CES la vie

The Consumer Electronics Show is about to begin in Las Vegas; and it’s interesting to see some of the technologies that are coming out – and speculate on how they might impact the enterprise IT environment.

First, there’s the Phone Wars, heating up with Google coming out with the Nexus One, which is an open smart phone, compared to the current market leader, the Apple iPhone, which is a closed smart phone. 

It looks (to me, anyway) like Apple’s making a similar mistake to what they made in the 1980s and early 1990s – they’ve created a closed-down product and priced it at a premium, while competitors are creating much more open products which start out as expensive but become less so as the technologies mature.  This openness allows Google to take more risks with offering services related to the Web and leveraging cloud computing.  (After all, a smart phone has a teeny-weeny little processor in it – you don’t want to do any heavy number crunching on that!)

Still, the iPhone has one main advantage over Nexus (and RIM’s BlackBerry) – the iPhone has hardware encryption that cannot be turned off, and applications are tightly controlled.  In short, it’s more secure, making possible inroads into enterprise markets.  ReadWriteWeb has a few pieces of advice from their coverage of the Nexus One that IT managers can follow to secure it for use with an IT network – especially on government networks or defense contractor networks.

• Make sure that the device can be locked and swiped of its data if a user loses their Nexus One.
• Make sure Exchange ActiveSync is installed on the device so permissions for accessing data can be set up according to the policy set by the enterprise.
• Provide the ability to configure the device to remotely provision application clients and device interfaces used to reach the application source (e.g. Wi-Fi, VPN).
• Allow for PKI support that allows Android devices to receive and ingest digital certificates. The use of certificates helps automate connectivity to enterprise applications via Wi-Fi, VPN and web by making authentication transparent to users.

There’s also the impact of the Cradlepoint 4G routers – devices that essentially convert and route ambient city-wide 4G WiMax signals to the more prevalent 802.11n signals which more standard WiFi network interfaces can use.  The idea is that people who have WiFi, but not WiMax, on their laptops can use 4G service, as well as enable someone to pay for one 4G connection, and transfer that to multiple boxen – roommates, for example, or even small businesses. 

Finally, there’s the expansion of the VUDU service.  VUDU is an on-demand Internet movie rental service – you hook up a box to your TV, and voila, you can rent movies from it.  It’s branching out, however, as it’s now going to be available built-in to multiple TVs, and will have internet “applications” for specific sites – Flickr, Pandora, Picasa, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Stock Tracking, etc.

Because of technologies like Vudu, we’re starting to see the – well, not the beginning, because we’re too far in – but the “beginning of the middle” of the TV/Internet convergence.