For the Bristol Group of Companies, who operate 15 stores across 7 distinct islands in the Bahamian archipelago, the storm’s damage could have been catastrophic.  With the Internet down, a critical link between the servers at head office and those at the stores was disrupted, jeopardizing Bristol’s ability to maintain operations.  One possible solution to this situation would have been to hire contractors on the remote islands to act as an extension to Bristol’s IT team, but at a cost of thousands of dollars.  Fortunately for Bristol, they had another option.

Despite the disruption of their traditional communications network, the islands’ mobile network remained operational throughout, and offered Bristol an opportunity to immediately manage their distributed systems.  This was only made possible through an investment that Bristol’s VP Business Intelligence, Craig Thackray, made months earlier, when he acquired Rove’s Mobile Admin software for their IT staff.  Mobile Admin enabled Bristol’s IT team to remotely access all of the systems in the stores, triage the situation, remediate issues and monitor their ongoing operation—all of this being done by a staff that was continually on the move between various locations.  This maximized the staff’s productivity and ensured all Bristol locations remained operational.

As Craig Thackray states,

“During Hurricane Irene our team was able to monitor and manage a network of 15 locations throughout the islands of The Bahamas, using Android phones. We would not have been able to do so without Rove’s Mobile Admin. It has been invaluable in getting the business back up following the hurricane.”

Financial losses stemming from IT downtime are starting to become a main focus of many corporations. Eweek.com has just completed a survey of nearly 6,000 IT personnel that sheds light onto some of these losses. See the complete story and data here.

Considering the different emergency situations organizations face, most of them not natural disasters, but other network emergencies (i.e. malicious activity, server crashes, employee mistakes, etc.), does your team have a mobile way to be notified of issues, access the problems, and resolve the issues?

According to comScore Voices, only 5,6% of Smartphones Subscribers in the US (Sep.2011) use the Microsoft Platform. 

The other big question is: should developers invest time and money in creating content and apps for a relatively small amount of users? If they did, the market could very well pick up and they would see themselves with a lot more customers. But for that to happen, many developers would have to take the leap and not hold their breaths until the market changes itself.

Carla

 Hi, this is Matt Moore again, Director of Development here at Rove.

 Unfortunately,  I do get a notification a few minutes later....

From the iOS notification center I can open the Mobile Admin iOS client directly to the list of events from vSphere for the vm we are watching.

Mobile Admin’s Notification system has informed me that my fix didn’t take.

 First thing I need to do is get the virtual machine running again for my high priority user.  I select the ‘Rove-c45’ vm.

  Hit the menu button...

Once I confirm the power on command completed successfully I can leave a note in the vm’s settings page to let others know of the issue.

Now I need to find out why this machine went into a suspended state.

The new features in 7.0 include:

•   Microsoft ActiveSync

o    Wipe, delete partnerships and troubleshoot AS devices

•   Amazon EC2

o    One-click SSH into instances

o    Start/stop/reboot instances

o    Notfications for scheduled events and CloudWatch alarms  

•   SolarWinds NPM

o    View details for nodes, interfaces and events

o    Top 10 lists

o    Acknowledge events

o    Unmanage nodes

•   iLO 2 and 3

o    Power cycle server

o    View server logs

o    Flash UID to help locate server in datacenter 

•   Notifications for locked Active Directory user accounts

o    Once-click from notification to user account in AD  

Usability improvements in 7.0 include:

•   Improved Notification system

o    New top-level view showing number and severity of events for each subscribed feed 

o    Better badge number support

o    Notification payload indicates which feed triggered notification 

•   Share Mobile Admin

o    Share the details of any page in Mobile Admin with team members directly from device

o    Submit feedback or bugs to Rove directly from device

•   Better device integration

o    Caching Active Directory login on devices is back as a server-side configuration     option (tentative)

o    Better data compression (tentative)

o    Create a calendar entry on your device from any date field 

o    Place a  phone call from your device from any phone number field

o    Open the browser on your device from any URL field

o    Send an email form your device from any email field

We are currently looking for people to participate in our 7.0 Beta testing. If you are interested, please complete the information required at this link and we will contact you!

https://docs.google.com/a/roveit.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dENabUJhOE1xS2xSWnF2NGVIM21hU2c6MQ

Thank you,

Your Rove Team.

Rove will be closed for the holidays as of December 24th, 2011. We'll be back on January 3rd, 2012! 

We wish you happy holidays and a happy New Year!

-The Rove Team

Reminder: End of year promo is 25% off any purchase of Professional or ProPlus licenses or any upgrades from Professional to ProPlus license before the Dec 23rd, 2011!

To take advantage of this promotion, contact sales@roveit.com or go directly to our online store (https://www.roveit.com/store/Products.aspx) and enter promo code: ROVE2011.

Rove will be closed for the holidays from Dec 24th 2011 to January 2nd, 2012. 

A² manages the settings, shortcuts and security so that users are able to seamlessly move between their mobile devices while dealing with issues. For example, IT pros can use an iPad while moving around their data center and facilities, and then switch to their Motorola RAZR on the bus ride home to check on status and triage outstanding issues.

“Unlike many vendors, we do not tie our licensing to specific devices or platforms owned by our users. Instead, we provide our users with the flexibility to use any mobile device they choose at the moment convenient for them, all from a single license,” explained Russell Ure, President of Rove. “Mobile devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and change is constant. Many IT folks now have access to multiple devices in the office or from home. Our objective with A² licensing is to provide our users the ability to manage urgent tasks no matter where they are and from any device that is at hand.”

Mobile Admin currently supports BlackBerry, Android phones and tablets, iPhones and iPads, and will be available shortly for the Kindle Fire and BlackBerry BBX devices including Playbook.

A² licensing is available immediately for all existing and new Mobile Admin customers.

About Rove Mobile Admin

Rove Mobile Admin is a secure tablet- and smartphone-enabled IT management solution giving IT staff unprecedented mobile access to incident detection, diagnosis, triage and resolution. Rove Mobile Admin uses agentless technology and enables network administrators to securely access and perform management operations on an extensive array of IT servers and services.

About Rove

With over 3,500 Business, Government, Healthcare and non-profit customers worldwide Rove (www.roveit.com) is the leader in mobile IT management solutions. Awarded eWEEK 2010 Product of the Year honors, Rove Mobile Admin lets IT staff take action anytime, anywhere for faster incident resolution, reduced downtime, improved customer service and increased IT efficiency. Rove partners with leading IT system providers including Microsoft, VMware, BMC, CA, HP, Symantec and IBM. Rove participates in the iOS and Android Developer Programs and is a BlackBerry Alliance Member.

For video, product screen shots and further information:

Would you like to be able to implement Mobile Admin before the en of the year?

Maybe that will help you convince your boss!

Want to upgrade your license from Professional to ProPlus? You can use that 25% discount towards that too!

Contact our sales teams at sales@roveit.com or enter ROVE2011 as the promo code on the online store!

Visit www.roveit.com/featurespricing for all information on features and products.

You can also try the newest features of Mobile Admin for 14 days with full access to Rove's support team by clicking here.