DEVELOPERS BLOG

Good Access and Good Work for Mac and Windows Operating Systems

gdn_homepageGood Access app showing the Good community home page

Blog Post Written By: Sriram Krishnan

A couple weeks ago we extended the Good Work experience to the Windows and OS X platforms thereby offering a credible and effective alternative to the VPN and VDI technologies that exist today. As much as it’s a market expansion, it is the innovative path that we are super excited about.

First let me describe the essence of Good Work experience for Windows and OS X. We term this release as a minimum viable product (MVP) release. We have taken a multiphase approach and this first phase is targeted towards temporary or contract workers at a company. It delivers basic email, calendar and contacts functionality securely to a user’s laptop. Follow up releases will support more advanced messaging and collaboration capabilities that allow IT to completely displace legacy access technologies and help Enterprise IT to consolidate their EMM infrastructure. This results in a true single control pane for management with control of all popular end points.

The path breaking innovation I referred to earlier has been made possible by Good Dynamics and Good Access. Good Access secure browser has been built on top of the Good Dynamics platform leveraging Chromium libraries. A fundamental aspect of our support for Windows and OS X is that it has been delivered as an extension to the Good Access secure browser. The initial release of Good Access for Windows and OS X was in December 2015. This powerful combination of Good Dynamics and Chromium libraries has allowed us to deliver a Good Work experience in the form of a browser extension with rich secure offline storage capabilities. For the end user it is a modern app experience delivered utilizing a next gen HTML5 based technology. Good Access for Windows and OS X was built with this express vision and purpose, which is why we have been positioning Good Access as a Secure Browser platform.

Being a HTML5 app, Good Work delivers an identical experience across both Windows and OS X. Our overarching goal is to expose this framework as a Good Dynamics platform capability so that developers can also write their own HTML5 based applications which can help the line of business (LOB) to rapidly developed mobile first business work flows across all platforms.

The activation model for Good Work for Windows and OS X is akin to other OS’s we support i.e. iOS and Android. A subtle difference though is that the software for end users needs to be downloaded from www.good.com/enduser . The existing Good Access and Good Control policy frameworks can be leveraged for administration and management purposes. Remember this fits the bring your own device (BYOD) scenario perfectly. The administrator is only managing the app on the laptop, not the device itself.

On iOS and Android, we have used a combination of Exchange Web Services and Exchange Active Sync to access the Microsoft Exchange infrastructure. On Good Work for Windows and OS X we utilize Exchange Web Services 100%.

We pioneered the container based approach for iOS and Android platforms. We believe that Good Work for Windows and OS X is an industry leading and industry first approach, which offers an alternative to VPN and VDI technologies that can allow enterprise IT to extend the bring your own (BYO) model to Windows and OS X. We strongly encourage our customers to start a Good Work for Windows and OS X pilot and become part of the next wave of BYO revolution.

To download the applications, you can choose to download Good Work and Good Access as a package or Good Access on its own. Remember Good Work for OS X and Windows is built using Good Access so it is required as part of the install:

Good Work for Mac OS X 1.0 with Good Access (required)
App Download (Good End User Portal)

Good Work for Windows 1.0 with Good Access (required)
App Download (Good End User Portal)

Good Access for Mac OS X
App Download (Good End User Portal)

Good Access for Windows
App Download (Good End User Portal)

BlackBerry

About BlackBerry

BlackBerry is an enterprise software and services company focused on securing and managing IoT endpoints.