Apple Event Recap: Delivering Managed Mobile Productivity on the iPad Pro

First published on CloudBlogs on Sep 10, 2015
I am sure that many of you watched Apple’s announcements yesterday; they are certainly delivering a tremendous amount of innovation across all their devices. Apple’s announcement of the iPad Pro is the first iPad squarely targeted at business users, and, perhaps not coincidentally, it does look a lot like a Surface . A lot of people were really surprised to see my friend Kirk Koenigsbauer walk on stage and demo Office on the new iPad Pro. I really encourage you to watch his portion of the event (he shows up around 33:30).  You can read more about the enhancements Kirk demoed in this blog from the Office team . During his demo there were a couple of things that really caught my attention about the importance of deep management of the Office apps on this new device. First , the user experience seen in Kirk demo’s is, quite simply, stunning and beautiful. Second , there were a number of enhancements that were demoed and announced for Office running on the iPad Pro:

1. Multi-tasking on the iPad You can Slide Over and Split View enabling you to quickly switch between the Office apps, quickly use a second app, run two apps side-by-side, or open attachments directly from Outlook in Split View.
2. Inking With the new iPad Pro, we’ve added inking to the Office mobile apps and made it easy to mark-up documents and collaborate with others. The new inking tools include pens, highlighters, an easy-to-use thickness control, and a new color wheel.
3. Intelligent Search iPhone and iPad search results will now include OneNote content and Outlook messages. The searchable OneNote content can be typed, handwritten, or scanned, and the search will even return Outlook messages protected with Rights Management.
4. Wireless Keyboard Support Keyboard shortcuts on the iPad can be a big time-saver, but they’re not always easy to remember. Now, simply tapping on the Command key brings up in-app reminders: Start a new e-mail in Outlook with ⌘n, and move between e-mail, calendar, and files with ⌘1, ⌘2, and ⌘3.

Third , with this being a device that is targeted for use at work, organizations will need to have the rich and deep management capabilities that the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) adds to the Office mobile apps. EMS has unique management capabilities for the Office mobile apps , including the Office mobile apps running on the new iPad Pro. These unique capabilities are all centered around helping to separate the corporate apps and data from personal apps and data on the iPad Pro and ensuring the device meets the criteria you define before corporate e-mail and files are sent to the device . The combination of Office 2013 or Office 365 + EMS delivers the managed and secure mobility productivity and the identity -center security you will want to implement on these devices – as well as all your iOS, Android, and Windows devices. These Data Leakage Protection (DLP), Information Protection, and Identity management capabilities are unique to EMS and the Office mobile apps. And this can now all be applied to Office on the new iPad Pro!