Google, in recent years, has added enterprise features to Android to increase adoption by businesses. The latest is called “zero-touch enrollment” and allows companies to configure devices with preferences at the carrier level before employees even receive them.
Over the past few months, Google has rolled out several new features powered by machine learning. Announced at an enterprise event today, Google Springboard allows users to search through Google Apps and acts as a day-to-day work assistant, providing “useful and actionable information and recommendations.” The company also announced a major revamp to Google Sites.
One day after announcing availability of its Vive VR headset for consumers following a few delays, HTC today announced an enterprise edition of the product.
Chromebox for meetings were announced two years ago and introduced the constantly updating Chrome OS model to corporate video conferencing. Previous hardware included a Chromebox and a camera, but required companies to supply their own monitor. Today, Google is announcing a more complete package that features an all-in-one Acer Chromebase that runs the enterprise software.
Update: It appears Google has shut down the eBay listing.
Earlier this year, we told you across several exclusive reports that second-generation Glass hardware was in development, namely a variant of the device reworked with the enterprise in mind. Now, a couple months after getting our first look at FCC images of the device and later an official Google patent, we now have our first look at a unit in the wild via a new eBay listing…
In November of last year, Google announced they were combining their various cloud and enterprise products into one team headed by Diane Greene, the co-founder of VMWare. Greene was brought over after Google purchased her cloud platform startup Bebop for $380 million, as revealed in an SEC filing today.
Sundar Pichai has taken to the Google for Work blog today to announce that Diane Greene, co-founder of VMWare, is taking lead of a newly-organized group at Google that combines the company’s cloud businesses. Besides the obvious Google Cloud Platform, this move pulls in Google for Work and Google Apps to make one integrated team… Expand
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Chromebook for Work is Google’s lineup of premium Chrome OS-powered laptops which it promotes as easy to deploy, highly secure, and ready to run legacy Window applications through OS virtualization. Today the company announced that Dell will begin selling a new one of these business-ready Chromebooks starting September 17th, called the Dell Chromebook 13.
The Chromebook 13 is, like the rest of the Chromebook for Work line, packing a serious punch for a computer running such a lightweight operating system. It has a 13.3″ full HD touchscreen display (1920×1080), a 5th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, a backlit keyboard and glass touchpad, and a palmrest made out of magnesium alloy. The laptop is quoted for 12 hours of battery life, although these ratings are usually generous. The starting price will be $399 when it goes on sale, with no more detail on upgrade options or variants. “Enterprise class performance at an economical price point,” Google says in its blog post.
Chrome OS certainly does hold a lot of promise for IT departments frustrated with the current solutions out there, namely Windows and all the tumult going on at Microsoft over the company’s strategy for the operating system going forward. Google’s operating system was built at a much later time, and without the baggage of years and years of developing and supporting software meant for a place and time that has since passed. In my day-to-day there are rarely more than a few edge case applications and tools I need a full-on desktop computer for, so the ability of Chrome OS to virtualize Windows and run its applications is just icing on the cake of an OS which recognizes that many business-related programs can run in the web and be almost indistinguishable from their desktop equivalents — especially with Chrome OS’s ability to run web apps as individual windowed apps.
The internet got more than a little excited about BlackBerry buying up a couple of Android-related domains a few weeks ago. Although they came at a time when rumors of an Android-powered BlackBerry smartphone were floating around, turns out they’re nothing to do with that. As was always the more likely scenario, BlackBerry has used these domains to show us how it keeps our Android phones secure through its BES12 enterprise management system.
In a blog post today, BlackBerry has announced Android Secured, a dedicated web space for keeping customers up to date on the management and security of Android phones. The new Android Secured hub can be found at www.manageandroid.com.
To that end we’ve recently launched the Android Secured hub for fresh news and updates on all things Android security and Android management. Check it out and be sure to visit again soon as we curate the top articles and stories that will keep you on the cutting edge.
From just skimming over it quickly, it appears to be a collation of various articles and videos from across the web which BlackBerry thinks is important to share with its enterprise customers. There is some BlackBerry-created content too, like an eBook on enterprise mobile security (for example). This is undoubtedly a push to reaffirm the company’s relevance in a market where so many people now want to bring their own phones to work. And where companies don’t necessarily want to fork out for an iPhone.
This doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t see a BlackBerry Android device. The manufacturer’s own chief, John Chen said the company might as long as they can make it secure. What’s more, there have been supposed leaks of a BlackBerry ‘Venice’ portrait-slider which may or may not be on its way.
Google Glass Explorer Edition
We told you last week that Google is internally referring to its next iteration of Google Glass as “Enterprise Edition” or “EE,” and now we’ve uncovered information about the soon-to-be-launched device’s hardware. According to several sources familiar with advanced prototypes of the device, the Enterprise Edition includes a larger prism display, as well as an Intel Atom processor that brings better performance and moderately improved battery life… Expand
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First noticed by Florian Kiersch on Google+, Google appears to be testing a new meetings service. Google Meetings, also referred to as GMeet, appears to allow users to schedule and join teleconference calls with one click. Instead of having to dial into a teleconference call, one user could create a meeting topic in GMeet, then invite everyone else to the call. People who received an invite would be able to then join the call with a single click.
Fresh off their landmark deal with Apple, IBM reports that around 60% of the leading Android dating apps include vulnerabilities that risk both personal and corporate data.
The report, which didn’t examine the iOS counterparts of any dating apps, found that 60% of the apps it examined included vulnerabilities that allow for either malware, the ability to track a user via GPS or the device’s microphone or camera, or steal credit card information. Expand
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Amazon Web Services is launching a new service (via The Wall Street Journal) this morning called “WorkMail,” an enterprise email and calendar solution that the Seattle-based company believes will bring a wide variety of improvements to a space that is largely controlled by Microsoft and Google.
Dropbox today officially announced its Dropbox for Business API allowing corporate IT systems to integrate the cloud-syncing platform for businesses into their own solutions. Dropbox says its newly announced Business API (application programming interface) will let developers take advantage of “team-level functionality” and corporate partners to further integrate Dropbox for Business into their own systems. Specifically, the Dropbox for Business API will provide the following benefits for partners:
Google, in a post on the official Google Work blog today, announced several enhancements coming to enterprise Chromebook users. In addition to a slew of new features for places using Chromebooks for Work, Google also announced a new pricing scheme for enterprise users. For $50 per device per year, users can get access to all of Google’s Chromebook for Work features, although that only applies to customers in the United States and Canada.
Google on Tuesday announced the rebranding of its Enterprise products and services group to a friendlier “Google for Work” name that should resonate better with small businesses and anyone using Google services, such as Maps, Search, Chrome, Android and Cloud Platform, to perform their day-to-day work. Google chairman Eric Schmidt emphasized that the change was made to empower anyone, including a sole developer in his or her basement, to have an impact. Expand
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A new report from The Information claims Google and HP have discussed the possibility of bringing a Google Now-like Android assistant to the workplace. Google’s Android unit has also reportedly been in talks with others about the functionality: Expand
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The latest enterprise market share data from Good Technology shows that Android gained five points from iOS, hitting almost a third of the market at 32 percent while iOS fell from 72 to 67 percent. Windows Phone remains flat (and irrelevant) at just 1 percent. (BlackBerry data is not included as the company uses its own servers and activations are invisible to Good Technology.)
What’s particularly impressive about the numbers is that Good’s technology mostly connects mobile devices to Exchange servers and organizations that use Google services for enterprise, which are more likely to Android, aren’t being counted here…
Sprint and Google announced a partnership today that will see the carrier sell Apps for Business, Google’s productivity suite of products for enterprise, while offering deployment and support as a complete solution. Sprint is essentially becoming a reseller as part of the Google Apps Partner Program.
“Google Apps helps businesses work better together with familiar tools they can trust,” said Murali Sitaram, director of strategic partnerships for Google Enterprise. “Our partners are critical in this effort, providing valuable cloud and mobility solutions to customers of all sizes and across diverse industries. We are pleased to welcome Sprint to the Google Apps Partner Program, where they will provide Google Apps and added services to help customers work the way they live.”
In its press release, Sprint said its offering of Google Apps for Business will include “24/7 support and online training included at no charge … all with a mobile-centric approach that enables the use of Google Apps on mobile devices.”
Google has announced a new feature for enterprise users of Google Apps: the ability for assistants and other team members to search for particular people in their boss’s contacts list.
Contacts delegation allows enterprise users to delegate full access to the contacts in their “My Contacts” group without granting access to their mail or anything else in their accounts. […]
To save users time when locating specific delegated contacts, we’ve now added search functionality. Delegates can search delegator contacts by selecting the delegator contact group in the navigation pane, and then searching.
It’s not the most exciting of new features, but is one of those small things that can make a worthwhile difference to a PA who might have to contact a dozen or more people a day – and every improvement like that helps Google build its case for broader enterprise adoption of Google Apps.
During its annual developer conference today, Google announced several new enterprise features that are coming to Android with its “L” update and a new “Android for Work” program. Thanks to a plethora of new APIs, the “L” version of Android will be able to seamlessly unify personal and business apps and data. Google claims that currently, many employees are required to carry two phones: one for work and one for personal use.
Google I/O is literally hours away and while we expect to see several things at this year’s conference, one of Mountain View’s biggest talking points could be improving Android’s appeal to business customers. To accomplish this, Google’s head of Android, Sundar Pichai is in talks with companies like Qualcomm to develop chips that store confidential information such as passwords and user data, so they won’t be as vulnerable to hackers, according to The Information.
Whether you’re an average Joe backing up pictures of your family or a huge mega-corporation that regularly moves terabytes of data, cloud storage migration can be a bit of a pain. Aware of your plight, Google is developing a solution that will help enterprise customers move their precious information with less of a fuss. Today, the company announced a limited preview of its new cloud import tool, which makes it “faster, easier and cheaper” to import your cloud storage buckets through Google’s “high performance network.”
Google recently expanded its Apps services for enterprise users by making its premium communication features available to everyone. Apps customers can now broadcast a 15 person Hangout chat session with HD video quality, a perk previously unavailable to standard subscribers. Furthermore, these new premium features introduce enhanced privacy controls that let admins restrict a Google+ post’s visibility, along with the option to hide employee profiles from external searches.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is purchasing Divide, a company that builds mobile device management software for enterprise customers. Divide confirmed the deal in an announcement on its website saying it will be joining the Android team and that existing customers will continue to be able to access the service (above).
Divide provides a cloud-based service that lets companies and large organizations oversee and manage mobile devices used by employees on their networks. The software can create separate work environments on personal devices used by employees, offers a number of security features, and also supports both Android and iOS: Expand
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Google announced today on its Enterprise blog that it’s introducing a new Google apps referral program that will see the company payout $15 for each new customer referred through the program.
Many of the millions of Google Apps customers learned about tools like Hangouts, Drive and Gmail for business from their customers, friends and networks. To help continue the momentum, we’re launching the Google Apps Referral Program. The referral program makes it easy to share Google Apps with your network and show them how they too can use these tools at work. To show our appreciation, we’re offering a $15 referral bonus for each new Google Apps user you refer.
Those interested in joining the referral program will need a valid taxpayer ID number and bank account for direct deposits. Google also says it will provide email and website templates that can be used to send a unique referral link to potential customers.Google Apps users in the US and Canada that are interested in joining the referral program can do so here.
Update: We had a quick Q&A with Google pasted below:
The fine print from Google is below: Expand
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Google announced a partnership with virtualization software maker VMware today that will bring Chromebook users access to Windows desktops and apps. The deal means enterprise Chromebook users will have access to Windows apps through VMware Horizon DaaS and an upcoming Chrome Web Store app:
Cloud applications allow flexibility, scalability and security and enable a work-anywhere environment, but many of our customers still use traditional desktop applications. Desktop as a Service (DaaS) helps bridge the gap between the cloud and a traditional desktop by allowing you to run your traditional software in the cloud and have applications appear on your Chromebook similarly to how they run today. An example might be your Windows based accounting application.
It might sound a little bit like Google is admitting that enterprise customers need more than just Chrome apps to get the job done, but it’s also embracing the upcoming end of life for Windows XP and encouraging business customers to upgrade to Chromebooks. Giving businesses access to the Windows apps many rely on is certainly a good argument for upgrading to Chromebooks. In a statement in VMware’s press release, Google’s president of enterprise Amit Singh said “Chromebooks can save businesses about $5,000 per computer when compared to traditional PCs.” Expand
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Employees who use their own electronic devices at work under a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) arrangement may have unwittingly authorised their employer to remotely wipe their device when they leave the company, reports the WSJ.
In early October, Michael Irvin stood up to leave a New York City restaurant when he glanced at his iPhone and noticed it was powering off. When he turned it back on again, all of his information—email programs, contacts, family photos, apps and music he had downloaded—had vanished […]
It wasn’t a malfunction. The device had been wiped clean by AlphaCare of New York, the client he had been working for full-time since April. Mr. Irvin received an email from his AlphaCare address that day confirming the phone had been remotely erased.
A survey found that 21 percent of companies perform a remote wipe of employee-owned devices registered on the company network, with employees ostensibly agreeing to this when they connect to the company network.
Many employers have a pro forma user agreement that pops up when employees connect to an email or network server via a personal device, he added. But even if these documents explicitly state that the company may perform remote wipes, workers often don’t take the time to read it before clicking the “I agree” button.
The legality of the practice has reportedly not yet been tested in court.
In principle, backup should allow wiped Android devices to be restored, but you may want to pay a little more attention to the small-print next time one of those corporate messages pops up on your screen, to find out what it is you’ve been agreeing to …
In an announcement shared on Google’s Enterprise blog by Boston’s chief information officer, the city has announced it will officially migrate some 76,000 city employees, police officers, teachers, and students to using Google Apps and email services from a variety of alternative systems including Microsoft Exchange.
The Boston official noted the city’s success in adopting Google Apps, particularly for boston.gov email addresses for every city official, due to the minimal effort in maintaining the system thanks to Google’s existing and scaling infrastructure. Expand
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During a talk at the LISA ’13 conference in Washington D.C earlier this month, a couple members from Google’s Macintosh Operations team explained how the company has been forced to develop its own set of tools to manage its fleet of roughly 43,000 Macs. The reason, according to Google engineers Clay Caviness and Edward Eigerman, is that Apple isn’t doing a great job at supporting its enterprise management tools. As the first slide of the presentation (pictured above) puts it, “While Apple won’t do much for you, there are tools out there you can use to keep your machines secure, up to date and useful.”
“We don’t use any of Apple’s tools to manage the Macs. Apple arguably produces two tools, Mac OS X server… and Apple Remote Desktop. It kinda breaks down when you get it over 50, 100, 200 machines that you’re managing… we’ve sort of lost their attention as far as enterprise management tools.”
During one slide (pictured above, right), Google uses the red line to represent the release of the iPhone while noting Apple’s remote desktop “hasn’t had a major revision to it since 2006.” To avoid using Apple’s management tools, Google has either developed its own tools or is using open source tools for everything from configuration, to package management, monitoring system levels and more. Google announced during the talk that one of the imaging tools it developed, CanHazImage, will soon be hitting open source. 
While Google mentioned during the presentation that it supports four desktop OS platforms (OS X, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS) internally, it also said these days employees that want to use a platform other than Mac OS X “have to make a business case” to do so. Compare that roughly 40k monthly actives from Macs reported during the presentation to the 42,162 full-time employees at the company (not including Motorola). The Googlers also noted that the company managed to update from 10.7 to 10.8 for 99.5% of its fleet in 8 weeks and it’s currently trying to accomplish the same for 10.9 Mavericks.
You can watch or download the full presentation here.
Photo: itpro.co.uk
Trading in Blackberry shares was briefly suspended in the lead-up to the company’s announcement that it is exploring ‘strategic alternatives’.
The Company’s Board of Directors has formed a Special Committee to explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment. These alternatives could include, among others, possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the Company or other possible transactions.
The company, which once dominated the enterprise market, was extremely late moving into touchscreen phones and found itself increasingly isolated by both Bring Your Own Device policies and aggressive pitching to the corporate market by both Apple and Samsung.
This tweet by Techmeme editor Mahendra Palsule perhaps says it best:
In an interesting development, the press release notes Prem Watsa CEO Fairfax Financial has resigned from the board:
With the announcement of the Special Committee, Prem Watsa, Chairman and CEO of Fairfax Financial informed the Company that he felt it was appropriate to resign due to potential conflicts that may arise during the process. Fairfax Financial is the largest BlackBerry shareholder. Mr. Watsa said, “I continue to be a strong supporter of the Company, the Board and Management as they move forward during this process, and Fairfax Financial has no current intention of selling its shares.”
Perhaps this indicates that the Blackberry’s largest shareholder is at least considering a buyout.
As more and more companies start allowing employees to bring their own smartphones and tablets into work, Google is obviously looking to capture a portion of that enterprise market. The company on Thursday announced several new features for the growing bring your own device, or BYOD, market.
Comprehensive mobile device management is included with Google Apps for Business, Government and Education. Organizations large and small can manage smartphones and tablets – including Android and iOS – right from the Google Apps Admin console, with no need for special hardware or software.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c0UEQXUNBto
BlackBerry already started providing enterprise management tools for iOS and Android devices through its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 suite, but today it launched a new ‘Secure Work Space’ feature that will bring even better multi-platform device management and security to companies allowing iOS and Android devices in the workplace. The idea is to separate work apps and the user’s personal data:
Secure Work Space is a new containerization, application-wrapping and secure connectivity option that delivers a higher level of control and security to iOS and Android devices, all managed through the single BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 administration console… On a personal iOS or Android device, users with Secure Work Space get integrated email (with attachment viewing), calendar and contacts for productivity, as well as secure browser access to intranets and document editing capabilities with BlackBerry’s Documents To Go™. With corporate data separated and controlled within the Secure Work Space container, these standard apps can be deployed with confidence to any user, together with other apps chosen by the company.
BlackBerry noted that it is working with partner Box for the cloud aspect of the new service, while users interested in taking advantage will have to purchase a $99 per year, per device license to access the new Secure Work Space feature through Blackberry Enterprise Service 10. The big benefit, according to BlackBerry, is that users “no longer need to configure and manage expensive VPN infrastructures to provide mobile device access to data and apps that reside behind their corporate firewalls.”
A free trial is available here.
Google already announced some big new enterprise partners adopting Google Apps this year, despite Microsoft launching its “Googlighting” smear campaign to promote its Office 365 alternative. In January, it signed its biggest deal with a single company by transitioning roughly 110,000 employees across 26 countries from Spanish bank BBVA to Google Apps. For governments, Colorado recently adopted the Google Apps for Government platform, and today Google announced on the Official Enterprise Blog that Edmonton has become the first major Canadian city to make the switch:
Google just signed its biggest deal yet with a single company to offer cloud services with 110,000 employees in 26 countries of Spanish bank BBVA switching to Google apps. The bank will use apps like Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Docs, and it will have employees’ access video chats and other collaboration tools. According to BBVA, the deal is the “largest global agreement for the adoption of Google Apps, Google Enterprise suite.”
Through this solution, BBVA seeks to increase its efficiency by providing employees the tools of advanced communication and collaboration. In addition, Google Apps will facilitate collaboration among professionals from the bank, regardless of geographic area in which they are. This is essential to drive innovation in a financial group as global as BBVA.
According to a report from BBC, who talked with BBVA, the move was largely driven by an increasing number of the bank’s staff utilizing smartphones and tablets as their main computer. The bank already moved 35,000 employees to Google Apps and it expects it to roll out to 110,000 staff members during 2012.
Director of innovation for BBVA Carmen Herranz confirmed to BBC that all customer data would remain on the bank’s servers with the move to Google services only applying to communication among staff. The bank had previously rolled out a successful pilot project with around 7,000 staff, and plans to “closely monitor for any increases in network load.” Herranz said their biggest concern is video conferencing.
Vice President of Google Enterprise EMEA Sebastien Marotte gave a statement in BBVA’s press release highlighting the importance of the announcement and growth of Google Apps: