BYOD: This Phone Will Self-Destruct In Five Seconds

Has anyone seen Coke Zero’s latest marketing campaign for the imminent release of James Bond’s Skyfall? If you haven’t – go ahead, I’ll wait here for you.

Done? Great. Why am I bringing this up? Well – despite the fact that I’m a self-confessed advertising geek – it lends itself well to analogising what’s going on in the corporate sphere regarding IT consumerisation, and more specifically, BYOD. Clinging at straws here?

Perhaps. But for many CIOs and Heads of IT, BYOD has become a mission-critical challenge (and no, I don’t mean like ‘that one’ with Miss Moneypenny). So while in reading this piece on COPE (Corporate Owned, personally Enabled), you could be swayed to take the less risker route towards enterprise mobility – but you’re only making life harder in the long run. And would you really want to end up having this guy as a solution provider?

All jokes aside, we know smartphones and tablets are in. Security is paramount. The number of in-field operatives working in the corporate sphere is growing exponentially. Today’s technological jungle is serving up a breed of CIOs that will need to become more ‘Q’ like in their approaches (to carry on the Bond analogy), and offering COPE strategies is too short-term to compete with the evolving pace of consumer smart-tech land. Oh, and isn’t the point here to be getting employees onto one device?

Over on MeetTheBossTV this week, Jim Sheward, CEO, Co-Founder and Director of Fiberlink, leveraged the idea that not only is BYOD one of the most important tasks for enterprise mobility, “…but it’s also the biggest challenge. It’s a radical change from how IT has traditionally operated.

“New phones and tablets are literally being announced and delivered on a monthly basis by the major providers. What are the systems, processes and platforms that an organisation can take advantage of to allow BYOD to take place – to get cost savings but also to have proper controls in place?”

The most obvious solution, as Sheward cites, is delivering BYOD solutions through the cloud. By offering “zero day availability” – the freedom to create and implement device policies controlled by the enterprise as soon as a new device enters the marketplace (and inevitably the hands of employees) – those in control stay, well, in control.

At this point, opponents of the alleged ‘cloud-panacea crew’ will argue that you’re merely replacing the BYOD security risk with its cloudy counterpart. A valid perspective, but one that slightly misses the point. Sure, you have different security elements to worry about, but that transition enables you to focus solely on aspects of cloud security, alleviating pressure on your BYOD strategy.

“Companies aren’t really there to build data centres,” explains Sheward. “Most come to the realisation that over time, they’re going to move some or all of their applications into the cloud. The pace of change is so fast in this ecosystem.

“For instance, over the last year, roughly every other week there is a major upgrade to an operating system. That means you need to do those upgrades every other week, typically over the weekend. If you’re [in the cloud] with your BYOD, you never have to run an upgrade because that happens automatically inside the cloud, and gets pushed to your users and platform without any changes required at the IT level.

“That is a significant difference and as the pace of change continues to accelerate, we think the cloud will become more apparent as the only way to go.”

All your sales people are out in the field. They’re not inside HQ, they’re not connected to the network and they’re talking to customers. Internet access is much more available to them than their corporate LAN.

What’s easier (and more importantly, more productive) for them than being able to move data between their device and the cloud? Certainly not trying to get back into their corporate network to get the latest pricing, contact or product information – essential tools for any sales person worth their phone bill. It’s here that applications bring their own keg to the party.

Naturally, you’re going to want control over access points and authorisation. Not a problem. Companies like Fiberlink are pushing the boundaries of offering holistic, 360-degree perspectives of an enterprise’s entire device architecture – security, status and compliance all sit neatly within your corporate applications. Of course, this will depend on your solution provider. But it’s more than merely choosing a solution provider. It’s about choosing which direction you want to take your enterprise mobility in.

Can your devices authenticate back into the network? Are they accessing other types of data? Have they been authorised by their owners? All of these questions should be brought up – and are increasingly being answered through layers of security that start at the application, end with the enterprise…and all travel through the cloud.

There’s no denying that every employee’s device is an untapped catalyst for productivity, so how should CIOs look at BYOD? Simple: Bring Your Own Direction. Look beyond the short-term challenges and into the long-term benefits. Because when you do, so will your enterprise – and they won’t end up having to COPE.

Follow Nick online @NPAPryke and MeetTheBoss @MeetTheBossTV

BYOD: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Follow Nick online @NPAPryke and MeetTheBoss @MeetTheBossTV

Author: Nick Pryke