BYOD – Bring Your Own Device as a term has become popular because of mobile device proliferation like tablets and smartphones, complimenting technologies like VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and work from home.
Its all about how we deal with it, there should be an appropriate balance between productivity gain on one hand, security risks and support costs on the other.
Think, it is like allowing students to bring their own devices to school.
BYOD = Bring Your Own Distraction and comes with MBTY (Mine is Better than Yours) syndrome and needs MDM (Mobile device Management) to be implemented.
BYOD makes sense, only if VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is implemented or custom apps are developed for various mobile platforms as part of BYOD strategy and enterprise mobility in order to secure corporate data and meet compliance
Tablets and smartphones enable top management and personal of a company on the field access, mails, data, reports, approvals to take quick business decisions. It does not help heavy duty workforce.
Ever heard of developing an app for a tablet on another tablet or preparing a proposal for a customer on a mobile ? Though technically possible its just time wasting.
And in corporate world Time = Money
Implementing BYOD also asks for multiple expensive technology upgrades in datacentres, app development, network, security and management of devices and appliances.
The main reason to embrace BYOD is to help reduce corporate expenses. But most of the time companies fully reimburse the price of the device and related service, making BYOD more expensive in long run.
Companies can incur wasted bandwidth costs, with at least 30 to 50 % consumed by personal apps needless to mention massive amounts of data consumed by auto application and game updates.
Facilities department need to provision PowerPoint's, upgrade UPS to charge all those personal devices and pay for the increased power consumption, as all these mobile devices are not complete replacement for desktops and laptops at least in todays world.
Security department will have tough time identifying personal devices and corporate devices.
BYOD places new burdens on IT as it tries to deal with an infinite variety of platforms and profiles. Though in theory BYOD allows end user to bring in his/her choice of device on to corporate network, in practice companies release a set of devices from which employee
has to choose one or more. Basically this is to reduce support costs.
This has made many companies to be with or think of COPE - Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled
BYOD - lets corporate data reside on employees Personal Devices opening doors to many security risks and increased support costs.
COPE - allows employee personal data on Corporate Devices - Its just a new term for what many of us already do :) . It also allows corporates enjoy bulk discounts making CFOs happy.
Technically BYOD is a great concept, but as with any technology, productivity gains along with ROI (Return On Investment) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) decides the fate of it in any company.
To some extent many companies already implemented both BYOD and COPE. They have provision to allow mails, and other messaging services to be accessed on Employee personal mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Users install cloud sync tools like Box, SkyDrive, Google drive, Dropbox and others to sync official data to cloud and access them on their personal devices, though with certain restrictions. To some extent they allow personal devices to be connected to office network. Few users with certain privileges may also copy data onto their personal external USB Disks and copy office data onto NAS or personal computer on home network. Users connect their mobile devices and install related software on company provided systems. Few even install software of their own interest, download what they like. They also store their personal data like documents, photos, videos and music on office systems, access internet to check personal mails, visit social networks.
I personally feel, it is Good to take benefits and implement best of BYOD and COPE worlds, bring in suitable corporate policies for both.
What do you think ?
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From cloudtweaks.com
Disclaimer: Just to make sure things are clear, this is a personal blog and opinions, thoughts, plans, intentions and strategies expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of people or any other organization with whom I had worked or working or would work with. As any human being, various thoughts keep running in my head and my opinions vary from time to time solely based on developments and experiences over the period of time, and any such thoughts and opinions published here might change in future. You are free to use comment section below to express if I sound stupid to you, however please note that all comments are moderated. Thank you for your time.
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