The last few months have been all about the Android Lollipop, its launch and Google’s plans of upgrading existing versions. Not much has been discussed about the Android Work initiative or progress on that front. Both Google and its mobility management partners have been surprisingly quiet and we have not been able to get any information. But it would appear that Google has not been slack and has managed to do a lot of work on this during this period. The very fact that it is now talking of beta trials for Android Work indicates lot of progress. There are links for signups to these beta trials now and that is encouraging news.

What Is Android Work?

It is the name of the many new EMM features that are making their debut with the Android Lollipop. For some years now, MDM APIs within Android have not been very sophisticated, which has compelled device makers to provide APIs of their own and this has led to the fragmentation problem that Google is trying to solve. Google has been trying to solve the fragmentation issue through its Android One launch as well as by launching the Android Lollipop. But the Android One experiment has not taken off to the extent Google expected and with the Lollipop still struggling in its early days to make an impact, Google needs to do more. To be fair, it has been trying and one move was the acquisition of Divide that makes mobile management solutions. It supplemented this by announcing Samsung would also be contributing a portion of its much vaunted Knox OS mobile management capabilities to the Android OS. Samsung would be contributing the total work as well as the separation part of personal data of the Knox and that is quite significant for Google.

Google To Come Out With Newer Features

Google has not made any new announcements of late but has been working behind the scenes on the Android Work to equip it with more features. At this point, it is not clear if the Android Work on the Lollipop platform would come as an AOSP update or if it would feature under the Google Mobile Services. If the latter is true, then those devices that are not certified by Google will not be able to get the Android Work features. The Android Work is actually intended for devices that have Android versions 4.0 and above. The workspace application which has its basis on Divide is similar to many of the common mobile management solutions. The difference though comes in the “Standard APIs,” as this one is not proprietary to any EMM vendor and therefore less susceptible to fragmentation. This workspace app will also have to deal with how it will interact with the many third party applications. If the interaction is open ended, then the user benefits and there would be lesser complications created due to those apps.