THE CORLISS REVIEW GROUP: SECURITY

Amazon revealed late September this year, aside from their announcement of the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, Fire OS 3.0 and a revised 7 inch Kindle Fire HD tablet, they also announced that its new operating system introduces new enterprise and productivity features to the Kindle Fire platform. As a result, the 7 inch Kindle Fire HDX, the 8.9 inch Kindle Fire HDX, and the 7 inch Kindle Fire HD 2013 model will be enterprise-ready when they begin shipping next month.

“Kindle Fire is already the second most popular tablet at work in the U.S.,” said Raghu Murthi, Vice President of Enterprise and Education, Amazon. “As employees increasingly bring their own devices to work, the new Kindle Fire tablets can be easily integrated into the workplace with the new enterprise features, including encryption, secure Wi-Fi, a native VPN client, integration with leading MDMsolutions, and Kerberos support for Intranet access.”

A native VPN client for instant access to corporate networks is being provided by fireOS 3.0 even as you’re on the road or at home, secure hardware data encryption (HDXmodels only), Kerberos verification for single sign-on and the capability to browse secure Intranet websites from the Silk browser on Kindle Fire. A native Simple Certificate Exchange Protocol or SCEP client is used to retrieve digital certificates for secure resources.

To make it more user friendly for IT departments to manage Kindle Fire, this latest platform furthermore provides Kindle-specific device management APls that integrate with existing Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems. According to the company,Kindle Fire supports a wide range of MDM solutions including Amazon’s Whispercast service as well as third-party vendors like AirWatch, Citrix, Fiberlink, Good Technology, and SOTI.

In addition to make it more consumer-friendly, the latest OS supports Wi-Fi networks with the use of WPA2 security, printing documents and emails directly to a wireless printer, and a built-in OfficeSuite solution for reading documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Business customers can make use of Android enterprise and productivity apps available in the Amazon Appstore like GoToMeeting, Evernote,Cisco AnyConnect, and Documents To Go.

The company said, some of these features will be delivered as part of the free, over-the-air Fire OS 3.1 update in mid-November. The Kindle Fire HDX models will also include a “Mayday” button, the company’s on-device tech support that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Users simply tap “Mayday” to be connected to an Amazon expert who can co-pilot users through any features. Blind and visually impaired customers can leverage new and improved accessibility tools such as Screen Reader, Explore by Touch, and Screen Magnifier, the company further added.

As of today the 7 inch Kindle Fire HDX can be pre-purchased although not until October 18, the Wi-Fi version doesn’t shipped while startingNovember 14, the 4G LTE models will ship. The customers can pre-purchase Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 tablet here while the Wi-Fi only model ships November 7 and the 4G LTE model ships on December 10.