Android M & Android for Work: getting there!

I attended a webinar this morning, thanks #IBM #MaaS360 for doing it!, to learn about Android M - I was too busy last week to check into Google IO.

You will find lots of review on the Internet, so I am not going to take my cut on this. But I want to highlight a feature called "Enterprise Contacts Integration". I think it is the next step towards the right solution in a world where the end user owns the end point (usually called BYOD, although I think that whoever owns the device, the end user wants both personal and work experience on it - this is another story).

I praised Google when Android for Work was launched! Finally a native container solution at the OS level that allows a third party to control that container, but not the whole device, so that privacy is protected. I highlighted two issues. 1) there is only one 3rd party container ("work"), why restrict to one? 2) although separation of personal and enterprise solves the data leakage risks issue from an enterprise standpoint, it is far from ideal from a user experience, for Apps such as calendar of contacts. Ideally, I want a single unified view that displays all containers data (yet keep them managed separately, isolated and/or subject to different policies). I do not want to have a personal calendar view and a work calendar view separated. I want the data to be separated, but the view to be unique. I draw a small picture on that a little while ago, see below.



From what I understand, this is what Android M solves for Contacts. And this is cool! Next step is the proper SDK for developers to build Apps that provide single view of data from separate containers.

Let me know what think!