Case Study - iDevices at Powerlink
Powerlink operates one of the largest transmission networks in this part of the world and works & collects information across a very large region. A mobility solution made good sense to enable more efficient operations. Powerlink had mobile devices already for email, calendar and collaboration and ran a pilot to upsize this to grow a business capability.
The pilot explored different mobility solutions and was device focussed Many people overlooked functional shortcomings because they ‘had an iPhone’. They also got quite a bit of 'phone envy’ so introduced a second tier phone to provide basic office productivity and email. The business case for an average user to get an iPhone doesn’t stack and it’s too easy for it to become a status symbol.
Use Citrix extensively to deliver apps. DropBox is used for meetings to reduce paper usage. Deliver Windows 7 desktops via VMware View to iPad users. They developed a few web based apps which display on the iDevices that provide dashboarding of market and company information.
In response to Cyclone Yasi they replicated data to SugarSync to make it available to incident response team. They replicated several GB of data to staff in the field.
Security was a major challenge. Devices were treated as non-trusted. Hooking them up to security/VPN technologies took off a lot of the 'shine’ off the devices. Information classification and governance was a challenge - a risk based approach seems to be working. They spent quite a bit of time on sign-up processes to understand roles and reliabilities in relation to bringing your own devices. They have implemented some clear policies.
The uptake on the iPad was quite a bit lower than the iPhone - they have deployed several hundred iPhones to date. The devices have clear limitations - they don’t meet all the business requirements. There were also quite a few licensing pitfalls.
Users are finding apps in iTunes which are 'better’ than in house applications. May need to look to partner with iTunes developers.
To a large extent they are where we are with perhaps the exception of policy where they be slightly more advanced.