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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Corliss Tech Review Group: Harmon.ie Intros Secure Android App for Office 365, SharePoint


Harmon.ie has partnered with five leading mobile device management vendors to provide a secure, cross-platform, easy to use, consistent Office 365/SharePoint experience for enterprise IT mobile Android users, they announced this September. For businesses looking to eliminate Drop box, Google Drive and other unsecure document sharing/storing services that employees typically use, and tighten those pesky “leaks” associated with unsecured storage services; this news is kind of a big deal for them.

Currently the company offers a full-featured, enterprise-grade Android app that permits device owners to access SharePoint and Office 365 documents securely on a subscription basis, with pricing starting at $4 per month. A free version for simply reading Office 365 and SharePoint documents and a full-featured Premium version for individuals to read, write, and upload files for a flat $19.99 fee is also being provided by the company.

Aside from Apple’s iOS platform and BlackBerry, the Android client is also part of Harmon.ie’s Mobile Suite. Supporting the suite are Citrix Ready Worx Verification, the Good Dynamics Secure mobility Platform, AirWatch, MobileIron, and Samsung KNOX. The three clients provide apps for editing and sharing Office 365 and SharePoint documents, and for reaching out to colleagues by means of Office 365/SharePoint social capabilities.

Harmon.ie also provides real-time updates when colleagues edit important documents; colleagues can then be contacted with a single click,” the company said. “Workers can expand their social networks by adding colleagues from the mobile device’s contact list and keep up to date with harmon.ie’s unified activity stream of collaboration updates.“

Harmon.ie backs Office 365 (SharePoint Online) and also hosted solutions for SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2010, Office SharePoint Server (MOSS 2007), and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. Pricing consists of email only for $4 per user per month with a yearly commitment, mobile only for $4 per user per month, and $6 per user per month for both email and mobile access. As you would expect it will be cheaper if you buy more licenses. Orders for more than 200 licenses will necessitate a quote.


“We are extremely proud to round out our mobile offering with today’s Android release, and to add such an illustrious set of leading MDM vendors as trusted partners,” said David Lavenda, VP Product Strategy at harmon.ie. “These new additions insure that customers now have secure and scalable mobile access to the document storage systems in which their organization already has a significant investment; Office 365 and SharePoint, no matter what mobile devices they use.”

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Corliss Tech Review Group: Over 10 mn BBM downloads on rival phones in 24 hrs. of launch

According to Canadian handset maker BlackBerry, its popular chat application BBM for rival Android-based handsets and iPhones has witnessed over 10 million downloads in the first 24 hours of its re-launch.

On Tuesday, the under pressure smartphone maker had begun again the rollout of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

“It’s been 24 hours since we resumed the launch of BBM for Android and iPhone. And what a day it’s been! We’ve already had more than 10 million downloads of BBM,” BlackBerry EVP (BBM) Andrew Bocking said in a post on the company’s official Blog.

In September, BlackBerry had stopped the global rollout of its instant messaging service BBM on rival phones, holding responsible the delay on issues caused by an unreleased old version of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger).

“When we saw almost one million people install an unreleased version of the Android version, another million use workarounds to download BBM onto their iPhones and another six million people pre-register to know when BBM became available for iPhone and Android, we knew we were on to something huge,” he noted.

The application has also seen ‘overwhelmingly positive reviews’ on Google Play and the App Store. BBM has earned 60,000 five-star reviews on Google Play from about 87,000 reviews, he added.

On Apple’s App Store, BBM rose quickly in the free app rankings in the first 24 hours, taking the number one slot in more than 75 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Indonesia and most of the Middle East, Bocking said.

BlackBerry said it will add more new features to BBM to promote it as the private social network.

“While we’re excited to bring BBM to iPhone and Android – we aren’t stopping there. Work isn’t slowing down at all. We committed to delivering a BBM experience on iPhone and Android that was equal to that on BlackBerry 10. That means bringing BBM Video, BBM Voice and BBM Channels…

“My team is still committed to bringing those features to BBM on Android and iPhone in the near future. And we are not stopping there – we have some great new features planned that will build on BBM as the private social network you count on for immediate conversations you can control and trust,” Bocking said.




Tuesday, October 29, 2013

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.