Off Topic - Mobile phones

[BIS]

Hi All Wise Tek-Tip'ers,

Looking for opinion here...

What are your thoughts on the mobile phone aspect (to those of you who manage the telecom infrastructure)?

We have been (and still are) a blackberry shop for the last 8 years at least, but going forward I am not so sure anymore.

There seems to be a lack of apps, lack of 'love' by the people who actually use them, lack of trust, lack of the 'coolness' factor - when it comes to blackberry. Should I stay?

So brainstormimng here - and hoping to get some independent input - what are your thoughts?

IOS? Android? Windows? Blackberry? What to chose going forward.

This from a business perspective - being able to play doom or whatever the kids play these days is not a valid reason

What are your thoughts on going forward? Management. Security. Ease of use. BYOD?

Appreciate any thoughts - will cross post this to the General Telephony forum as well.

Thanks for your input!

 

[DAVIDPAYNE]

We are in the process of installing a BYOD management system, so we will be able to support everything except Windows phones.
IMO, Blackberry sat on there hands way to long, and I do not believe they will be able to catch up. But it will take a long time to die.

 

[Westi]

I think you will need to separate the personal use and the business use.

strictly business I am still hooked on Blackberry, simple reason is security and not a lot of games and sh!t for it which is what you really do not need for a business environment phone. If you want to play games during busines hours take a day off and play a real game on a gaming PC with a 29" screen in front of you not a 4" screen in a parking lot or at a coffee house.
I know that a lot of people say that the Blackberry is going to die but so far most government agencies and banks use it for the security reason and that won't change any time soon, they just lost a big market share for all the personal yuppies that went over to the iphones as that was the trendy thing to do.
If Blackberry wants to catch up then they should bring out a dual SIM card phone so that you can have your personal number and your business number on the same device without having to carry 2 phones or use your business number for personal use or vice versa.

personal even with a little bit of business I prefer the Android platform, not much more to say about that except that you do not use proprietary Apple or BB software to manage it.

no way is for me the iphone, reason is that you have to have the itunes to manage and the security is not high on these devices mostly because a lot of users don't even activate their code for accessing the iphones (because they can leave it that way) but that means you lose the thing and anybody can, without even hacking it, access your files and settings on the phone. Iphones where a great toy when it came out but has since surpassed by Android toys that run on openly available tools and do not require the Apple proprietary software to administer it.

The BYOD everybody is talking about will get changed with some other slogan of the day in a couple of years as that is about teh lifespan of these things and by then there might be something else on the top of the must-have devices for the modern person.
I am old fashioned and paranoid and if security is not there then I don't want to have anything to do with it for my business even if that means that people look at me like I am a relict of the cold war (which I am, LOL) but I am sure that if I lose my phone nobody will take it and goo through my emails and contacts or even pictures and make use of it.
Btw. I also own an iphone (just to say that I am not one of these I_hate_anything_iphone guys) which I use strictly for personal use, password protected (as good as that actually protects it) and without business email or business information on it and I use it for its purpose, a nice toy.



Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (SME)

http://convergednetworks.ca

Give a tech a solution and he will be back tomorrow to ask you the next question, teach a tech how to read the manual and he will be able to solve the problems for a life time.

 

[pbxn]

Nice thing about BB's is the BES server where you can create policy and user groups that allow or restrict various aspects of the phone. Issue is, BB is real slow to the party as far as the devices and the app's its supports, which now forces the issue to look at Android or preferrably Apple. BB imo made the same mistake Nortel did; we don't have to cuz they'll never get rid of us mentality.. Kicker with Apple is, it was never designed to be a coroporate phone, lacking security policies etc. The flip side to that is the App store which every one and their grandma is willing to write Apps for. We're going away from BB, only due to Bes server on its last leg and have chosen iPhone's as the standard.
Doing so though has forced us to purchase a 3rd party mdm solution. This encrypts, forces password policy allows for remote wipe etc and we can deny certain app's.
Having a 3rd party mdm also embraces the BYOD craze. You want corporate email on your device, cool, its required to have this app.

 

[mikeydidit]

We are also in the very beginning stages of setting up something here. I see a lot of trouble though as they are still in the mindset here of pleasing everyone. That usually ends up pleasing no one. Can't decide on one vendor, type of phone, nothing. We all know the craze for the I Phones and I also agree that their more for play than work. Most of the tech's here use droids (including myself) and I am seeing more people switching to them here even with the IPhone 5. I see the Ipad as something that could really be useful. But Apple doesn't want to play nice with the rest of the world. This will set it back a while for apps the rest of the world could be using.

It's coming.

When is the last time you helped someone, just because you were able to?

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