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Android at Work, Made Simple

Any solution that opens up choice when it comes to my mobile platform at work is always great to see. Not just as it means you don't need to a be a techie to get your device working with corporate systems, but also you IT department would rather you didn't - for many good reasons.

At work I've often been jokingly called "the Mac guy", as in the past I was the one of the few with a Mac on their desk. Whilst Mac support at my current employer (SAP) is superb, in the past most places haven't supported my platform of choice. For pretty much all of the 2000s I've been on Mac, from the aluminium clad PowerBook G4 to my trusty (late 2010) MacBook Air I current drive.

So every time I changed companies, or IT changed major systems that I needed to connect to, I was spending lots of time and effort working out how to get my MacBook talking to the network. OS X has certainly helped, as Apple has supported more and more corporate features, but most of the time has been cobbling together a working solution based on copied configuration and the odd bit of third-party software to convince the network services to work with my Mac.

Now whilst I'm an 100% Mac guy when it comes to computers, it always comes a huge surprise to my colleagues than I've only owned two iPhones, which is the same number as Android devices I've had. For mobile platforms I'm much more open minded - although I still occasionally pine for my old BlackBerry 7200 and Nokia e71.

So any solution that opens up choice when it comes to my mobile platform at work is always great to see. Not just as it means you don't need to a be a techie to get your device working with corporate systems, but also you IT department would rather you didn't - for many good reasons.

If you were of the 93,000+ people at Mobile World Congress last week, you'll have seen SAP was part of the great Android pin treasure hunt.

android-and-sap-at-mwc-2015.jpg
On the Android pin trail
Diarmuid Mallon

Why? The previous week Google formally announced Android for Work, a program that brings together OEMs and other technology partners to harness the power of Android for the enterprise and to support mobile adoption in the workplace. It's all about enhanced security with a dedicated and managed work profile that is isolated from personal apps, simplified management and an open platform for innovation. SAP (disclosure: my employer) has partnered with Google on this game-changing initiative, which fulfills the needs of our customers who are looking for a simple and secure way to support Android. SAP already several hundred Android-based enterprise mobile apps, with I'm sure more to come.

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Android for Work Program

For more info, please check out Google's blog announcing Android for Work along with SAP's press release.

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