Samsung is looking into the idea of hosting its own cloud services to extend the appeal of its Android-based consumer smartphones and tablets to enterprises, the company said on Wednesday.
With more employees bringing personal devices to work, the company is thinking about building cloud-based services for enterprises to connect disparate devices based on different OSes, said Dave Lowe, vice president of enterprise sales at Samsung Mobile, during a launch event for the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone in New York.
"When I talked about ... knitting together, stitching together devices, it's absolutely a direction we want to go -- creating cloud services," Lowe said.
Samsung offers a range of products that includes smartphones, tablets, PCs and thin terminals based on different hardware and OSes. There is a growing interest in Android, Windows 8 and Windows Mobile, and enterprises will ultimately need to deploy cloud services -- either from Samsung or third parties -- so data can be easily shared between devices, Lowe said.
Samsung is heading toward offering cloud services, but Lowe didn't say when such services would be deployed. For now, Samsung is working with third parties to offer cloud services.
Smartphone was the world's largest smartphone seller worldwide in the first quarter this year followed by Apple, according to Strategy Analytics. Samsung sold 44.5 million units in the quarter, while Apple sold 35.1 million units.
A huge opportunity has opened up in the enterprise market for Samsung with Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices now losing favor, Lowe said.
"We've got this growth in prosumer devices, and then you've got what's going on with Blackberry. Every enterprise is looking for an alternative to BlackBerry. There needs to be something that they can grab on to that is Blackberry-like," Lowe said.
There has been a lot of fragmentation around Android devices that made it difficult for customers to standardize on a single platform. Samsung, however, is building an enterprise-grade platform for its mobile devices. Samsung's consumer products include the Galaxy smartphones and tablets, and the company is giving the devices features that would allow them to be added to the list of approved devices in enterprises.
For example, Samsung is starting to certify its products as SAFE (Samsung Approved for Enterprise), with features that make them easier for IT departments to manage on-site and remotely. The certification also means that the devices have features that ensure they are used in compliance with IT policies set by a company.
The Galaxy S III is the first to get SAFE certification and upcoming tablets will also be SAFE certified, Lowe said. The SAFE-certified devices are being designed to be managed similarly.
SAFE is exclusive to Android devices for now, Lowe said. There are still questions on how to extend SAFE to Windows as many of the security features have already been built into the OS, but Samsung wants to move in that direction, Lowe said.
With SAFE, companies can encrypt and remotely wipe out data if a device is stolen. A system administrator can also enable or disable Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and camera or track assets and enforce roaming policies. Samsung offers mobile-device management tools including AirWatch, SAP's Sybase Afaria and Juniper Networks' Junos Pulse. SAFE devices also support VPN (virtual private network) settings from Cisco, F5 and Juniper for secure access to corporate networks.
As part of SAFE, Samsung has opened up hundreds of APIs (application programming interfaces) to carriers and software partners, which can build enterprise-level features for smartphones and tablets. For example, Samsung opened up APIs to AirWatch, whose mobile-device management tool works far better on Samsung devices than others, Lowe said.
Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com
Comments
Blake Fisher said: One of our guysread the Gartner report with ranksAirwatch high so we contacted them We told them that wewere interested inthe Samsung tablets because we had heard about the SAFE program and the advanced management capabilities The AW guyspent a lot oftime convincing my guys thatApple was the way to go and that Android was not safe Then a lot of promises about what is comingIn the end when we looked at AW on the Samsung devices it did not do a lot andwasunstable Probably because of the info we got from AW we started to look at Apple devices but in the end their is a very limited amount of management capabilities on iOSWe evaluated some other products with similar results I dont remember exactly how we discovered SOTIGartnerdoesnot talk much about them not sure why not but theyreally do have a greatproductTheir product does what they say no fluff the product is solid and hasdepth Best of all they have a great support team who are patient and know their stuffI suggest that you try it
Sandro said: Hi Agam I couldnt agree more with Keith we reviewed AirWatch for sometime and they kept insisting that the way to go was iPads But they are super expensive in Brazil They even had a Gartner report to back that up So we though of going with them until we bumped into SOTI in Brazil I think they are from Rio de Janeiro httpswwwfacebookcomphotoThis very nice young man pulled out a Samsung Galaxy Tab 89 and show me the remote control features the kiosk mode Which Airwatch never showed us on the iPad and other features We immediately fell in love with both your tablet and SOTI Sandro
Keith Williams said: Hey Agam iv just forward your article to our SOTI rep hopefully they will get in touch with you and show you what their system can do
Keith Williams said: Hi Agam -really interesting article we have Airwatch to manage our iPads and in allhonesty they have done a decent job as all we need to do is sync email to thedevices We then started to look at Samsung tablets and S3s from our carrierEE- but AA just did not cut the mustard they could only offer standard out ofthe box support that the Google OS provides with its own APIs we got in touchwith our Samsung rep and he pointed us to a company called SOTI who has exclusiveaccess to Samsung hardware MobiControl their solution allowed us to deploy ourapplications directly to the devices over the air and install the softwarewithout user interaction We can do real time remote control and not just viewbut also control the device screen for IT troubleshooting - a real life saverfor our helpdesk - and we have been able to deploy a lockdown screen with ourcompany branding on the tablets to some of our field guys I am now seriouslyconsidering replacing our rugged devices with Samsung handhelds when we do a refreshThe Samsung rep we met gave us this link httpwwwsamsungmobileb2bcoI think yourfriend Lowe got the companies mixed up or you made a typo why you dont getin touch with the SOTI guys and they should be able to tell you about wherethey stand with Samsung BTW when are you reviewing the new MS surface tabs Lookingforward to your thoughts on the surface