After Hours

Welcome to After Hours, the Rank + File weblog covering the consumerization of enterprise IT.

Rank + File offers essential intelligence for CIOs and IT leaders on the technology their users bring inside the organization, by hook or by crook.

  1. New event: Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise, March 2012

    March 2012 brings the debut of the Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise (CITE) conference and expo in San Francisco, California.

    Managed by IDG, and sponsored by Cisco and Citrix, the event will likely be a bit more staid and devoted to things bureaucratic. (The example agenda previews sessions on governance, asset lifecycle, risk management.) But it makes for an interesting compliment to Box.net’s lively Boxworks conference, and the long-running Enterprise 2.0 series of events.

    You’re encouraged to submit a speaking proposal to CITE by November 18th, 2011.

  2. "We often hear from folks inside these companies. They’re beyond frustrated with the software/solutions they’re supposed to use. So they turn to our products because they just plain work. Sometimes they expense them, but often it seems a team or department head just pays out of their own pocket. The cost is insignificant compared to the productivity they receive in return. We salute these insurgents!"
    Sneaking into the Fortune 500 through the back door. Where 37 Signals tracks the rogue use of their software in large enterprises- without the buy-in of large enterprise IT. - (37signals)

  3. Without explicitly saying the word Hotmail, Google recently launched an Email Intervention campaign. Designed to help us get our friends off of old providers, and onto Gmail so we can gchat, call, and video chat with them, the video is aimed at hotmail users, and the people who love them.

    Days later (coincidence?), Microsoft releases Gmail Man, a friendly, creepy mailman who asks embarrassing, intrusive questions while he delivers your email.

    Never mind that Google Apps for Business (the closest analog to Office 365) doesn’t have ads in Gmail, and that Microsoft’s Hotmail is full of even blinkier, more garish ads (a better comparison for ad-laden consumer Gmail in the video).

  4. Wily correspondents: your days are numbered. Google Apps enables email receipts.

    Read receipts allow senders to monitor the status of the messages they send and allow recipients to acknowledge receipt of mail.

    Opinion has long been mixed on email receipts. Overt aggression on behalf the sender? A necessary evil for evasive recipients?

    Most use receipts only as last resort when communicating with poor correspondents or as pseudo-legal documentation tool. In any case, they are a staple of enterprise culture. Long enabled in Microsoft Exchange/Outlook environments, Google has brought them to Google Apps.

    Email read receipts must be enabled by an organization’s domain administrator before users can access the feature.

  5. Microsoft battles Google Apps campus popularity with some creative licensing

    As of June 2011, more than 12 million students use Google Apps for Education.

    Google provides its premium Google Apps service for free to schools, so it’s tough out there for a Microsoft enterprise sales team courting the next generation.

    parislemon:

    Microsoft Pays University of Nebraska To Use Office 365

    When you can’t beat em (Google Apps in the Cloud), don’t even try. Pay people to use your service instead. 

    No, it’s not straight-up cash. But it’s still hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives such as other Microsoft software. Money that would otherwise be revenue from the University of Nebraska to Microsoft. So yes, they are paying them. 

  6. The White House is not immune to IT consumerization angst. technipol: President Obama complains White House technology is ‘30 years behind’ “President Obama may be content using a slightly outdated (though admittedly secure) BlackBerry while on the go, but it seems that he’s far more disappointed in the technology at the White House itself. Speaking at a fundraiser in Chicago this week, Obama said that “when it comes to technology, we are like 30 years behind,” and he’s not just just talking about some ancient Windows desktops left over from the previous administration in the West Wing. He went on to complain about the lack of “really cool phones and stuff,” saying, “I’m the president of the United States. Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn’t happen.” Maybe he can get some of his new tech industry friends to help him out with that if manages to settle in for a second term.” [Engadget]

    The White House is not immune to IT consumerization angst.

    technipol:

    President Obama complains White House technology is ‘30 years behind’

    “President Obama may be content using a slightly outdated (though admittedly secure) BlackBerry while on the go, but it seems that he’s far more disappointed in the technology at the White House itself. Speaking at a fundraiser in Chicago this week, Obama said that “when it comes to technology, we are like 30 years behind,” and he’s not just just talking about some ancient Windows desktops left over from the previous administration in the West Wing. He went on to complain about the lack of “really cool phones and stuff,” saying, “I’m the president of the United States. Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn’t happen.” Maybe he can get some of his new tech industry friends to help him out with that if manages to settle in for a second term.” [Engadget]

    (via villagevoice)

  7. The Google Docs document list update: from inbox to file system

    The Google Docs document list had an extreme makeover on January 31st, and some of us are still adjusting.

    As we continue to fumble through what we miss, and coo over what we now adore, a theme emerges:

    • The old document list was like an inbox: The who and when was front and center.
    • The new document list is like a file system: The what is front and center. Thumbnails, grid views, type of file is emphasized.

  8. A nice Google-style tell a story through the typing advert for Microsoft Word 2010.

    Here, Microsoft shows what it might have looked like to see the founding fathers stumble their way towards The Declaration of Independence, one IM joke at a time.

    While it’s evocative of Google’s marketing style, the applications themselves have a least one major difference: Microsoft Word 2010 is a desktop program, and Google Docs is all in the browser.

    Thank you for the link, urlesque.

    (Source: URLesque)

  9. With or without IT approval, iPads saunter in to the enterprise

    There’s a lively thread on Hacker News  in response to the The iPad is about to steamroll into the Enterprise story.

    While the story is perfectly reasonable, it’s mostly punditry. The resulting Hacker News thread is far more empirical. 

    Some selections:

    iPads and iPhones are easier to support than Blackberry. “It’s more of a pain to support Blackberry. You need a dedicated server. With iOS you just turn on Activesync on your Exchange server, and give your users the DNS name and let them go to town.”

    “Enterprise now accounts for 40% of iPhones sales.”

    “The senior mgmt at my enterprise workplace are twisting arms in the IT department to get iPads OK’d.”

    “The iPad’s introduction into the enterprise is a start that signifies different kinds of devices can be helpful. Desktop virtualization and the cloud probably have a role to play in all this too.”

    “The native iPad Cisco IPSec VPN has a much quicker sign-on time than OS X version of the client from Cisco.”

    “The iPad has support for enterprise wifi networks and works very well with Exchange. It is about as enterprise-friendly (without being MS) as you can get.”

  10. Notes from Michael Gartenberg on Blackberry’s consumer about-face

    From RIM needs to make the BlackBerry business-sexy

    Everything was geared toward the consumer. The talk was of touch screens and multitouch gestures, photo tagging and cataloguing, media and music synchronization, and the integration of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook…

    But it wasn’t just that these consumer features were being highlighted. It was also noteworthy that nothing was said about the core functions that have made RIM and BlackBerry the darling of the IT organization…

    When it comes to mobile, it’s not necessarily what IT thinks is important; it’s what the end user thinks.

    Michael Gartenberg

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