Whispercast for Kindle Brings Organization to Bulk App Distribution

Whispercast for Kindle has been operating since last fall, and gives organizations a little extra help in terms of bringing Kindles into play for the large-scale user. Amazon is stepping up Whispercast's capabilities to encompass bulk app distribution, turning the Kindle into, surprisingly enough, a potent business tool.

Whispercast was formerly used as a way to manage Kindles from one central location. It had a variety of sound features, like the distribution of books across Kindles, the ability to regulate Internet access staged from the devices, the ability to share documents and still allow for certain levels of personalization. But at the same time, while this was great in some situations—especially academic circles like schools—the impact for other environments was comparatively low.

But with Whispercast's newest upgrade, allowing users to buy apps in bulk and distribute them easily throughout a central point, the Kindle—and by extension the Kindle Fire—may have a whole new use in the business field. Thanks to Whispercast's new capability with apps, finding those Android, and Kindle-specific, apps that have a specific utility in the field can be found and brought into play much rapidly than before. An enterprise can outfit Kindle Fire tablets with e-mail apps and conferencing tools, and all those impressive little slices of productivity can be rapidly put in place, ready for the employees to start producing with them.

Better yet, for offices that would rather institute a bring your own device philosophy, as an increasing number of offices are doing, those users who already have Kindle Fires can use their devices, and the organization can use Whispercast to let those users “opt-in” to receive apps gifted to a personal Amazon account.

The Kindle Fire has already drawn a lot of attention for its high functionality and its low cost. But with the augmentation of Whispercast to handle apps, the result is a newer, larger functionality. It's still every bit as valuable to educational institutions, but now it's got an enterprise edge thanks to its overall capability as a tablet. It's not hard to see businesses loading up on Kindle Fires rather than iPads, and then using these Kindle Fires like a fleet of low-cost Android devices.

Whether or not the augmented Whispercast will result to the widespread use of Kindle Fires in business settings remains to be seen, but the viability of such a concept has never been so substantial thanks to the changes made. The sheer versatility of such an arrangement means that there are plenty of great ways to use it, and may well have some IT departments thinking twice about the device of choice to bring into the office.