Handbook VIRTUALIZATION CLOUD DEVELOPMENT APPLICATION NETWORKING ARCHITECTURE STORAGE CENTER MANAGEMENT DATA INTELLIGENCE/APPLICATIONS BUSINESS RECOVERY/COMPLIANCE DISASTER SECURITY 1 EDITOR’S NOTE Mobile Application Delivery: 2 CREATING A SECURE FOUNDATION The Next Frontier FOR MOBILE APPLICATIONS With the influx of mobile devices and applications entering enterprises, IT departments have a new mandate: how to securely and efficiently deliver 3 FOUR APPLICATION reliable applications to end users. DELIVERY OPTIONS 4 DELIVERING CLOUD-BASED MOBILE APPS ENTERPRISES EDITOR’S NOTE 1 Delivering Secure Apps Is No Small Feat As technology trends like bring your own device mobile devices have prompted IT departments to think Home gather steam, they have introduced a host of new bless- more efficiently about app delivery and how users can ings and curses for IT departments. On the upside, end get access to existing apps without re-architecting ap- Editor’s Note users are more savvy consumers, with knowledge and plications for a mobile environment, which can be a preferences about IT. They may know quite a bit about time-consuming and costly prospect. In our second Mobile App Droids and Dropbox. On the downside, though, end piece, Lisa Phifer explores some of the trends in mobile Virtualization Eases Deployment Headaches users are more savvy consumers, with knowledge and device management and security and outlines how IT preferences about IT. But that know-how introduces departments can think about ensuring data security— Creating a Secure issues of control, security and management for IT even when they manage a variety of devices and operat- Foundation for Mobile departments. ing systems. Applications This package of articles looks at the consequences Next, Robert Sheldon maps out four methods of de- of trends like BYOD, virtualization and the cloud on livering applications and weighs the pros and cons of Four Application Delivery Options application delivery. How have application delivery each. All three contributors consider mobile devices in approaches like Software as a Service and desktop terms of the key elements that have come to define en- virtualization as well as BYOD ushered in new ways terprise IT: control, security and flexibility. Finally, this of delivering applications to users, and what benefits package offers approaches and tactics to give users what and challenges arise? And how can IT satisfy user they want while also delivering applications more effi- needs while preventing data breaches and address- ciently and securely. ing usability concerns? This series of articles turns over these questions and offers some tactics to Lauren Horwitz address them. Executive Editor, In the first article, James Furbush explores how Data Center and Virtualization Media Group 2 MOBILE APPLICATION DELIVERY: THE NEXT FRONTIER VIRTUALIZATION 2 Mobile App Virtualization Eases Deployment Headaches IT pros have begun to recognize that enabling mo- long-term solution to enable a mobile workforce either, Home bility isn’t as easy as setting up an email account on an and makes sense from a cost perspective only if organi- iPad and calling it a day. If IT doesn’t provide a way to zations have already virtualized applications. Editor’s Note access corporate applications and data on mobile de- The second takes an existing application and turns it vices, end users will simply circumvent IT and seek out into a cross-platform mobile app. The third decouples Mobile App their own applications. the data from the application and picks the appropri- Virtualization Eases Deployment Headaches But with careful planning and understanding of em- ate application for the platform or device being used. ployees’ needs, IT can deliver apps without incurring Then IT can pipe the data from a data center into an Creating a Secure the cost of re-architecting apps for a mobile environ- application. Foundation for Mobile ment—a process that can take months of development “The first two don’t respect the benefit of the mobile Applications work—which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. device,” Ramji said. “The third is really hard to achieve with the realities IT departments face.” Ultimately, Four Application Delivery Options he said, while mobile forces organizations to rethink THE THREE PHASES OF MOBILE APP DEPLOYMENT how they deploy applications, there are still too many There are three phases of enterprise mobile application limitations for organizations to create an environment deployment, according to Sam Ramji, director of strat- where the device doesn’t matter, but the access and use egy at Apigee, an application programming interface of data does. platform company in Palo Alto, Calif. The first is using virtualization to deliver existing apps to mobile devices. IT shops have insisted, in fact, MOBILITY CATALYZES CHANGE that application virtualization is a mobility play; this Mobile has forced organizations to rethink existing “bridge technology” can assist with organizational in- systems and how employees access those systems, said vestments in Windows 7 and applications not built for J. Schwan, founder of Solstice Consulting, a Chicago- a mobile environment. Many also acknowledge it’s not a based enterprise mobility consulting firm, which 3 MOBILE APPLICATION DELIVERY: THE NEXT FRONTIER VIRTUALIZATION 2 released App Launcher, a previously internal-only mo- mobile app is great for swiping quickly through results bile application lifecycle tool, this past summer. on an iPad,” Hendrick said. Rather than choosing one “Mobile is a great catalyst for change,” he said. “Orga- application delivery method over the other, IT must of- nizations don’t have to do everything with mobile, but fer doctors the flexibility to use whichever version of we’re reaching a tipping point that it is the device plat- the electronic medical record app they need at any given form of the future.” moment, he added. At the University of California at Irvine’s Medical Home Center, doctors and administrators insisted on using their own iPads for work, which caused the IT depart- “ Mobile is a great catalyst for Editor’s Note ment to react seemingly overnight. change. ... We’re reaching a IT set up a combination of AirWatch’s mobile de- tipping point that it is the Mobile App vice management and Bradford Networks’ network ac- Virtualization Eases Deployment Headaches cess control to provide a level of control over devices device platform of the future.” flooding the network, said Curtis Hendrick, manager of —J. SCHWAN, Creating a Secure emerging technologies and support services for the uni- founder, Solstice Consulting Foundation for Mobile versity’s IT department. The organization pushed users Applications toward iOS devices (approximately 1,000 iOS devices are now enrolled in an officially supported capacity at Other organizations have migrated legacy applica- Four Application Delivery Options the hospital) because most of the organization’s appli- tions to the cloud as a result of mobile, while using cation vendors have released iOS versions of their apps, virtual desktop infrastructure technology to deliver Hendrick said. homegrown apps in the process. For applications that didn’t have a mobile version to Two years ago, Quality Distribution Inc. (QDI), a exploit, the IT department used its existing desktop Tampa, Fla.-based bulk-transport company, reduced its virtualization technology, Citrix Systems XenApp, to dependence on Microsoft products, said Cliff Dixon, push virtualized applications to iPads through Citrix vice president of IT at QDI. The plan was to adopt Receiver. In the case of the hospital’s electronic medi- Software as a Service applications, such as Google cal records application, doctors can use the traditional Apps, when possible and then use Ericom’s PowerTerm Windows version of the app and an iOS version. WebConnect, which acts as a gateway to turn back-end “The interface isn’t great on Citrix, but doctors data and applications into HTML5 Web apps for legacy have more functionality for entering patient data. The applications. 4 MOBILE APPLICATION DELIVERY: THE NEXT FRONTIER VIRTUALIZATION 2 Then, the company gave employees in regional offices Google Chromebooks to access the new application environment. The employees love it because they have access to all their applications and data even on a home computer, Dixon said. “Because trucking happens in the middle of the night, it’s a 24/7 type of employee,” Dixon said. “If they Home need to start a process at home, they used to fire up their computer, create a VPN tunnel and hope things Editor’s Note went smoothly. Now, they just grab their smartphone or iPad off the bed stand or anything with a modern Web Mobile App browser, and get the job done in half the time.” Virtualization Eases Deployment Headaches The ultimate goal for QDI is to eliminate the com- pany’s data center footprint and legacy applications by Creating a Secure 2015. Foundation for Mobile “We’ve taken that challenge to adjust our applica- Applications tions to fit the BYOD [bring-your-own-device] mold and choose app vendors that understand we operate in Four Application Delivery Options [the] mobile world,” Dixon said. Dixon envisions an IT department that is less about troubleshooting problems and more about delivering services. Going mobile and shedding legacy platforms is part of that vision. —James Furbush 5 MOBILE APPLICATION DELIVERY: THE NEXT FRONTIER SECURITY 3 Creating a Secure Foundation for Mobile Applications Ultimately, mobile applications can be only as can be said for laptops, users lose smartphones and tab- Home secure as the foundation on which they are built—that lets far more often. They almost always contain saved is, the mobile devices and operating systems on which passwords and are less likely to verify user identity Editor’s Note they run. So it’s imperative to understand the inherent with two-factor authentication. risks associated with mobile devices, the native secu- These data and network risks are exacerbated by Mobile App rity measures built into mobile operating systems, and mobile malware.