digital partners_™ Apple Corporate Sales • Professional Systems Integrators

As business professionals become more mobile, the need for secure file sharing capabilities continues to grow. Currently, many professionals have turned to consumer-level programs like Dropbox and Google Docs, exposing company data to major security risks and creating compliance nightmares for IT departments in regulated industries.

This week GroupLogic rolled out a secure Enterprise File Sharing solution called activEcho that addresses the critical needs of all key constituents – users, the business, IT, security and compliance groups – to allow for secure and efficient collaboration.  At dpi, we’ve been an authorized reseller for the full GroupLogic product line since 2003 and are excited to add activEcho to our comprehensive suite of IT services for the enterprise.

activEcho combines a high level of security and control for IT departments with a seamless end user experience.  It’s flexible deployment model works in a wide variety of multi-platform infrastructures, allowing IT pros to deploy activEcho inside their firewall, in the DMZ, or in a private cloud on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android operating systems.

All documents are encrypted by an administrator-defined encryption cipher, both while in use and while at rest. In addition, the activEcho server tracks all versions of the files, allowing for recovery of past editions.

Access to documents is granted to internal users through Active Directory credentials, allowing for seamless file sharing between colleagues through AD groups and administrative control over which AD logins can access specific documents.  Collaborating with external service providers is made possible by authentication via an activEcho invitation.

At dpi, our systems architects have real world experience in large-scale device deployment and management in multi-platform environments. We have cultivated strong partnerships with the leading providers of MDM and mobile-related software including the full GroupLogic product line, JAMF Casper Suite, MobileIron and more.

To learn more about a mobile device management solution from dpi, click here or call (314)-863-8008.

Apple announced the new iPad Wednesday at an invitation-only event held in San Francisco where Chief Executive Tim Cook said the iPad is “reinventing portable computing.”The new devices, which will be available to consumers on March 16, feature superior graphics, high speed 4G LTE web browsing capability, an improved camera, and a new Apple A5X chip with quad-core graphics.

For business users, the new iPad means greater mobility. Users now have the ability to roam worldwide on 3G networks and access faster 4G LTE networks through Verizon Wireless and AT&T in the US. In addition, the new iPad has taken on features of the iPhone 4GS, including voice dictation and the ability to create a personal hot spot with the device.

At dpi, we offer enterprise customers real-world experience in deploying and securing iOS devices. We leverage our strategic partnerships with the leading providers of mobile device management software and accessories to implement complete end-to-end solutions that allow companies to securely take advantage of the amazing features of the iPad. In addition, we’re experts at integrating Apple and its ecosystem in multi-platform environments and offer Apple certified support, repairs and training for IT professionals.

digital partners is currently taking pre-orders for the new iPad, which will be available for customers on March 16. To learn more about a custom iPad solution or to pre-order your new iPads from dpi, click here or call 866-679-6227.

The biggest disruptive force in the computer equipment market is not [the cloud], but Apple. – Andrew Bartels

In his Global Tech Market Outlook for 2012, Andrew Bartels, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, focused not on the major shifts in Enterprise computing in the cloud, but that Apple is taking the workforce by storm.

This year Apple will sell an estimated $19 billion in Macs and iPads to enterprises. The growth marks a 58% increase over corporate spending in 2011. What was once a small trend with executives insisting on their own Macs, has now spread across departments. More and more employees are requesting to use the operating systems they use at home. The result? More Apple computers in the workplace.

The upsurge is also fueled by the demand for an increasingly mobile sales force. iPads have become the standard as corporations see how easily sales materials can be demonstrated as well as day-to-day operations managed on the go. Apple has reacted by ramping up corporate sales through reselling partners.

As an Apple reseller for close to twenty years, digital partners is uniquely positioned to use its longstanding relationship with Apple to help its clients get volume discounts. If your enterprise is playing catch up with integrating Macs and iPads, give us a call. Our systems engineers can answer questions about integration and our Apple specialists can help you find the right hardware for every position.

Every year successful companies take a fresh look at how they can improve practices and continue to grow. For most companies, no matter the industry, this is often work smarter, not harder. Being safe and streamlined is the result of smart thinking, not sweat-drenched work.

One place smart practices fuel growth is in enterprise data centers. Companies with electronic storage risk damaged equipment or injured technicians. Server boxes are bulky, often heavy, and cost thousands of dollars to replace.

With one easy addition to your server space arsenal, companies can lower operating costs, reduce risk of energy, and streamline server deployment. ServerLIFT solutions are designed to safely and efficiently lift servers and IT equipment in today’s data center environment. Both manual and fully controllable electric server lifts are available and have form factors designed specifically by data center employees to meet the toughest challenges with loading and unloading servers.

digital partners is a ServerLift authorized reseller and can work with your data center teams to find the best-fit server lift for your environment. This year, think smarter by eliminating extra risk and costs by adding the one tool that will aid your data management team to be more productive than ever. Give us a call to find out more or get a quote on the ServerLIFT SL-500X or the SL-300X.

A recent article from Forrester Research reviewed the challenges that Information Technology and Operations teams faced in 2011 and listed the growing challenges in the coming year. Concerns with transitions from local storage to backup in the Cloud, mobile device management, and hardware updates have moved to front and center for IT planning. Above all is the need for IT departments to demonstrate value.

As companies look ahead to appropriate budgets for 2012, it is important to focus not only on operations maintenance, but also on increased agility and mobility. Securing data across mobile devices like smart phones and iPads is essential. Your company’s digital assets should be easily accessible but only to those within the corporation. Our mobile device management (MDM) and security team work with companies to conduct MDM security audits and pre-assessments for MDM tools like MobileIron. Set up a beginning of the year review with digital partners to see how you can save money for all four quarters by securing and managing your mobile devices.

Updating systems with digital partners has never been easier. Through our strengthened relationships with Adobe, Autodesk, and Apple, we can help you build department-specific bundles with the hardware and software you need. Our service team can help you configure and deploy machines. Call dpi’s Enterprise specialists to find out more about beginning of the year specials and bundles.

Preparing for 2012 does not have to be difficult. Hardware refreshes and mobile device management are great value propositions. Contact digital partners for answers to your questions and some hands-on help.

The advanced class is used to cover concepts that exist in other development languages and how to do them in Objective-C and the mobile devices, as well as further interact with native capabilities of the device.  To ensure business logic processing does not cause sluggish or non-responding UI, asynchronous designs can be used to allow background calculation of data.  Most iOS devices also provide a camera for visual input / recording; the course will cover utilizing the camera to capture image or video and how to consume these media files in an application.

With wider availability of internet connection, either through Wi-Fi or 3G cellular connection, more people are connected than ever before.  Most applications can utilize these connections to get / store data and maybe provide connectivity and UI to existing portals that are available on the internet.  Such a connected application may need to be able to consume web services, show a website content within the confines of the developed application and maybe show a map with specific locations tagged along with current user location.

Subjects covered:

• Go through Grand Central Dispatch and asynchronous designs
• Providing contrast with threading and cover various situations on which path to choose
• Utilize the camera on iOS devices to capture images and video and how to show these media within the application
• Use UIWebView control to display websites and how to provide navigation
• Evaluate web service concepts and options available to produce web service and its output along with options to consume web services
• Consume Web Services within the mobile application
• Use MKMapView control to show Google Maps; contrast current user location within the map with the CLLocationManager class usage

Other advanced topics

There are various other topics that can be further explored related to iOS application development; the above classes can have their subjects tailored to satisfy the client’s need and preference.  As in any typical software development class, a subject is only important if it needs to be used by the application being developed; however having proper knowledge on most things and more importantly how to find / learn new subjects is crucial to the success of developing any type of application.

These following listed subjects are not specifically listed above but may be substituted and / or covered in lighter detail within the classes:

• Handling touch, multiple touches, keeping track of touches and handling gestures recognized by the system or by a custom handler
• Creation of UI custom controls to be reused within an application or other application in the development ecosystem, along with custom drawing routines using Quartz
• OpenGL ES development; this is crucial for 3D graphics-intensive applications and would be recommended to be a custom class by itself to cover OpenGL basics
• Control animation; providing a well-behaved UI is great, but sometimes a little extra ‘flash’ may be desirable to raise the application to the next level – block development will be covered as well as prior begin / commit animation methods.
• Instrumentation in Xcode; this is not strictly a development subject, but is helpful to optimize code and check for memory leaks in applications
• Exploring GameKit; the name does not strictly imply it is for development of games, rather it is for development of great social games.  It allows tapping into Game Center which is a centralized network service along with voice chat services and using Bluetooth to do peer-to-peer connectivity.
• Background tasks; it is not for doing more than a single action at a time, but rather to create an application that can continue to be active while another application is running.
• In-depth Objective-C; the language used to develop for iOS devices is not commonly available outside of the Apple platforms – some developers that would like to learn further may need a ‘pure’ language class.  This can be advantageous since it can be used to develop Mac applications as well.

Enroll today!

It’s easy to enroll. Just give us a call and let us know which course you’d like to take. We’ll take down your information and provide you with more details about the class and costs.