Lync mobile clients are provided at no additional costs to subscribers of Lync Online and Office365. They are enabled by an update to Lync Server 2010 which is now available to Lync Online and Office365 subscribers.

Lync 2010 for Windows Phone is now available to download via Windows Marketplace and Lync 2010 clients for other platforms have been submitted to their respective mobile application marketplace and should be available soon.

• View colleagues’ availability in real-time and select the best way to communicate – initiating an instant message, email or phone call
• Connect to Lync conference calls with a single touch without requiring long numeric passcodes or conference numbers
• Make and receive calls using your Enterprise Voice (Lync ID) number only, so you can connect with others using a single, consistent identity
• Lync 2010 for Windows Phone provides transport layer security (TLS) and permiter/internal network protection without requiring a VPN, so your communications experience is safer no matter where you are or what network you use.

Lync for Mac 2011 enables Mac users to see their colleagues’ online presence while working in Outlook or collaborating on Office documents. It enables them to quickly send an instant message, start a video chat, or schedule an Online Meeting right from within Outlook for Mac 2011.

Mac users can download Lync for Mac 2011 by simply clicking Install Lync on the Office365 home page.

DME 3.6 pushes the boundaries of business mobilisation while guaranteeing the highest levels of corporate security, giving users flexibility and safety. It also provides for proactive management of call, text and data costs by alerting users to approaching spend limits and administrators to usage patterns, allowing them to proactively manage user behaviour, prevent bill shock, and get the best deals for international and other use.

DME 3.6 is meeting the demands of business and employees. Employees want and expect to use their personal devices at and for work. DME allows businesses to meet these demands knowing their corporate data is secure and there is absolutely no risk to their business. This is imperative with the security issues around open devices like Android and the major security breaches that continue to occur. This solution allows businesses to make substantial hardware and service savings.

As a key enabler for bring your own device to work, Excitor’s secure partitioning of corporate email and data prevents business information being transferred to personal space and ensures work related mail is sent and received only via a corporate server. It also allows systems administrators control of corporate data without affecting employee’s personal information.

Excitor CTO Carsten Eliot Nielsen sees DME 3.6 as the way forward for businesses and their employees. He said: “DME 3.6 includes the launch of AppBox – a means of rapidly building and deploying forms based applications to mobilise enterprise business processes. Now organisations can introduce new secure mobile applications from simple processes such as approving vacation requests or purchase orders to building complex CRM processes. It works not just on the newer iPhone and Android devices but also on Symbian and BlackBerry. DME 3.6 also adds the integration of RSS feed data into the secure partition protecting both the content and customer investment in valued information.”

Microsoft Office applications – Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, and Outlook – are at the heart of Office365 which is available in a wide range of service plans designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, ranging from the largest to the smallest. With Office365, people can stay on the “same page” using instant messaging and virtual meetings with people who are just down the hall or across the world. They can work on files and documents at the same time and share ideas as easily as they can share calendars. Office365 gives people new ways to work together with ease, on virtually any device.

“Great collaboration is critical to business growth, and because it’s so important, we believe the best collaboration technology should be available to everyone,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “With a few clicks, Office365 levels the playing field, giving small and midsize businesses powerful collaboration tools that have given big businesses an edge for years.”

DME from Excitor is an encrypted Push Email and Device Management solution (similar to Blackberry BES) with a secure Messaging Client that works on all smartphones, allowing corporate data to be partitioned from a user’s personal data. The DME Server enables an IT Department to centrally manage these devices, enforce policies over the air and reduce mobile expenses by optimising voice & data usage.

Excitor has been the leading enterprise mobility solution in the Nordics for the last 10 years and is now expanding into the UK. Ericsson, British American Tobacco, Siemens, PwC, Ernst & Young, Danske Bank, the Swedish Police and Swedish Parliament have all deployed our solution.

Group Managing Director, Darren Ridge said, “We have been honoured to be a top tier Vodafone Platinum Partner and one of a small group accredited with this status. To be named the Platinum Partner of the year is an honour and a huge credit to our superb team”.

For further details:

Nokia press release

Microsoft press release

By Alan Giles, VP -Business Development, Excitor A/S

How to turn smartphones on for business

The shift might not yet be complete, but it is well under way and unstoppable: large companies are starting to allow employees to bring their own devices to work. This transition could have serious consequences for businesses not prepared to face a world in which devices like iPhone or Android come to dominate an increasingly fractured mobile landscape. About 50 percent of the world’s business users are already using their smartphones for both work and play, mixing data with little regard for corporate delineation, according to a recent Unisys-commissioned survey of more than 3,000 workers in 10 countries. That figure is only going to increase. The number of workers using smartphones is set to double in the next four years, according to the survey, and a separate study by Vanson Bourne has shown that nearly 80 percent of large companies say the number of employees wanting to bring their own devices to work has shot up. In other words, we are in the midst of an emphatic movement towards a mixed-use world. Three years ago, no-one knew this would happen and as a result big businesses have so far failed to brace themselves for the coming onslaught. Less than half of the enterprises surveyed in the Unisys study said they let their workers access business-related apps from their smartphones. The trend makes sense. By bringing their own devices to work, employees are happier because they get to use the devices they prefer, which in turn leads to improved productivity. You can see why. These days, employees can afford the best and newest smartphone models, and they can easily replace them without having to work through corporate red tape. Besides, who needs separate phones for work and play when one great device does the trick? The arrival of the iPad, a powerful and versatile mobile tablet, has made this phenomenon only more obvious. At the same time, companies no longer have to purchase and keep replacing large fleets of mobile devices, and, with smart decision-making, they can more easily manage their mobility systems. This is not the news the handset manufacturers or network providers want to hear. It ultimately dilutes their sway and lowers their sales while diverting full power of choice to clients and consumers. It could also throw up problems for companies that are not adequately prepared to manage the transition. Without a clear separation between corporate and personal worlds on their devices, employees could be putting company data at risk – it becomes too easy, for instance, to move data from one sphere to other without realising what you’re doing. While it may be an intimidating proposition for security-minded companies with a carefully structured mobility plan, it is ultimately a freeing one – but only if the tricky transition process is negotiated with care and intelligence. After all, a smartphone is only smart when it’s managed properly. There are five key areas of concern for any business undertaking the shift to an environment in which their employees can use their own devices for work. Businesses who best understand the following five points stand to save money, improve productivity, and own a mobility plan with the flexibility to please its employees and the IT department.

Security

Every month, Londoners leave 10,000 phones in the backs of taxis, according to a 2009 survey of cab drivers by security firm Credant Technologies. On top of that, the British Transport Police report that 45 percent of thefts on London’s underground train system are of mobile phones. What happens when those lost phones happen to carry sensitive corporate data, or have easy access to it? Well, without a mobile solutions provider, that precious data can be compromised. The good news is that systems now being offered by the likes of Excitor can deal remotely with such data leak on a device-by-device basis. You can encrypt, protect, and wipe data with the press of a button. In the meantime, an employee who loses his own device is likely to report the loss much quicker than if it were a company device, reducing the opportunity for leaked data.

Corporate partition

While the days of company-issued devices may be on their way out, corporate-personal delineation is as important as ever. With multi-use devices, the distinction between work and play is increasingly blurred, so it becomes crucial for employers to define where their corporate boundaries lie. And herein lies the trade-off. Companies have to be cognisant of the fact that the device is owned by the employee, so there is a limit to how much you can prescribe usage. You can’t, for instance, totally lock it down and ban the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Excitor’s solution is to have two experiences on one phone: a personal mode for employee’s non-work life, and then a corporate ‘sandbox’ that is walled off from outside interference. Within that sandbox, the enterprise can control everything. For instance, if you have a short-term employee, you can push out the solution, control that employee’s access to your corporate data, and then remotely wipe anything in that sandbox when the relationship ends. At the same time, that employee retains all of his native applications and personal data – it just takes one click of an icon to switch between the two modes. There are also legal boundaries to consider. Of course, it is legally problematic to wipe data wholesale from an employee-owned device. So, the simplicity of the corporate-partition approach is even more advantageous – all you do is revoke the user’s licence to the application and the data becomes inaccessible. Deleting the application altogether, meanwhile, removes the encrypted data without deleting any privately owned data.

Usability

A rich user experience is key. While it’s all very well for a worker to bring his iPhone into the office, if the interface for the corporate side of the device’s life is difficult to navigate or confusing, then it’s not much use at all. In fact, it will have a detrimental effect on productivity. With this in mind, enterprises should ensure that access to corporate email, private instant messaging, and file synchronisation is predicated on a simple icon system that requires nothing more than the click of a button. To further enhance usability, businesses should seek out a mobility solution that is independent of network providers. This allows employees to piggyback on their own personal air-time plan without having to change operators for corporate use.

Management

Managing a fleet of mobile devices that have been issued to employees who aren’t necessarily familiar with those devices can be a headache and a strain on IT resources. However, things change drastically in a scenario where employees use their own phones – effectively, you outsource much of the IT work to them. This is where
How to turn smartphones on for business management of the system becomes important. Whatever solution your company chooses, you need to make sure it allows you to manage different user groups, different sets of parameters for your drivers, and facilitate varying geographical parameters. Having such a system in place allows fine control of how your networked is accessed and it offers the flexibility for you to make changes at any level of the system at any time. Instead of the company device being the focus, attention is focused squarely purely on the interaction between device and network.

Cost control

Perhaps the greatest advantage to be gained from an effective and efficient mobility solution is financial. More than ever before, mobility solutions provide insulation from the dreaded ‘bill shock’ – the phenomenon of unexpectedly high charges on mobile phone bills. With DME, Excitor’s Dynamic Mobile Exchange system, for instance, companies will become more aware of the true cost of mobility. If one network provider offers a better rate for global roaming, for example, with DME companies would be able to force employees to use that particular network for their corporate calls when travelling. Companies can also get an exact gauge on how much each call costs – after a call has been made, for instance, a pop-up can offer metrics such as what the tariff was and how much air-time was used. Bill reporting thus comes through in real time and is truly transparent, helping educate employers and employees alike on the real costs of mobility. While cost control is perhaps more relevant to corporate-owned devices, employees can still benefit from the alerts and insights on what drives cost – ultimately, if the cost for corporate data exceeds the monthly reimbursement offered by the company, employees are not likely to use their own devices. Enterprises may indeed be moving into a new era of mobility, but it shouldn’t come as a shock to the system – in fact, the system is the very thing that should benefit. With these five key factors in mind – security, corporate partition, usability, management, and cost control – an enterprise’s mobile world will be more productive, more flexible, and more cost-efficient. And that’s when smartphones start to get really smart.

Alan Giles is Vice-President of Business Development at Excitor, a mobility solutions provider based in Denmark.
This article reproduced with the kind permission of Excitor A/S