It’s official. The iPad and the iPhone have cemented themselves as part of the day-to-day infrastructure of business.
Of course, every company in the world seems to be pouncing on the phenomenon like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Everyone wants to get into the game. A perception has suddenly arisen that whether you’re a brick-and-mortar retailer or an enterprise software vendor, you *must* have an iOS app.
Here at MokaFive, we’ve long since known that we wanted to extend the functionality of our award-winning MokaFive Suite to the iPad—providing secure, managed access to corporate data. However, we resisted the urge to hastily slap something together and toss it out into the marketplace. Instead, we stood back awhile to study this new platform and see how it could best be leveraged.
What we found was that there were three basic types of solutions out there, each of them with their own distinct deficiencies.
- Solutions that involve accessing and navigating a full Windows desktop from an iPad. This includes VDI (Citrix Receiver, VMware View App), Remote Desktop products (LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, etc.), and Hosted Desktops (usually hosted by managed-service providers, and mostly not enterprise-class solutions).
Caveats: These are awkward to navigate (Windows was designed to be used with a mouse, not with a fingertip!) and cannot be used offline. In general, we see these solutions as overkill—providing an interface that is unnecessarily heavy, but which adds no value.
- Data Sync solutions/cloud-based file repositories (DropBox, Box.net, etc.).
Caveats: In general, these solutions have weak management controls and poor security.
- Mobile Device Management Solutions (Zenprise, Mobile Active Defense, MobileIron, and Good Technology).
Caveats: Like VDI, these solutions are also overkill, albeit in a different way. They force you to manage the whole device, instead of just being concerned with what is truly important—your data. They also are not workable with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs, since the penterprise must take full control over the entire device. Personal data cannot co-exist in this model.
One size does not fit all
Now, some of the solutions I mentioned above might be perfect for your environment. Perhaps you *do* want to manage a whole device and disallow personal devices or personal user of corporate devices. Perhaps you already have VDI installed and deployed, and so a Citrix Receiver or VMWare View App would be just right for you.
However, MokaFive has developed all of its products with the same philosophy in mind:
- Provide a secure, encrypted data container to allow users to run data anywhere—even on a personal device (enabling BYOD)—without subjecting that data to risk or leakage.
- Employ just a single console to allow for central management of every device in the enterprise.
- Ensure that data is available both online and offline.
And MokaFive for iOS does all of the above. We created a secure, encrypted container that could run on an iPad or iPhone (even a personally owned device), isolated from user data and applications. This data “bubble” is easily managed by IT in the same fashion it manages its corporate images and data—no need for a separate management console. If an iPad is lost or stolen, or if an employee leaves the company, IT can remotely wipe out the entire data container. And instead of a Windows VM, we created an app with a true iOS interface.
A secure, manageable data “bubble” for multiple uses
Here are a few of the use cases for MokaFive for iOS:
- Providing physicians with secure access to electronic patient records from home or from the road. Likewise for pharma companies who possess HIPAA-controlled data.
- Let corporate board members carry confidential data on a personal iPad without risk.
- A contractor might have company data for more than one client on her iOS device. MokaFive for iPad can create one secure data container for each company and isolate your corporate data from the contractor’s other personal data or data belonging to other clients.
- Teachers can use MokaFive for iOS to connect to student grade portals from their iPads.
- Mobile professionals can get access to corporate file shares, network resources, and even data from their MokaFive LivePCs that have been backed up into the cloud.
Our new iOS solution fulfills the MokaFive “promise.” Its performance, user experience, and management capabilities are unparalleled. Its security is customizable and strong enough to comply with any set of government or corporate standards or regulations. And it allows users to access corporate data on personal devices without risk to intellectual property.
At $50/user/year, we think it’s the best deal going.
Warm Regards,
Purnima Padmanabhan,
COO
MokaFive
