Last month, Microsoft rolled out an update that features 3D touch and Apple Pencil support for its Office 365 apps on iPhone and iPad Pro. Users can now quickly open Office documents they receive over email or connected cloud storage, review the 
files in the Office mobile apps and mark changes within the documents using the Apple Pencil. The annotations are embedded in the file itself and viewable in any Office app across the mobile, web and desktop versions. These features are useful in enabling document collaboration use cases where multiple users are engaged with the same document.
The new Office for iOS also include improvements to quickly locate your work files leveraging the native iOS Spotlight search, side-by-side multi-tasking to copy-and-paste data or chart objects between files, and other feature enhancements (e.g. automatic shape recognition) aimed at getting your work done faster.
The Office app updates are driving more and more work to be done on the iPad, and thus work data to be pushed on to the mobile device. Organizations want to ensure their employees are taking advantage of this new level of anytime-anywhere productivity; however, they are also increasingly concerned with securing access and storage of the sensitive work data on corporate or employee-owned devices.
Office 365: Ready for Business with Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE, powered by VMware AirWatch unified endpoint management technology, enables Office 365 ease of use, management and security in the organization. The comprehensive solution automates provisioning of apps, provides a common identity for authentication, enables adaptive access control to the apps and protects the data on the device. For organizations evaluating Office 365, Workspace ONE simplifies the journey and the experience of provisioning the Office apps to their end users.
1. Self-Service and SSO Access
- Push automatically or deploy on-demand the Office 365 apps and email configurations.
- Sync existing on-premises directory services to ensure access to Office 365 is restricted to licensed users only.
- Set up users for single sign-on (SSO) access to the Office apps using the same identity as their corporate account.
- Integrate with existing or best-of-breed identity solutions and support password-less, certificate-based authentication.
2. Conditional Access to Authorized Users and Devices
- Restrict access to Office 365 apps and services such as Exchange Online, One Drive for Business and Skype for Business to only compliant and managed devices.
- Flexibly support different claim rules (e.g. certificates, domain membership, VPN-based) for authentication based on the device platform (whether mobile, desktop or Web) requesting access.
3. Containerize and Protect Data
- Leverage native platform controls to containerize apps, encrypt data, set data loss prevention policies (e.g. open in, cut/copy/paste, etc.) and restrict access to company data on untrusted apps.
- Enable IT admins and end-users to selectively wipe all corporate data and apps from lost or stolen devices.
Although the above capabilities were discussed with Office apps and email in mind, the fact is that many organizations (> 60%) are going beyond basic productivity (enabled via email and Office apps) and are deploying new line of business (LOB) or internal apps to support their workforce. With VMware AirWatch, organizations get a unified management solution that can extend the same self-service, authentication and security controls across all their applications and services, whether in the cloud or on-premises.
To learn more about how to deploy and secure Office 365, you might also be interested in:
- Video: Accelerating Office 365 Deployments with VMware AirWatch
- Webinar: Enabling Office 365 for Mobile Workers
- Whitepaper: AirWatch Support for Office 365
In “The Redmond Series” of blogs, we hope to provide insights around the modern IT makeover and best practices for managing your Microsoft mobile-cloud investments. Whether you are thinking strategies (desktop transformation, mobility, BYOD) or products (Windows 10, Office365, Exchange), our product experts will guide you on how to simplify management and fast forward your Microsoft deployments.
