Google Apps, Uber, and Netflix – Disruption and doing things 10 times better

As a relatively small market compared to the ten-fold larger United States, Canada is slow to receive the latest in disruptive technologies. Netflix rolled out its now-ubiquitous video streaming service in the US in 2008, and Canada didn't get Netflix streaming until September 2010. Now incumbents like Rogers are racing to provide Netflix-like functionality.

Uber does everything you need
and looks good doing it.

Another example is the oft-beset-upon taxi service Uber. Traditionally, when you need a taxi in a hurry, you either run to your nearest major street and hope that an empty one rolls past or you phone the taxi company. Then you have to wait for the taxi to show up and hope it's not nabbed by someone else in the meantime. Once you arrive at your destination, calculating the tip, giving payment, and getting a receipt is a cumbersome process that hasn't changed significantly in many years.

Uber allows anyone to request a ride via a mobile app or the web. Drivers arrive curbside in just minutes, you can track the movement of your ride, and you receive a text message when your driver arrives to pick you up.

Once you've arrived at your destination, Uber handles the payment automatically through the app and your online account. No need to fumble with cash or wait for a credit card transaction to process through a painfully slow payment terminal over a cellular connection. With Uber, the cab driver simply ends the ride on his smartphone and the payment is processed. You'll have the receipt in your email by the time your feet hit the curb.

Uber first launched in San Francisco in 2009, and has since rolled out to more than 50 cities in 20 countries, including Toronto and Montreal. The service only recently launched in Toronto area, though, and since it relies on local drivers to provide rides, there aren't many cars available in the area just yet. In San Francisco, "No one under the age of 40 with a smartphone is going out and getting a cab anymore."

I had the opportunity to experience first hand how Uber has transformed the marketplace in San Francisco while attending the 2014 Google Global Partner Summit. My three Uber trips were an eye-opening experience that tells me this is going to cause a similar market disruption in Toronto. It's just a matter of time.

On the other hand, Mississauga Taxi
looks and behaves as dated as it is.

Local companies like Mississauga Taxi have an app that works, but it doesn't see much competition from Uber at the moment. They haven't taken it to the next level to turn it into a disruptive technology. The Mississauga Taxi app omits vehicle choices, automatic payment processing, visibility of cars in the area, or a custom pick up location by dropping a pin. Its address search is cumbersome as it couldn't find the local Port Credit GO Station which Google Maps finds and autocompletes before I finish typing it.

The one nice feature was the ability to monitor the location of the cab dispatched to pick me up. After that, the taxi ride and payment experience is just like the old days and it took me longer to use the app than it would have to pick up the phone and call the cab company. In fact, when I arrived at my destination the Mississauga Taxi driver was fortunate that an individual not willing to wait for the next train to downtown tapped on his window and asked for a ride. However, the in-a-rush new customer had to wait while my cab driver booted up the payment terminal from scratch, entered the cab fare, inserted my credit card, let me enter the tip amount, my pin code, wait for the slow cellular data connection to process the payment, then finally print the receipt. With Uber in San Francisco, I simply got out of the cab and felt my smartphone vibrate immediately with the emailed receipt. What a massive difference in customer and driver experience!

Technologies like Netflix and Uber tend to be borne out of frustration with the traditional way of doing things, and Google thinks the same way, all the way from the very highest levels. Larry Page has said he, "expects his employees to create products and services that are 10 times better than the competition." Why? Because products and services like the Google Apps won't cause market disruptions if they are designed to be only two or three times better than the incumbents like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. You have to start fresh and completely change the way things are done to have any hope of making things 10 times better. Only then will you cause a disruption.

Miss the disruptive wave and you can end up like BlackBerry, a business that will continue to survive, but will also continue to downsize to match their shrinking customer base.

So why stick with the incumbents who always seem to be two steps behind, responding with too little, too late? Get Google Apps for your business now and earn more money like the individual taxi drivers in San Francisco that ditched the traditional cab company and switched to Uber.

Google Apps let you work the way you live by enhancing consumer products used by billions with the features and controls that your business needs to be productive, innovative and successful. Google Apps will change the way you do business!

BlackBerry is repositioning itself as a device management company—but is already being beaten by Google

BlackBerry recently published an open letter to its "valued enterprise customers and partners," to remind everyone that they "are very much alive, thank you." The newly-minted CEO, John Chen, makes an important—and telling—concession to the "new" mobile computing landscape: recognizing "that BlackBerry devices are not for everyone."

Unfortunately BlackBerry devices are losing ground faster than ever according to data released by Gartner last month. BlackBerry now sits at a mere 1.8% of the global smartphone market, compared with 5.2% at the same time last year.

As a result of their declining sales of smartphones to end users, BlackBerry is beginning to reposition itself to focus on a handful of what it sees as key areas: enterprise mobile management (EMM) solutions and embedded systems, as well as cross-platform instant messaging (BBM).

It's not hard to see why BlackBerry sees the need to pivot away from what has traditionally been its strength, but unfortunately it's pivoting straight into a marketplace where it's pricing itself out of contention. BlackBerry's enterprise management capability revolves around the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), a software package that requires you to either manage an on-site server or pay for hosting one in the cloud, in addition to the $19 per year management fee. Add to that the fact that the newest version of BES (10.2) can't manage BlackBerry devices running older versions of the BlackBerry operating system and you need to double your server count just to be able to manage both generations of devices.

As if all that wasn't enough, the $19 license fee is charged per device, so if you have two devices, each one of them needs its own license fee. And who doesn't have a smartphone and a tablet these days? In fact, a Sophos survey says consumers are carrying an average of 2.9 mobile devices each.

Google Apps for Business and Education includes bring-your-own-device (BYOD) security for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10 in the $50 per user per year price tag—which includes activation on an unlimited number of mobile devices. We've tested management of BlackBerry 10 devices from the Google Apps console and it provides remote wipe and monitoring capabilities just as it would for any other device. There's really no need for a BES.

For about $12 more per year than two BES device fees per user, you can have an all-in-one, cloud-based productivity suite that includes BYOD management features and can replace your Exchange, Lotus Notes, or other email and documents solution. Sticking with BlackBerry means you're on the receiving end of all the IT headaches involved with patching, securing, and managing yet another server (or two!).

All of us at Interlock IT live close to BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo and sincerely hope that they can find a successful market niche. BES 10.2 does have some advanced security features not found in other products. But the BYOD market is a highly competitive space already well-covered by giants like Google so BlackBerry has a tall, competitive mountain to climb.

Does anybody remember Palm?

Using Google Apps with the BlackBerry Z10: Syncing Email, Contacts and Calendar

Google Sync now officially supports BlackBerry 10 devices, so this workaround is no longer necessary. To see updated instructions, click here.

As you can imagine, being a Google Apps reseller means we here at Interlockit.com get to experience all the joys (and challenges) of dealing with a vast array of different mobile devices.  The newest kid on the block is the BlackBerry Z10, which just so happens to be BlackBerry's first smartphone to support Microsoft ActiveSync.  Unfortunately, much like its iOS and Windows Phone relatives, the Z10 does not differentiate a Gmail account from a Google Apps account, so it needs a little hand-holding to make use of these new available features.  Follow this guide to ensure your new Z10 is syncing your email, contacts and calendar with your Google Apps account.  Let's jump right in!

First, access the System Settings menu and select Accounts.

Next, click the Advanced button at the very bottom of the screen.

Choose Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.

Fill in Description with what you'd like the account to be called on your device.  In the Email Address field, enter your full email address.  In the Domain and Username fields, simply split your email address in the same way shown here. 

Put your Google Apps password in the Password field, and use the server address of m.google.com on port 443.  Turn both SSL and Push on, but leave VPN off.  You may also choose the Sync Timeframe, which determines how much email content to keep on your device.

Finally,  you may choose which items to sync to your device from your Google Apps account.  Unfortunately you can not sync Tasks and Memos with Google Apps at this time.

Hit Done, and the Z10 will verify your settings, add your account, and begin syncing!

Breathe a sigh of relief while reflecting upon the days of yore, filled with calls to your service provider to reset your BlackBerry Internet Service password.  As you can see, BlackBerry has the beginnings of a winner with the Z10; let's hope they keep it up!

To find out more about Interlockit.com and what moving to the cloud can do for your business, visit us at http://www.interlockit.com/

Thanks to +Nicolay Doytchev for the screenshots!

Canada tops for mobile data loss

The HR Reporter recently shared a study by the Ponemon Institute which Crashplan also highlighted on their blog.

HRReporter.com notes:

• Corporate mobile devices and the bring-your-own device (BYOD) phenomenon are rapidly circumventing enterprise security and policies in Canada.
• 71 percent of 421 respondents in Canada agree the use of mobile devices in the workplace is important to achieving business objectives.
• 72 percent of Canadian respondents also believe these devices put their organizations at risk — and only  half of the organizations surveyed have the necessary security controls to address the risk.
• 58 percent of the organizations experienced data loss resulting from employee use of insecure mobile devices.
• Canada and Italy ranked the highest out of 12 countries surveyed for mobile data loss.

Bottom line is Mobile devices are a huge security risk.  Smartphones can store an immense amount of sensitive emails and contact databases which may easily fall into unfriendly hands.

Google Apps has excellent built in Mobile Device Management that allows customers to remotely wipe the synced data contents of iPhones, and Androids plus enforce password and screen lock policies.  You can even control and approve what devices are allowed to connect to your organization's Google Apps data.

For Blackberries we offer a Google Apps integrated Blackberry Enterprise Server solution for $10/device/month with similar capabilities for remote wipe of data, etc.

There are no complex integrations requirements or other extra costs for Mobile Device Management with Google Apps for iPhone, iPad, or Android devices.  There is no need to purchase expensive 3rd party solutions like RIM Mobile Fusion that exceed the $50 USD/year/user cost of Google Apps.  Zenprise is another Mobile Device Management solution with prices starting at $40/device/year.

Contact us at Interlockit.com to learn more about protecting your organization's valuable data with Google Apps.

More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

Security and management of mobile devices has been holding back many corporate enterprises from embracing iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

Google just enhanced the ability to manage iOS and Android devices from Google Apps: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-flexible-mobile-device-management.html

No servers required; just turn it on.

You can still use Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for managing your Blackberry devices with Google Apps.

Rogers Blackberry with Google Sync and Blackberry Internet Service Synchronization

Watch out for an issue we just encountered today with Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) on Rogers with a Blackberry Bold running Blackberry OS 5.0:

• if you change your price plan with Rogers it will reset your BIS settings and turn on Sync Contacts, and Sync Calendar via BIS automatically.  This will cause massive duplication of Google Calendar entries and corruption of address fields in Google Contacts if you also have Google Sync installed and running on your phone.  The difference between synching with BIS and Google Sync was discussed on a prior blog post here
• We still recommend using the Google Sync because it works better and faster than the BIS sync

The solution is to sign out of Google Sync before making changes to your account.  The next day review your BIS setup via the Email setup icon on your phone and make sure the Synchronization of calendar and contacts is turned off.  Then restart/login to Google Sync again.

Update April 19, 2011: We're seeing this issue much more frequently now across Rogers, Telus, and Bell.  They are upgrading their backend BIS systems so suddently Contact and Calendar sync can get turned on with zero warning causing corruption of Calendar and Contacts.  We hope that the cell phone companies will work with RIM to warn users before making the surprise upgrade.  As a result of this we strictly turn on the BIS Contact and Calendar Sync if supported by the phone.

Android wallops Blackberry

Back on March 21, 2010 I blogged about the cost savings of using Android phones.

The Globe and Mail reports that Android phones account for a dominant 44 percent of the consumer smartphone market in Q3 2010

We're big proponents of the cloud because we're saving corporations lots of money on their IT and putting them on a continuous innovation curve; but we'll miss the billable hours from configuring Blackberries. :)

With an Android phone you sign it into your Google Apps account and you're done.  Email, Calendar, and Contact sync starts working immediately.

Tip:  Only buy phones with version 2.1 or greater of the Android OS.  And make sure the manufacturer is going to upgrade it to version 2.2 which is faster and adds flash player support.

In Canada we recommend the Google Nexus One from Videotron, Samsung Galaxy S from Rogers, HTC Desire from Telus, Motorola Milestone from Telus, and the HTC Desire Z from Bell

Enjoy!

Surf the web via your Blackberry - no Internet stick required

Who likes to pay separately for their Internet stick and its data plan?

I've been using Blackberries to surf the web from my notebook (as tethered modems) for over 3 years yet still very few people know about it.  It's never been simple to configure.  There are no additional monthly costs outside of your existing Blackberry data plan.  Make sure you have a 500 Mb/month plan or greater or it's very pricey.

2 ways to make it work via a USB cable which also charges your battery:

• The old way is complex, details are here but it can be done over Bluetooth or a USB cable.
• The new way is to install Blackberry Desktop 5.0.1 or greater and simply click the IP Modem button but this works only with a USB cable

It works on Rogers Wireless and Bell Mobility.  Should work on Telus but I haven't tested it myself.

There's no need for buying software like Tether for Blackberry. I hope this helps a few people save some money.