Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is making its way into every enterprise: from hospitals to higher education to corporations. So it’s no surprise that the demand by consumers for BYOD functionality is becoming prevalent in the hospitality industry as well. Guest’s personal devices are becoming faster, smarter and more personalized than ever before. The benefits derived from the plethora of applications and capabilities supported by these devices have become nearly essential to today’s business and leisure traveler. The increase in guest’s use of their own devices, however, has resulted in a disconnect between the hotel property and portions of the guest experience, primarily in voice communications. For example, telephone calls to hotel guests from staff or other guests, if gone unanswered, typically revert to a guest personal voicemail box. As a result, guests hanging out by the pool, restaurant or bar, or working in the conference center do not get the phone call and may go a long time before discovering that someone is trying to reach them. Therein lies the disconnect.

In an attempt to improve the guest experience in the current environment, hotel companies are solving this dilemma by bridging the gap between the guest’s personal voice device and their own internal voice communication system. Since many guests typically prefer their own device and its personalized user interface, ringtones, contacts and functions, hotels can now easily make the guest’s device their primary extension during their stay at the hotel. Incoming calls to guests from within or outside of the hotel would ring on the personal mobile phone. A real advantage of this is that the guest does not have to be in their room to speak with the caller. The call will reach the guest anywhere on property as long as they have a cellular signal. For this simple but beneficial feature, guests provide their name and email address to the front desk agent of the hotel during the check-in process.

The benefits in implementing mobile technologies stack up for both hospitality managers and guests. By accommodating the guests’ device, you enhance guest engagement and improve customer satisfaction, which in turn can increase customer spending and revenue. The benefits certainly don’t stop there, mobile technology implementation can also accelerate guest traffic, give you a venue to promote sales of goods and services if you desire, and customer satisfaction surveys where you can gather feedback relative to the guest’s experience.

 How can I use BYOD to enhance my guests’ experience?

The average consumer has access to advanced technology in their home, and has the same expectations when they travel. With this, hotels are under a lot of pressure to keep up with, and even exceed, the customer’s expectations. So what services can you offer your guests from their personal device?

• In-room dining ordering
• In-hotel restaurant listing and reservations
• Pre-arrival requests
• Mobile Payment options
• In-room environmental controls – lights, drapes, thermostat, TV, etc. 
• Express check-out
• Hotel Area maps 

……just to name a few

According to Pew Research, more than half of all mobile phone users rely on their portable device to search for information on hotels. With mobility, you can get everything you want, where you want, plus gain positive benefits in revenue, guest experience and marketing. With the steadily increasing volume of mobile network users, what better time for a hospitality business to embrace the guest BYOD trend and get them more connected to your business than ever before.

Check out our case studies to see how NEC has helped hotels around the world recover missed revenue opportunities, increase customer service, and enhance the overall guest experience.

If you are contemplating a Unified Communications (UC) solution for your business, key points to consider are the efficiency and functionality of your organization’s current telecommunications strategy, followed by why and how your business should implement Unified Communications. For smaller organizations, UC implementation is simplified due to the smaller number of users. In these businesses, it’s easier for an IT manager to configure applications on individual desktops, whereas in medium to large organizations there simply aren’t enough resources to utilize this method. Instead, the IT manager may send the client application to a central location for download, or send an e-mail to users with a link for them to self-configure their desktops. Regardless of your organization’s size, it’s still crucial that you evaluate current systems and solicit feedback from employees when integrating Unified Communications into your business. The following list of guidelines can help you develop a strategy to guide you. 

• UC project management

The first step you’ll want to take is identifying a project manager to oversee all UC implementation. You will also want to form an interdependent team --members from all sides and departments of your business who can benefit from the increased user productivity of UC implementation. You can simplify UC project management through thorough planning and the consistent assessment of needs, risks, and benefits of the project. Becoming very familiar with your prospective Unified Communications provider is also beneficial, making sure the provider can help your business adapt to changing needs. Evaluate the mobility of your workforce and see how UC projects will fit in to, for example, a bring your own device (BYOD) policy. Having a back-up plan as well as a recovery strategy in case of an emergency is also something you’ll want to think about sooner rather than later.

• Understand business needs EARLY

Ask what problems need to be solved and what other processes within your organization are in need of improvement? When preparing to implement UC, you must thoroughly understand what business processes are taking place and how improving such processes will contribute to enhanced productivity. In doing so, involving business partners in developing a UC strategy is ideal. By doing so, you can gain a better understanding of, for example, how important mobility is to business processes/practices. Have your UC project management personnel spend some time with employees in their daily workings to gain first-hand experience of how UC planning can help them.

• Assess current performance and solidify business buy-in

Evaluate how the implementation of UC applications will change your current IT infrastructure. Consider performance, cost, satisfaction, and general success and failure of business processes. Recording this information can be very helpful in comparing current operations to future operations. Also consider the amount of traffic you receive and from there determine which UC applications can best handle your traffic flow. Once you have decided which UC solutions you will implement, it is imperative the entire business agrees with the new technology implementation.

• Provide Product Outline

Provide key staff members the framework for potential product and services to be implemented and keep members of your organization well informed about developments in the strategy. As you receive feedback, start implementing small scale changes and continue to communicate implementation plans so you can make the full solution transition much smoother. You may want to take advantage of opportunities to test performance of your selected UC solution before implementation. Employing the “build-a-little-test-a-little” strategy can be very beneficial as it allows staff and users to test applications and give feedback.

• Training

Employing UC comes with many benefits--increased productivity, satisfaction, and savings. However, in order to fully yield these benefits, your staff must be well-trained on the solution you choose to implement. The good news is, training will be relatively easy since many users are familiar with and comfortable using UC type applications in their personal lives. On the flip side, just because users are comfortable, doesn’t mean training is any less of a necessity. Training is key in maximizing your investment and ROI – if users are not properly trained, they will likely not use the application and view it as a waste. How do your users learn to adapt to new technology? It is essential that training providers give IT staff quality instruction based on implemented UC solutions. Users must be able to receive quick, reliable feedback to any problems. Providing critical UC training to employees is vital in successful adoption. Determine the best environment to train your users, whether it is online, in-classroom, etc. To make sure users are completely comfortable with the new platform, allowing them to work remotely from time to time may be ideal, especially for business continuity.

Lastly, it is important not to leave UC planning up to users.   According to research from Nemertes, companies that have a prior UC plan in place are “measurably better” compared to companies that leave strategy planning in the hands of their users. Proper preparation and strategy can have your business well on its way to not only reaping the benefits of Unified Communications, but seeing drastic improvements in your organizations workflow.  To really see the value in your investment, plan on tracking your improvements and measuring your ROI.  To see how UC yielded measurable results and improved the workflow of one company, download the ROI of Unified Communications white paper below. 

The increasing prevalence of mobile data has resulted in great security concerns for enterprises operating on multi-device systems, or with a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy in place. It is challenging for businesses to decide whether the greatest value is in securing the devices that data is delivered to, or securing the data itself through methods such as Mobile Device Management (MDM). Mobile devices usage is highly favorable to end users in terms of access and convenience, but IT managers and CIOs cringe at the thought of the security risks associated with mobility and allowing sensitive data to be retrieved from virtually anywhere, any time. According to the Cibecs/IDG Connect 2012 Business Data Loss Survey, 60% of IT and executive management professionals do not feel their data is completely secure. Whereas existing security measures may suffice for company-owned and controlled devices, it is in the company’s best interests to implement new levels of control on employee devices not controlled by IT to ensure maximum data protection as opposed to device protection.

If you’ve heard that securely controlling data transmission is not possible without enterprise ownership of the device, we’d like to show you otherwise. The following examples of mobile data security best practices can give you an idea of what protocol to follow in securing data across your network and devices.

Thin Client

Thin client policies apply to both smartphones as well as tablets, and include OS streaming, hosted desktop virtualization and workplace virtualization. Sensitive information is processed centrally and remote devices can access this data through thin-client terminal applications using network access only. A major benefit of thin-client operation is that information does not leave the server and can only be accessed by an authorized end user. If the authorized user becomes restricted for any reason, access is immediately revoked, with the potential for a remote wipe of the entire device if company policy dictates. This strategy can ensure further security by implementing strong authentication policies, which limit actions such as host copy-and-paste operations and screen capture in addition to controlling data and file transfers. Internal and client contact data may not always be considered eligible for company security policies. In cases such as this, a thin-client data source with applied security is an ideal solution, as it ensures a contact database stays with the company rather than the phone when the end-user leaves the organization.

Mobile Thin Client Management

Mobile thin client management allows users to control which devices are permissible for company use, thereby restricting data access points. Perhaps the most beneficial feature of this strategy is that thin devices can be remotely wiped. Smartphones and similar devices may have limiting features, such as size, processing power and storage capacity, whereby only restricted data processing can occur. Where thin devices can only keep limited amounts of data, they have the unique capability to replicate data and store master copies within specified datacenters.

When implementing the thin device strategy, companies can still control security of these devices by employing mobile device platforms or other management applications, enabling security policies regarding backup and compulsory data encryption.

Protected Data

The aforementioned strategies focus on protecting data processing environments, but how can you protect your data directly? The Protected Data method guards the data at the source rather than the endpoint, ensuring the safety of data regardless of its location. Enterprise rights management and other such technologies directly embed access rules into documents by way of cryptography. With this method, the rules are applicable to documents regardless of location or device, allowing effective security measures for multi device environments.

This pattern also allows for “detecting, logging, and blocking” data that leaves enterprise premises. Having the capability to follow the transmission of sensitive data provides the benefit of understanding the speed and direction of information transfer and flow.

In addition to applying these strategies to mobile device environments, make sure users are aware of potential security threats and how to avoid them. In addition to securing information, users should be sure to secure the many popular applications that smartphones have. Educating users and emphasizing the security risks on their personal mobile devices can make corporate policies much more effective; by demonstrating that there is a significant and known threat to users’ personal information as well as company information, users are more likely to adhere to corporate controls. This provides a win-win scenario, protecting users’ personal info while also protecting your corporate data.

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has faced an uphill battle for adoption due to the issue of effective policy implementation.  BYOD offers employees the luxury of working with devices they are most familiar with and can foster a more productive and collaborative environment, but these benefits must be balanced against the inherent dangers of uncontrolled devices having access to your data and network. When implementing a BYOD policy, special care needs to be taken to ensure existing company goals are not compromised. An effective, comprehensive BYOD policy will promote collaborative solutions for executives, IT staff and workforce users, but must take into account the following policy concerns:

1. Security

According to Gartner, the number one concern for potential BYOD policy implementation is security. The transition from company-issued devices to personal devices requires strict guidelines defined in your security policies. Protecting communications, monitoring data usage, and addressing privacy matters are imperative measures to take. Updating and executing data encryption methods, using SSL or HTTPS for example, will ensure secure data transmission. Archiving and recording methods should also be implemented in complying with company regulations, as well as increasing overall security.  BYOD systems can attain the same level of security (or even greater) as before implementation if optimal software services are put in place.

2. Support and System Administration

With multiple personal devices operating on company premises, support and system administration policies must be established. By instigating single-point administration, changes can be replicated smoothly across users within the enterprise. To reap the full benefits of your Unified Communications platform, it is essential to enhance support for administration as well as end users. So how can you do this? First, select a platform that allows easily accessible support, either by in-house IT staff or from your chosen support provider. It is also beneficial to define clear user roles to identify specific support and administration options that are available according to the user’s responsibilities and position.

3. Device Choice

When determining your device policies, of course you’ll have to determine which devices are allowed, which ones aren’t, and why. It is also helpful to get feedback from employees during this process. You can analyze employee preference by survey, asking such questions as “what devices do you already own?”, “are they compatible with baseline security/support features?” It is helpful to be familiar with the operating system, hardware and other specifications of the various devices and device types. In the future you may want to leverage this knowledge to lay the foundation for assessment of additional devices and technologies. Feedback from employees will also help keep your IT team up to date with changing devices as the consumer market changes.

4. Monitoring Usage

Whether your business adopts a formal BYOD plan, such as implementing a BYOD policy solely for senior-level executives, or creates a more informal plan which permits all employees to use personal devices, it is imperative to establish usage guidelines. One way you can do this is to develop a list of guidelines that establish binding agreements for employees to adhere to so that you protect and ensure the safety of sensitive corporate data. This way, if employees want to use their own devices, they will agree that the device, including their personal data, could be remotely wiped if it’s lost or stolen. It should also be clear that it is their responsibility to back up any personal information they don’t want lost in that eventuality. Appropriate termination polices should also be in place, acknowledging that all company information will be permanently deleted upon leaving the organization. It may also be beneficial to establish a mobility committee to create and monitor the success of policy goals.

How Unified Communications Can Help

Unified Communications (UC) can’t take the place of effective and well thought out BYOD guidelines, but it can help keep your company contacts and other data safe and secure when an employee’s device is lost or stolen. With the right UC app, your IT administrator can rest assured that traffic is secure and data loss is prevented with encrypted data en route to any endpoint. What’s more, Unified Communications will allow your company to provide a win-win for employee choice and corporate security. With the plethora of devices available - from iPhone to Blackberry to Android and more - you don’t want to try to support each individually when you can easily provide users all their desktop communications capabilities through a single approved UC app – on the device of their choice. This gives employees freedom of choice on their device and you the peace of mind and safety of managing a user and their network credentials the same way you’d manage their corporate issue desktop. One of the most sought-after features of the app is the added benefit of hiding a user’s mobile number when they make calls and displaying only their corporate phone number on caller ID devices – a single number identifies employees both internally and to your clients. Truly remote working.
With Unified Communications they’ll also benefit from added flexibility and mobility with the following:

• Corporate presence and IM
• Click to dial from mobile applications
• Availability of the UC app from the same app store they use on their personal device
• Access to corporate directory and resources on the go

While Unified Communications won’t solve all your concerns, it can help alleviate some of the primary security challenges related to BYOD. For more information on how NEC provides the same UC experience across multiple devices click here.

As an IT manager one of your major responsibilities is implementing and overseeing voice and unified communications (UC) project management. To help take some of the load off, we put together the following list of tips, best practices and a few helpful hints may be useful. Take a look:

Plan, Plan, Plan - Be sure to assess all needs, risks and benefits of your project before developing a plan. When it comes to IT project management, some companies have defined processes in place, while others rely on the skills of an integrator or service provider to implement a process for successful UC deployment. Regardless of your internal project management skills, it’s important to understand what your provider can offer and what role they will take on in the implementation process. The right provider can save you money and time as well as help to improve your system effectiveness. A skilled integrator can become a valued partner of your organization and help increase workforce efficiency. Also be sure to leverage the expertise of a dealer with prior experience in structuring, deploying and managing collaboration applications.

Know your Provider - Some good qualities to look for in a provider are domain expertise, sophisticated knowledge, and insight in collaboration space – these will lead to enhanced creativity and resourcefulness, as well as innovation and efficiency with your UC project implementation. There is a wide variety of applications available that can provide the best solutions for document sharing, instant messaging, audio conferencing, video streaming, and presence, so look for a provider with direct experience with these applications so you can capitalize on the effectiveness of your solution. The UC project management strategy that will likely provide the most benefit is one that offers a generous amount of flexibility and can easily and successfully adapt with the changing needs of your organization.

BYOD Capabilities - Know your mobile future. Make an effort to tailor your UC project management approach to accommodate the ongoing BYOD trend. Your strategy should be capable of taking on the unavoidable technical challenges created by the emergence of internet-enabled personal devices, including mobile smart phones and tablets. Research from Comscore states that in 2011, there were upwards of 400 varieties of smartphones alone available in the United States. Focus on securing your corporate data rather than trying to become an expert on every type of device that’s available.

Redundancy - The type of strategy you have in place in the event of emergency, or, worse, disaster can determine the safety of your data. Redundancy plays a key role in this strategy – you surely want to know how long service will be unavailable in the case of an unforeseen event Unified Communications can be a great way to strengthen your disaster recovery plans, so whether initiated by you or your provider, be sure your project management approach includes an adequate back-up and disaster recovery strategy. An effective plan will ensure continuity of operations and have the ability to protect mission-critical data from being destroyed. It is helpful to consider a plan with the capability of using the replicating method to back up data and move it to a separate location through a secure and bandwidth-efficient transfer. Don’t forget the unified communications requirements for remote sites and teleworkers. Since you won’t be able to predict their user’s requirements or their role in redundancy, keep these at the forefront of your mind when devising your project implementation plan.

We hope these tips provide an understanding of what it takes to successfully implement a UC project management strategy. We can’t say enough how important preparation is when it comes to your communications strategy, so as you move forward, get a clear idea of what your goals are and then determine how to best approach your Unified Communications application. Remember: your strategy is customized for you – what works well for one business may not be the best method for all.

Smart phones, tablets, laptops, regardless of the device, the Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD phenomenon, is on the rise in organizations everywhere – even yours. Check out this infographic and you’ll see that 60% of companies already have a BYOD policy in place. Official or unofficial, BYOD is likely already taking place within your organization, so how are you navigating the changes it brings? When it comes to IT needs, it is necessary to have the means to create a network of productive and responsive people who can respond at moment’s notice. Communication is certainly key in achieving this, and technology has evolved to make way for BYOD as a cost-efficient method to do so.

Many companies started finding it beneficial to allow employees to bring their own communication devices on premises to use for work purposes. With the right policy, BYOD empowers employees to get their job done the best way they see fit. It also aids in collaboration and can increase both revenue and productivity while efficiently bridging the end user generation gap.

Tying it all together: Unified Communication, Collaboration

Advances in technology have led to the ongoing innovation of powerful, consumer-level devices carried in the pockets of millions of people. Did you ever imagine that all the power of a workstation desktop would be available on a majority of today’s smart phones? This concept grabbed the attention of enterprise software developers early on and they have continued to capitalize on creating scalable communications and productivity software that spans multiple devices.

Most of your workforce is likely already walking around with their own computing device. From smartphones to laptops to tablets, many companies have found that in allowing the workforce to use devices with which they are already familiar, you can improve productivity and lower overall operating costs, resulting in additions to your top-line. In this A.T. Kearney report, 40 percent of respondents admit they use at least one personal IT device for business purposes. This same study cites that employees who can perform their duties using tools tailored to their needs, rather than tools designed to meet company-wide standards, have a more positive attitude, are more motivated and more efficient. In order for a BYOD strategy to be beneficial, communications must be paired with technology that is aligned with the needs of your workforce.

If you’re looking for ways to empower your end users to increase their productivity, check out the CIO.com webcast that we sponsored on the topic of BYOD and the new workforce. You’ll learn more about implementing strategies to build a secure, scalable, and cost efficient business that addresses the demand for BYOD and access to unified communications.

Infographic source

Unified Communications (UC) has enjoyed a steady, if not slow, broad acceptance as technology users begin to accept the efficiency and effectiveness of new market-driven apps. With employee mobility becoming a priority, an office for some does not include the traditional four walls, and as a result, smartphones and tablets have caused a rush for the door.

InformationWeek’s State of Unified Communications 2012 report by Michael Finneran surveyed more than 300 IT professionals, 67 percent of whom said they currently have deployed or are planning to deploy Unified Communications. 

Collaboration and efficiency were cited as the driving forces for the IT professionals’ decision to supply UC systems. To further support the growing partnership between UC and mobility, InformationWeek cites a survey in which 87 percent of 300 respondents claim to expect smartphone use to grow in the field of sales. In this same survey, only 8 percent reported plans to purchase desktops.

These reports come as no surprise, however, when all the benefits, offerings and advantages of both a laptop and desktop can now be found on your choice of a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile handheld device, and easily at that. The mobilization of communication has unleashed a genuine freedom in business communications, where users demand the same capabilities on smartphones and other handhelds as they utilize on desktops and laptops. With the increase in workforce mobility, these users’ demands are being met.

Reaching Into the Fold: Mobile Unified Communications

Mobile UC initially evolved from the concept of fixed/mobile convergence (FMC). FMC integrated mobile network services, and resulted in the voice market evolution into UC systems where voice is only one of several communication modes to be integrated. This methodology ultimately replaced FMC.

Despite all of the benefits, adoption of UC is still slow, and according to Information Week, it is due to a lack of user engagement-- to limited IT infrastructure-- to lack of enough funds to implement the adoption. The wait for the evolution of security and management is over, and with this evolution comes to the necessary improvements for these systems to flow into a natural, trusted cultural adoption. For unification within this media to truly occur, this evolution was absolutely necessary.

Now that budgets are finally easing and seeing some room to “bend,” it’s time to consider devoting time and energy to mixing mobile devices in the UC fold. If productivity is your goal, and expanded profit margins are your intended accomplishment, the only way to deliver the full benefit of your endeavor is to liberate your immediate users with mobile unified communication. The tables have turned; earlier efforts to mobilize UC failed to gain popularity, now mobilization is almost essential. Are you ready to make your move?

BYOD Part 2-Defining Devices

Now that we’ve identified users, let’s take a look at available devices and best application practices. It is critical to keep in mind the differences in the way each of these devices are used.

Laptops: Laptops can be relatively easy to incorporate, as they offer standardized network and Internet access. But are the benefits greater than the risks? Laptops are easy to turn off, and easy to detect on your network. In an educational setting, teachers can clearly monitor laptop usage and if you are designing access to your student portal, creating a website accessible by all operating systems and most browsers is a relatively simple task. On the risk side, however, laptops can be easy vectors for malware and viruses. If left unchecked, these viruses can spread throughout your school infrastructure and affect anyone who is connected.

Smart phones: While voice usage of phones is decreasing sharply among youth, data and text usage is rising – and fast. Take a look here to see how dramatically data services usage is increasing among teens and young adults. Have your schools faced this issue yet? If not, it is likely they will soon, how will you prepare for this?

Smart phones can be difficult to manage on campus due to the fact that there are so many different capabilities and operating systems associated with them. Designing an app for the Apple OS and Blackberry may make most of your staff happy, but what about the percentage who favor Android? Websites, even those designed for mobile devices, have also caused more issues than they resolve for even the most common devices.

Tablets: Similar to laptops, these multi-tasking devices allow for document management, communication and collaboration. Tablets can run a wide range of applications and software, whether it is for educational purposes, general productivity or for entertainment and personal use. Although similar to laptops, tablets tend to be more secure from a virus and malware standpoint, and less useful for writing and collaboration without accessories such as a keyboard. Tablets are associated with a more narrow set of operating systems (e.g., Apple OS or Android), but with Microsoft’s foray into the arena in 2012, and various other vendors such as HP and RIM continuing to fine-tune their own offerings, this may not be the case for much longer.

So where will you go from here? You can see that there’s a lot to consider before moving ahead, and as is the case with most major projects, the more preparation and greater understanding of adapting to your user needs, the better your chances at successful implementation.

BYOD Part 1-Defining Users

Do you manage IT for an elementary school district, or a college or university? If so, you are undoubtedly seeing more frequent use of personal devices. There is business value in this rapidly growing practice of users wanting to gain access to your network using their device of choice – are you prepared?

When contemplating a solution set or policy switch to a personal device such as a tablet or smartphone, there are some key things to remember. Before you make a decision on what infrastructure to invest in, first look deeper at your users, the devices and available solutions, and then weigh both the benefits and obstacles you will encounter. Keep in mind that each user will require different access, use different devices, and generate their own sets of issues and benefits.

We’ve divided these users into three categories, let’s take a look:

Students: This group will be more invested in new technologies and less willing to use second-rate or “borrowed” tech in the classroom. They also have a deeper desire to be connected and collaborate electronically. The user set within this group varies greatly; for example, middle school students require different solutions and access than high school students. In a university or college setting, graduate students may have different tools available to them than their undergraduate counterparts.

Teachers: Teachers are bringing their own devices into the classroom, and not just for personal use. Tablet and smartphone use to run presentations and manage in-class participation are practically required by some schools. This trend is likely to grow, and determining your teachers’ needs and capabilities is paramount to a successful implementation.

The good news here is that teachers using their own devices can not only save your institution money, but can enhance the educational process for your students. Advanced presentation styles, greater sense of ownership, and “always-on” connectivity with students can help your teachers make a profound connection with their learning community.

Staff: Your administrative staff can be the most vocal and have the most to gain in accessing school systems through personal devices. Allowing access to student data records, attendance charts, personnel forms and other information needed on an ad hoc basis can increase productivity and efficiency tremendously, which can result in less training and more usage with reduced capital investment.

Remember to also include your maintenance and other support teams in this category. Rather than supplying cell phones and paying for usage, why not allow staff to use their own cell phones, or even connect seamlessly with Wi-Fi to your internal PBX, thus saving you mobile charges altogether.

Each of the user types in your environment are unique and should be treated as such. Identifying who will be granted access to your network, and the scope of that access before you make deployment decisions is critical in preventing unnecessary network tampering and security risks. Now that we’ve identified users, the next post will take a look at available devices and best application practices.