It’s funny how things evolve so quickly. Just a few years ago, the thought of employees using their own phones or laptops for work at work was unthinkable.
But as the consumerization of IT trend grows from a trickle to a flood, many organizations have no choice but consider how to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program. And the experience at Softchoice was no different.
Let’s start with the obvious.
There is no silver bullet, one-size-fits-all checklist for creating the perfect Bring Your Own Device strategy. Every organization is completely different.
But it’s not as bad as it sounds. Many of the technologies necessary to support a strategy are probably already in your ecosystem. It’s just a matter of knowing what’s missing, and how to leverage what you’ve already got.
To give you a hand, we’ve assembled seven tools and technologies that make planning and executing your BYOD strategy a reality.
While BYOD (bring-your-own-device) seems to be a major concern of IT administrators today, BYOA – or bring-your-own-application – is becoming increasingly as significant. Using third-party applications and cloud services in the workplace brings about a host of control, security and productivity considerations. And just like BYOD, BYOA is real. According to a recent Fortinet study of over 3,800 active employees in their twenties, 69 percent indicated that they were interested in creating and using their own applications, while 30 percent admitted they would likely contravene any restrictive company policies.
In this next BYOD Behind the Scenes expedition, I took a look at industry trends and conducted a poll of Softchoice employees to compile our top 3 applications to bring to work! Share this list to with your users and ensure they’re getting the most out of their chosen devices and can make the safest, most productive decisions for your company.
The way people work is changing dramatically. Everyone is bringing their personal devices into the office, which has led to the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend.
A recent Infotech Indaba survey found that the use of personal and unmanaged devices and applications within businesses is at an all time high. “The consumerization of IT is happening within businesses despite those businesses not necessarily being ready for it,” says the report. “Beyond simply accepting the presence of consumer devices, businesses should establish a base level, proactive and open approach to their use.”
In the survey, 82% of IT decision makers ranked security as a barrier to accepting personal and unmanaged devices into the business, followed by managing those devices at 66%.
With the unabated growth of consumerization, Gartner Research recently stated that “mobile device management (MDM) is essential for IT success”. However, with so many options – which is best? There are several new companies in this space offering great solutions. Security vendors are expanding their offerings and you have major platform or systems management vendors adding ways to manage a variety of mobile devices.
Our own Director of Security Solutions Stephen Perciballi and Manager of Microsoft Solutions Architecture Tim McKellips recently sat down with the Softchoice Advisor to discuss the challenges and implications involved with managing this environment.
Softchoice Advisor: What is your overall opinion on pure-play versus platform mobile device management?
This article originally appeared on Stephen’s personal blog. You can visit it here.
Right now there are several types of Mobile Device Management solutions. They all have their place when you consider security and total cost of ownership. Some of them are going to be much more secure giving more piece of mind. Others are going to integrate into or leverage existing systems giving you piece of mind that you are not standing up an entirely new environment that also needs to be managed and secured.
We will be focused on MDM solutions that manage Android, Apple iOS, and Windows Mobile. Blackberry is very well known for having one of the most secure solutions already. Until a few years ago they were pretty much the only game in town when it came to phones carrying sensitive data so I’m sure they have been under heavy attack. Very few issues have been published about the Blackberry solution and it’s not because it wasn’t a target.
Generally every solution out there is going to allow you to push email, calendar, contacts. You will also be able to configure other features on the device such as wifi and VPN profiles. From a security perspective you are able to force passwords on and enforce complexity. Finally you can wipe out the work email, calendar, and contacts that you push along with any other settings like VPN and wifi. Or you could decide to simply wipe the entire device. These are the main benefits of having an MDM. Without these abilities I.T. is going to be tasked with managing and supporting all of these devices which would be extremely time consuming.
Regardless of which solution you choose there is still some inherent risk today unless you use this solution in conjunction with something else.
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