Wherein We Trash InfoWeek...Again.
Perhaps it is time to change the name to Weak Information. We will lay out the case momentarily, but first keep this phrase in mind :
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
And here is why we were reminded of this phrase :
And that's what makes apps bad for IT -- apps are a lock-in. Once we adopt an app, whether proprietary or purchased, we're stuck with a particular handset and perhaps even a particular wireless carrier.
Seriously?!
We only bring this up because we find the entire premise of IT based on open standards a joke. Do you not wonder, as do we, where all these open and loving IT people were... like, oh, in forever ?! Isn’t this precisely the same people who have been telling us for decades that Macs were bad in IT because strength came through homogenization? You bet your sweet bippy they are!
Then again, in the interests of full disclosure, we admit to being the heretics of the IT world. Silly us, we thought it was the job of IT to integrate the tools the users found easiest to use and made them the most productive. In short, we always thought it was the purview of IT to advise, not command.
Now we are about to drop the nuclear bomb which obliterates the entire premise of this article : enterprise-level tech is all about the lock-in and competitive advantage. What? Do you seriously think Apple or Amazon or Microsoft wants everyone to use their internal systems? It’s about keeping the entire world and dog OUT. And if you believe for even a single minute when Amazon contracts out for a system there isn’t a nuke-proof NDA stronger than Superman that specifically prevents any use other than for Amazon... well, we want to talk terms with you on a gently-used bridge.
Again, here is where the ‘one source’ crowd will show their true colors. They don’t want code from six different sources on any system, let alone hundreds of anonymous sources of various levels of competence and expertise. When a CIO has a problem, he or she wants one phone number and one person at which to vent their corporate spleen. Just like any one of us. They are, after all, human. Well, some of them.
So what is the solution? This :
And that's to design all mobile apps to work within a browser. One would simply go to mobile.whatever.com (or perhaps use the .mobi domain for non-proprietary apps), authenticate, and then, well, that's it. Except for the almost part, and that is the fundamental lack of browser standards in most (Oh, what am I saying? All!) mobile devices today.
We are certain Weak Information has lost their freakin’ minds. So the solution is to turn over your most vital and secure systems to the most insecure, buggy, and undependable software ever conceived by humanity? Seriously ? We thought Weak Information had to be joking, and then we read this :
To be fair, some of these extensions do indeed have value, but silly arguments between vendors, like the Apple/Adobe tiff over Flash, only serve to irritate customers and limit end-user productivity. It's 2010 -- why are we still putting up with such asinine behavior on the part of our suppliers?
Ummm... maybe because Apple got it right with their calling-out of Adobe Flash.
But since when has the word “productivity” even been used in the same sentence as “Flash”? Insecure, yes. Buggy, yes. Worst software you could put on a computer, yes. But “productive”? That is a flight of fancy we just cannot comprehend.
Which brings us back to the thought we originally advanced :
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
We cannot contrive a single instance where “open” anything in Enterprise-level IT is a great thing. The sad fact is there is a great deal of power and strength in uniformity in certain circumstances. So if some wonk is telling you the tools you use - and Enterprise-level IT is routinely being commanded to integrate - are bad, you must begin to wonder what they are selling.
The simple fact is there has not been a documented instance of insecurity in the “wild” with an iPhone. Each and every reported instance has been with an already ‘jailbroken’ (read : already insecure) iPhone. So if someone is telling you to abandon a documented secure platform, then you should be very, very afraid of what they are selling as a replacement.