In this week’s issue of the Roundup, we’ll take a look at some hot mobile stories impacting companies today, from BYOD policies to mobile security concerns.

Let’s hit the road:

Windows tablets set to cause more device confusion
As we discussed last week, tablet computers are soon expected to take the place of desktop and laptop computers as the primary device for businesses. Tablets are already entering the enterprise via BYOD initiatives and being acquired and distributed to employees by companies themselves.

Unfortunately, the different operating systems being run on tablets cause problems for IT departments within companies, which struggle to manage and secure the disparate devices. And it’s about to get worse.

InformationWeek recently reported that a new army of tablets and other mobile devices that run Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system will hit the shelves in 2012. The devices are expected to start at $300, which could help them take market share from more expensive Apple and Android tablets. The proliferation of these devices could mean yet another disparate tablet for IT departments to agonize over.

Cyber crime skyrockets, gets social and goes mobile
2011 was a bad year for cyber crime. According to a recent study released by security company, Symantec, and featured in an article by PC Magazine, cyber crime jumped in 2011.

During the last year, Symantec blocked 5.5 hack attempts, which was an 81 percent increase from 2010. They also identified 403 million unique malware variants.

Perhaps the most startling statistic was the increase in mobile attacks, which grew by 93 percent in 2011. The Android operating system being the most frequently targeted.

The study reported that malicious spam decreased in the past year. However, these attacks appear to be evolving instead of disappearing, as hackers moved to social networks for more targeted and frightening attacks.

BYOD policies apparently passé
Bring your own device (or BYOD) is all the rage in enterprises today. Ultimately, employees want the same advanced functionality at work that their mobile devices deliver at home. Companies have been willing to allow employees to utilize  personal devices on their networks because they deliver advanced capabilities and increase the productivity and agility of the workforce.

Unfortunately, it appears that companies have been leaping into BYOD without planning ahead. According to a recent article by FierceMobileIT, a new report shows that two-thirds of the respondents allow BYOD in their enterprise but don’t have a BYOD policy in place. As a result, 25 percent of those surveyed have been the victim of a hack attempt or malware on their device.

For IT decision leaders looking to embrace BYOD, the article gives some good tips on how companies can protect themselves and their employees.

Does your company have a BYOD plan and policy in place?

Let’s hit the road:

Excuse me, is your shoulder ringing?
The connection between humans and machines might get a little closer if Nokia has its way. CNN reported last week that the company has submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a way to use magnetic ink for tattoos that would “ring” when cell phones receive incoming signals. The ink would interact with a specific electromagnetic field emitted by mobile phones. There was no information available about how to turn the tattoo off when going to bed for the night…

Using phone line “fingerprints” for security
You know how you can usually tell when a caller is from Maine or Georgia? It turns out that the same kind of distinctions are possible on the background noise for that phone call, which opens up new possibilities for security.

TechnologyReview.com reports that a relatively new startup company, Pindrop, is working with “several top banks” to process recordings of customer calls to flag possible fraud cases. Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO of Pindrop, says, “We can identify whether a person is using a landline or cell phone, or when a call which was supposed to come from a mobile in Atlanta comes from a landline in Nigeria.”

Apple security requirements limiting some apps
Within heightened scrutiny coming from Congress on privacy issues, Apple has begun to reject applications for iPhones and iPads that access the UDIDs (unique device identifiers) distinctive to each device. The company told developers six months ago that it was going to make the change, but it appears Apple is moving up the implementation of the policy because of pressure from the media and lawmakers.

Considering a tablet’s ability to do similar jobs as a desktop or laptop computer with as much ease and far more mobility, it comes as absolutely no surprise that employees would want to begin utilizing their tablets in the workplace. This phenomenon is referred to as “bring your own device,” or “BYOD.”

The desire to get the same advanced, mobile capabilities in the office as they have at home is driving employees to demand that their companies embrace BYOD. And many will simply bring their devices in anyway, regardless of their company’s policies. It’s safe to say that BYOD is an inevitability.

And this is good news for small and medium-sized businesses, because there are multiple benefits of BYOD.

First is the cost. Employees that bring in their own state-of-the-art mobile devices and tablets are making that technology available to the company at no cost. When you consider what these devices sell for, that can be a huge savings when multiplied across an entire company.

The advanced capabilities are an additional benefit. From mobile video communication, to a wide range of productivity applications available via easy and inexpensive download from app stores, tablets can herald in a new, more mobile era of increased productivity and effectiveness at your company.

Unfortunately, many IT people feel that having tablets popping up on your company’s network isn’t as innocuous as it may seem.

By incorporating tablets, smartphones and other endpoints onto your company’s networks, the network is becoming more vulnerable. Each additional untethered endpoint is an additional security risk that your IT department may be unprepared to handle.

Other IT professionals will point out the bandwidth issues that BYOD creates. Bandwidth can be an expensive and limited resource for small and medium-sized companies. The addition of personal mobile devices connected to networks via wi-fi can compound a company’s existing bandwidth issues.

To help make embracing BYOD easier, some companies are taking innovative approaches and implementing creative and unique policies and technologies to help make BYOD a more risk-free concept. We’ll take a closer look at some of these approaches in subsequent posts on the High Tech Highway.

Until then, you may want to sit down and think about if your company is ready for the post-holiday crush of mobile devices and the challenges that it could bring. Ultimately, BYOD is going to happen. Your company will need to prepare its network and IT staff to overcome these challenges. Luckily, the benefits should certainly outweigh them.

However, many companies are often hesitant to embrace cloud computing. Their reasoning often revolves around security, and the thought that sensitive information could be compromised if stored outside of their own networks.

In a way, they’re right. There is added risk in utilizing public clouds. However, there is more than one kind of cloud, and not every cloud is ideal for all workloads and data.

Here’s a look at the different clouds in the IT sky, and what differentiates them from the others:

• Public cloud: this is the cloud that most people think about when we discuss cloud computing. Public clouds are often cloud services purchased from large service providers such as Amazon and shared by multiple tenants. These cloud services can ultimately expose companies that utilize them to additional risk since other tenants of the cloud could become targets of hackers, leaving all tenants at risk.
• Community clouds: this is a cloud that is shared by multiple tenants within a single community. For example, many civilian government agencies utilize clouds owned by other civilian government agencies. These greatly reduce the risk associated with multi-tenant public clouds where random and anonymous third parties could be on the same cloud, but are still hosted outside of the organization and its datacenters.
• Private clouds: for those truly uninterested in sharing, there are private clouds. Private clouds are hosted within an organization’s datacenter and used only by one tenant, the organization that owns it.

So, which cloud is the best for your company? Well, that’s a difficult question to answer. Maybe it’s all of them. At the end of the day, the different clouds each have their own benefits and shortcomings.

For data and workloads that can benefit from increased transparency and mobility and aren’t considered extremely sensitive, the public cloud is most likely the way to go. These cloud services are often utilized for hosting things such as Web sites, thanks in large part to their flexibility and scalability, and email.

For workloads and data that could benefit multiple organizations within a community and needs to be shared between them, the community cloud is often the way to go. This information could be more sensitive in nature, but still needs to be shared between a group of companies, organizations or agencies. A data repository for companies in the same association could be an example.

Finally, for workloads that are extremely sensitive in nature, the private cloud is the clear choice. Private clouds are often the ones chosen for mission-critical applications and the most sensitive of data and information.

So, which cloud is right for your company? It ultimately comes down to the workloads you’re looking to move to the cloud and their individual demands.

This could make the move to the cloud seem even more daunting than you originally thought, but it is actually more liberating than frightening. There are different clouds for different data, which means you have choices available that can ensure each workload that you move to the cloud receives the flexibility and security that it requires.

The trick is to sit down with a trusted partner to identify which systems you want to move, the benefits of moving them to the cloud and the cloud that best suits that particular workload. Ultimately, an integrated approach, featuring multiple different kinds of cloud infrastructures could best suit your company. With different cloud options for each system and workload, it may seem like a move to the cloud is difficult and convoluted, but it ultimately means that there’s no excuse for not considering a move to the cloud.

But just what is the cloud? What advantages does the cloud hold for your company? Why would you want to embrace cloud technology? Are there any disadvantages or concerns about the cloud? For many business owners, these questions remain unanswered.

Cloud computing and cloud solutions are essentially technology solutions offered as a service or otherwise hosted outside of a company’s physical data centers in the “cloud.”

Let’s look at email solutions as an example. Traditionally, when a company implements an enterprise email solution, they need to purchase that solution and then host it themselves. This means that the company needs to pay for the software and the hardware needed to run it in their data center.

An email solution based in the cloud would eliminate the need to purchase and run the data center hardware required for hosting the enterprise email solution. When you consider the cost for maintaining, cooling and powering that hardware, those savings can dramatically increase over time.

And this isn’t just the case for email. Applications, video communication, data storage and other solutions are now being offered as a service via the cloud.

When it comes to functionality and capabilities, cloud services also have a leg up. The largest advantage is mobility. Using our email example, employees on the go can log into their account from any Internet-enabled device and receive the full functionality of the service. By hosting solutions such as applications and email in the cloud, companies can ensure that their employees can be just as productive and effective outside of the office as inside the office.

Are you heading for the clouds?  If so, check back with us.  In subsequent posts, we’ll take a deeper look at the kind of clouds out there (yes, there are multiple), the different kinds of services that are ideal for each kind of cloud and some of the concerns about the cloud, including security.

For the younger generations that have grown up with computers, it’s almost unfathomable to think of what an office environment without computers would have been like. That’s because the introduction of the computer to the workplace drastically changed how people did their jobs and empowered them to work faster and smarter.

Technologies like this are often referred to by those in the industry as “disruptive technologies.”  This may sound negative, but the opposite is true – these technologies create fundamental changes in the ways organizations and enterprises operate and shift things into the next gear. They serve as an exit ramp on the road of routine and show you a faster, previously unattainable shortcut to getting the job done.

Now, new disruptive technologies are emerging and gaining adoption in the workplace. They’re creating a new road, a High Tech Highway, with no discernable speed limit, traffic or toll booths.

What are these new trailblazing technologies? You may have heard of them before. They’re TelePresence, cloud computing, virtualization and information security. These technologies are enabling businesses to get where they’re going faster, safer and with far less cost.

For many companies, the concept of taking the cheaper, safer and faster road sounds appealing, but they just don’t know where the on-ramp is. That’s why we started Iron Bow’s High Tech Highway. This blog is a roadmap for all small, medium-sized and emerging growth businesses that know they could be operating more effectively, efficiently and inexpensively, but just don’t know how to steer themselves onto the path.

On this blog, we’ll be featuring articles authored by Iron Bow’s staff of technology experts, discussing the new disruptive technologies that, together, are creating the new High Tech Highway. These experts will look at the recent trends and advancements in cloud computing, virtualization, video communication and information security, discuss how they can empower your business and the best practices for their adoption and implementation.

However, like all good collaborative references, this roadmap to the High Tech Highway isn’t complete without your feedback. Have a hard time reading the map? Have a suggestion for a good place to stop between “software as a service” and “desktop virtualization?” Drop us a note and let us know.

The road to increased operational efficiency and better business practices sits open before you. Let’s take it together.