On "Personal Technology" and the "Next Big Thing"

I have the fortune (or misfortune) of getting Information Week delivered to my door. This year has seen a lot of articles about iOS, Android, Personal Technology, and custom application development. Of course, the executive team at work gets Information Week as well - from the CIO down to the department managers. We have been fairly forward-looking for a while - when Apple released the iPhone 3Gs we were able to support deploying those on a corporate level, and allowed users to bring them into the environment (on a personal level) if they were configured with a profile as detailed in the Apple iOS Enterprise support documentation.

Sadly, we were unable to support droids for a while, since they didn't even conform to ActiveSync security policy (this has changed, fortunately). This has been going on for a couple years, and for a business that is very concerned with privacy (we are a hospital, after all) it was very forward looking. The hospital did not choose to go the route than many others are on - hiring a team to develop custom applications for iOS or Android connectivity to our various data silos, but that wasn't a problem.

This year, however, has been the year of "personal technology" in the trade rags. And as the hospital desperately wants to be at the forefront of technology, they are pushing for support of personal technology at every level.

I am a fan of supporting personal technology. It helps your employees feel attached to your business. It makes them believe that you care about them, and their wishes. But sometimes, you have to balance that with security, business needs, and legal concerns. A strong leader in IS doesn't just give in to the employees, no matter how important they are, if what they want to do compromises the security of your business, and even more important if it compromises state or federal law. I thought we had a strong leadership team in our IS department. Turns out I couldn't be further from the truth.

Leadership knows one word when it comes to "I want" from the VIP/high-profile users: "Sure!"

Can I bring my personal device to the hospital, put explicitly restricted patient information on it, without any oversight or data security managed by the IS security group?

"Sure!"

Can I buy hardware that is blatantly incompatible with our environment, and connect to the internal network with it, so that I look important at conferences and meetings?

"Sure!"

But when we (as the IS team on the ground with the technology) attempt to raise red flags, or warnings to the leadership team that we need to have some sort of structure around these things, and they have to work (function) within the legal and moral scope of our business, we are ignored, or (worse) chastised for even considering such things.

Personal Technology is the "Next Big Thing" in IS - it makes sense because it can save money, it invests your employees in the business on a personal level, and it can improve the effectiveness of your employees - when your environment is able to support it. Before you take the time to let every smartphone, tablet, and personal device into your environment, you need to evaluate the devices, develop a plan, and implement it in a measured way with continued review to determine if what you are doing works for your employees and your business.

It's the interface, stupid...

So I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with a potential iPad user, and I realized something during that conversation. The "amazing and magical" hype about the iPad isn't the device itself, it's about the interface. HP has a device quite similar to the iPad (at least in initial visible review) coming called the Slate, but it runs Windows. That will be the actual downfall of the device - because a desktop OS isn't a true touch-tablet interface. I've used the HP all-in-one desktop touchscreen - it's a novelty but you really need a keyboard to use Windows effectively. That's what iPad has going for it, along with the other iPhone OS devices, as well as the Android OS devices - the UI is a unique experience focused on a touch-based interface, not a mouse and keyboard.

If you've never really used a touch-tablet interface like the iPad, or a Surface device, you can't understand - even if you use one of the tablet based PCs out there like the Lenovo X200. The interface and the way you interact with the device is what makes or breaks it - so although I am optimistic about the Slate for those Windows-only environments (like the hospital I work in today), I'm afraid that it will fall flat, with a mouse/keyboard UI that fails on a touch based device. Only time will tell, however, if HP and Microsoft "get it" with touch interface PCs beyond the shiny nature of a Surface....

Being a Mac in a Windows world

So you hear this all the time. "I'm a Mac user - I don't want to use Windows. I don't like it/It sucks/It gets viruses..."

Whatever. The Mac is far from perfect.

I"m a Mac user too. For the last 3 years I've been struggling to bring the Mac on par with Windows in the "Real World" of business. I had it easy the first couple of years. I worked in a cable broadcast environment, where the Mac already had a presence in motion graphics and marketing. It was also commonly used in associated companies in other broadcast production services, so there it wasn't a matter of bringing the Mac in from scratch, it was a matter of integration and trying to bring parity to the Mac platform. Parity was a challenge of mindset - the IT group there was so entrenched in "The Windows Way" that the Mac was still Mac OS 7/8/9 - pretty, for making pictures, but not a real computer. During my career there, all the easy work was done, and some of the hard work as well. When I left, all the Mac systems were bound to a "Magic Triangle Cylinder of Destiny" environment with AD/OD management, SSO login processes, and IT viewed them as another piece of the environment, no longer just a pretty picture-making box. I may write more about my experiences there, but this is about my current experience, mostly to keep me sane.

Here, at my new job, I really am a lone Mac in a Windows world. I've moved into IT support for a large regional hospital/medical group. I was brought in to plan and develop an integration plan for Macs in the environment, as the entire IT group here is (again) living in Microsoft land. I was here for almost 3 weeks before they took one of the 8 (yes 8!) Macs they had and let me get started with this project. In the next few articles I'll describe the process I've gone through, mostly for my own sake but also for those who might accidentally stumble across this and either have additional information or need to do something I've already done. Stay tuned...