1

Hi everyone,

We’re undertaking a programme of making all of our IT sensible and I’d like to get your opinions on using Google Apps and Office 365 together.

We’re going to be getting Office 365 in so I can:

  • retire our on-premise Exchange server
  • have a platform for federated sign-on for third party websites and apps

I now need to think about company smartphones. Right now I have about 20 smartphones. They have no central control or admin. When they were deployed, management just created a random Google Account to allow access to the Play Store. I want to deploy proper mobile device management.

I am thinking of using Google Apps for Nonprofits to unify the administration of our smartphones, since I can get it for very low cost, and since I have to have a Google Account per phone to get the Play Store, etc.

But is this the best idea? Are there other services I could use in conjunction with Office 365 to handle the remote device management? Using both GApps and Office 365 feels a bit clunky.

What do you think?

@Google

1 Spice up
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What kind of management are you wanting to setup for the phones? There are two free traditional MDM options: Cisco’s Meraki MDM is free, as is the MaaS360 MDM version within Spiceworks.

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Nothing fancy. I’m interested in the next step beyond no management whatsoever :slight_smile:

Useful features would be:

  • Being able to redeploy a staff member’s phone in the event of loss or damage to the handset, including such things as accounts, SMS, and settings. I’m imagining something that works a bit like roaming profiles in a Windows network.

  • Automatic backups of phone contents and settings. I believe Exchange can handle most of this.

  • Location tracking.

I’ll take a look at the two options you mentioned, thanks!

4

The location tracking is definitely covered by most MDMs. I mostly track iPhones/iPads, but I believe the first two features you requested are covered by the Google account on the Android devices. I have replaced an android device by simply signing in with their account. I would suggest making the google accounts secured with corporate information to avoid headaches.

5

The problem is how well I can do central control over device Google accounts. If we were using the full GApps suite for everything it’d be no big deal, but we’re already set up with Microsoft’s offerings.

Without Google Apps, I couldn’t administer all the device accounts from one control panel. I’d need to keep a big password list and do everything one by one.

I am thinking that I’d need to set up GApps for our domain, attach Google Accounts to our existing user email addresses, and then use both Google and Office 365 together to cover all the device management scenarios I need?

It’s not a big deal with charitable pricing, but it doesn’t feel very elegant.

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Without Google Apps, I couldn’t administer all the device accounts from one control panel. I’d need to keep a big password list and do everything one by one.

Administer what exactly? What is the ‘everything’ you would need to do to each device?

WIth an MDM you have a list of all phones, with all of their information (serial#, IMEI, phone#, etc) plus their location (luckily this works great with android!). You can lock down the phone, erase it, force a passcode, and several other options. What are you looking to control on the phone?

If to manage the Google account itself, why? If all security info leads back to corporate, you have ultimate control over the account. I keep the backup email and security questions info, they have the password to the main account.

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I think Heather has a great point when it comes to getting an MDM. Meraki and MaaS360 are ones to look at, but I’d also take a look at AirWatch . This allows you to update service settings over-the-air, enforce security policies, secure mobile access to corporate resources and documents (if that’s something that you like in Google Apps), and remotely lock and wipe managed services. You can integrate AirWatch with Office 365 as well. Here’s a bit more info about how Airwatch integrates with Android devices: http://www.air-watch.com/solutions/android