Google has finally succeeded in their big effort of making Android useful for corporates and professionals. It has introduced Android For Work, a platform on the user's form which gives the Android ecosystem a split personality, i.e. A profile for personal use, and a more secure, isolated profile for corporate use.
Several features are as follows:
- Enhanced security and management tools. It will use Android's default encryption service, the enhanced SELinux security enforcement. The employer will be able to manage the work-related data but the personal data of an employee is not accessible.
- A special app named 'Android For Work' for managing businesses will provide secure mail, calendar, documents, browsing etc.
- There will be a suite of business apps supporting Exchange and other capabilities such as creating and editing presentations, documents, spreadsheets and so on.
- Google Play for Work allows businesses to securely deploy and manage apps across all users running Android for Work, simplifying the process of distributing apps to employees and ensuring that IT approves every deployed app.
A similar feature was introduced by Samsung last year called 'Samsung Knox'. Not much amount of development has been happening on it. Google is certainly providing a major feature here.