Today, harmon.ie, the user experience company for the mobile enterprise, forever changes the way people use their mobile devices to do work.  That’s because the hundreds of millions of iOS, Android and BlackBerry mobile device users have no way to effectively use Office 365 and SharePoint. This was corroborated by none other than former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in a recent interview on CNBC.

“With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated, they can’t type, they can’t create documents. They don’t have Office there.”

While Microsoft hopes that iPad enthusiasts will move to Windows tablets and smart phones, industry analysts say otherwise. Analysts at the recent Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit stated that “by 2015, over 80% of the handsets sold in mature markets will be smartphones, and only 20% of those handsets are likely to be Windows phones.”

Today, all of this changes. Because today, harmon.ie 4.0 offers workers, for the first time, a native app which bundles Office Web Apps to edit, collaborate and share documents with colleagues on iPads and other mobile devices. With the advent of harmon.ie 4.0, workers now have a consistent, unified user experience of Office Web Apps, SharePoint, Yammer and SkyDrive Pro, in all the places people want to work – mobile devices, the desktop and the cloud.

harmon.ie customers agree. Companies who have been reaping the benefits of harmon.ie, weigh in on the significance of the 4.0 release.

“A number of years ago, we embarked on a five-year plan to save the taxpayers of the State of Missouri $512M by reducing headcount, facilities and equipment, and putting the savings into our transportation system.” said Michael Miller, assistant director of Information Systems for the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). “In order to increase our productivity in our new environment, we’ve used harmon.ie together with SharePoint, and they have been critical success factors in helping us to reach our goals. As we move to expand collaboration with our external partners and contractors, we are excited about the new capabilities available in harmon.ie 4.0 to reach mobile users in our extended enterprise.”

“harmon.ie is a critical part of our successful SharePoint implementation at Library and Archives Canada and support the complex task of integrating email into our records management solution,” said Ronald Surette, director of General Innovation and CIO, Library and Archives Canada. “We are looking forward the new features found in the new 4.0 version.”

What’s New in harmon.ie 4.0
harmon.ie 4.0 provides the following key Office 365 capabilities:
• The only native app experience for Office 365 on all popular mobile platforms, including iOS, BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 and Android (available in Q3’13).
• Enterprise document security on mobile devices, including support for data-less mobile devices with Office Web Apps and documents residing on the cloud without compromising the device, as well as secure offline support for BlackBerry 10 out of the box.
• A social Yammer experience integrated into Outlook and Outlook Web Apps 2013. Now users can micro-blog using Yammer in the email window, hold group conversations, preview documents, and @mention colleagues to get them into the discussion – from the same window where people spend much of their work time.
• Support for new Office 365 features, including SkyDrive Pro and document preview inside Outlook. With SkyDrive Pro, you can make SharePoint content available offline and selectively share documents with partners who don’t have access to your SharePoint services. Document preview allows you to quickly browse SharePoint documents without having to download each of them to your device.

We are at a crossroads in the mobile enterprise. We have tasted the freedom of mobile access, but we can’t really do much work on these devices,” said Yaacov Cohen, CEO of harmon.ie. “Workers need to type, create and edit Office documents across desktops and mobile devices to turn the dream of being productive on a mobile device into a reality. Now, ‘Bring Your Own Device’ has become ‘Use Your Own Device’ that delivers a tangible ROI for organizations.”
 
Availability and Pricing

harmon.ie 4.0 is available immediately and is sold on a subscription basis. Pricing starts at $4 per user per month.