Today’s professionals already embrace mobile computing. Yet many of them face a dilemma: they love the flexibility of a tablet, yet they still require the power and performance of a laptop.  That’s one big reason why mobile workers now carry an average of 3.5 devices.

These challenges call for a new approach: convertible devices that combine the best qualities of a tablet and a laptop, all in a single, highly versatile form factor. In this eBook, you will answers to these questions:

• How are different industries embracing convertibles?
• How do you determine whether convertibles are right for your organization?
• What are the key features to consider when selecting a convertible?
• How does the new ThinkPad Helix Ultrabook™ Convertible revolutionize mobile computing?

Download the Mobility Unleashed eBook:  www.lenovo.com/helix

Originally posted by Doug Drinkwater, TabTimes

The increasing number of smartphones and tablets in the workplace will push 25% of enterprises to adopt their own app store by 2017, according to Gartner.

In a new study, the research firm says that enterprises will increasingly turn to these app stores to control the apps their employees are using, especially with the bring-your-own-app (BYOA) trend now deemed to be “as important” as bring-your-own-device (BYOD).

Originally posted by Gartner

A well-executed single sign-on (SSO) strategy reduces password-related support incidents and provides users with improved convenience and more-efficient authentication processes, according to Gartner, Inc. A sound SSO strategy will give users fewer reasons to write down passwords. However, one password providing access to all in-scope systems can lead to compromised access to those systems.

“Organizations implementing SSO, particularly to systems that hold sensitive data, should implement risk-appropriate authentication methods with the SSO system,” said Gregg Kreizman, research vice president at Gartner. “Solutions are not ‘one size fits all,’ and solutions that provide SSO to all target systems may be deemed too expensive. Therefore, a best practice is to identify the tactical and strategic approaches that reduce enough of the problem space over time and within budget.”

Mobile devices can pose further challenges for SSO. “The proliferation of mobile phones and tablets with a variety of operating systems has created the latest and greatest challenges to authentication and SSO,” said Mr. Kreizman. “Web-architected applications can often be supported with existing access management tools, such as Web access management (WAM) and federation, because smartphones and tablets have Web browsers. Native mobile resident applications can create a gap in SSO support, and market offerings to resolve the issues are currently immature, proprietary, or not comprehensive enough to support multiple device and operating system variants.”

Originally posted by Jason Evangelho, Forbes

The first laptop I owned was a ThinkPad T20, and the next one may very likely be the ThinkPad Helix which Lenovo unveiled at CES 2013. In a sea of touch-inspired Windows 8 hardware, it’s the first ultrabook convertible with a form factor that gets everything right.

The first batch of Windows 8 ultrabooks get high marks for their inspired designs, but aren’t quite flexible enough to truly be BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) solutions. Lenovo’s own IdeaPad Yoga came close, but the sensation of feeling the keyboard underneath your fingers when transformed into tablet mode was slightly jarring. Dell‘s XPS 12 solved that problem with its clever rotating hinge design, but I wanted the ability to remove the tablet display entirely from both of those products.

Enter the ThinkPad Helix with its “rip and flip” design.

2012 was a pretty big year, in terms of mobile and enterprise mobility. Look at just a few of the milestones that spring to mind in a quick mental review of the year’s biggest mobile headlines:

Mobile application development is a “touchy” thing – both literally and figuratively. I mean it literally, in the sense that users generally let their fingers do the walking across your mobile app’s interface, which has some very interesting implications for your GUI (graphical user interface), and figuratively, in the sense that there are a lot of ways to go very wrong in the mobile development process.

I’ve had some limited experience in trying to design mobile apps, and a great deal of experience in using them. Very few apps that I download – and they must number in the thousands by now—pass the acid test of becoming permanent fixtures of my mobile experience. Most are “one and done” affairs, where I end up regretting the time I spent trying them out in the first place.

So here are four things that make a mobile app really stand out, from my perspective:

A friend of mine was responsible for creating the BYOD pilot program for a Fortune 10, $50B healthcare company. In the process he learned several important and surprising lessons, which he has kindly passed along in blog form.

One lesson he learned is that the biggest cost in developing a large corporate BYOD policy rollout may not be directly related to technology or devices at all. In many cases, it’s the tab for lawyers and HR staffers to review proposed policies, and to develop the lengthy contracts employees ultimately need to sign to use their personal devices on the corporate network.

Mobile Device Management is no picnic. Just ask anybody who’s doing it – or trying to.

On the surface of things, MDM doesn’t seem so tough. All you have to do is read the website of any major MDM vendor, and they’ll explain that they have the whole problem handled. Just buy their solution, and “problem solved.” But you don’t have look very hard to start finding chinks in the armor.

Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management Software Report is prefaced with the assertion that “MDM features have commoditized with little differentiation,” indicating that most offer the same strengths – and weaknesses. Perhaps the biggest limitation on MDM as a category is that the ability to actual manage devices is highly dependent on the mobile operating system each device is running – and all mobile OSes are not created equal in terms of their ability to be managed.

The EDUCAUSE 2012 Conference right around the corner!  The annual conference is the premier gathering of the brightest minds in higher education IT, and Lenovo invites you to join us in booth #1614 to get hands-on demonstrations of some of our latest products.

We will have hands-on demonstrations of the new ThinkPad Tablet 2, featuring Windows 8, as well as our full portfolio of ThinkPad Ultrabook PCs including the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.  See how it stacks up to the competition before the show with this X1 Carbon vs MBA infographic.

Find out more about our product showcase at EDUCAUSE here or request a 1:1 meeting with us to learn more about Lenovo, discuss our education strategy, or understand our product roadmap.

To help you prepare for the show, we invite you to download these complimentary e-briefs:

• 4 Key Mobility Trends for Instructional Technologists to Watch

• Mobile Tech Transforms Higher Education: 5 Key Trends to Watch

• Instructional Technologist’s Guide to Mobility Advances: 4 Opportunities to Make an Impact in Higher Education

Learn more about Lenovo at EDUCAUSE here:  www.lenovoeducause.com

Windows 8 is finally out. The question for enterprise is, should we care? While I don’t see any enterprise professionals doing cartwheels over it, the early returns do look somewhat promising – at least for portable devices.

I myself laid eyes on a bevy of news Windows 8 devices at a hardware vendor’s coming out party a few weeks ago, and I liked what I saw. However, there was a distinct consumer flavor to these offerings (as one might expect from the company that pioneered personal electronics back in the 1970s).

But some more robust Windows 8 devices are also on tap, and I have to think they could have some serious allure in the corporate sector. To date, while many enterprise organizations have come to tolerate the tablet, I think the number of large enterprise companies that actively embraced – or God forbid, actually pushed tablets out to users proactively – you could count on your digits, without removing your shoes. I believe that most tablets in the enterprise initially came in the back door, or in many cases, through the boardroom door as executives showed up to work with their shiny new devices and demanded that IT hook them up to the corporate network.