Embrace BYOD in Your Company

Ten to fifteen years ago, the notion of “self service IT” was a concept feared by IT managers. Considering the challenges related to supporting a growing group of users, IT teams ensured control and standardization in their respective environments. In the ideal scenario for IT teams, only a small group of influential users could deviate from their options of hardware and software.

TEXT HANS HOOFT

The concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a challenge for the traditional IT way of thinking in which the “machine” plays a pivotal role. Initially, it started as a financial discussion, in which companies considered whether they could remove the corporate computers from the balance sheet by making the users the owners of the computers by means of financial benefits. It was, however, the rise of the long-awaited user-centered apparatus like tablets, smartphones and ultrabooks that catapulted BYOD from a conceptual item to an inevitable force with which IT teams would have to learn to live.

While BYOD appears to be rather a new concept, Forrester Research estimates that more than half of all employees (53%) already use their own technologies for work purposes. What’s remarkable is that BYOD often begins in the boardrooms. Forrester Research estimates that no less than 77% of the senior staff buys their own hardware. Ignoring BYOD can therefore be more dangerous than most user-driven technological trends.

AppSense, a major player in the field of virtualisation, thinks that a shift to a people-driven approach is the key to softening the additional risks and complexities BYOD entails. Because of the shift of the management and policy focus from apparatus to users, IT teams can prepare themselves with a man-centered strategy for a working environment that has considerably less standardisation and control of machines, without affecting efficiency and security. As soon as user experience, data and access to applications can be managed on the apparatus, more options will emerge to support BYOD users. For many companies, this will start with, for instance, the furnishing of remote desktops or the delivery of applications to unknown apparatuses, and there are sufficient practical cases that have proved this works. However, AppSense thinks that the real answer to this challenge is to create a unique user experience on a device of choice, without affecting visibility and control.

Context conscious
Even if employees move a part of their activities to non-traditional operating systems like iOS or Android, most of them will still revert to Windows. By means of virtualisation and the BYOD principle, it will happen more and more often that a user has access to a Windows environment on various devices. Therefore, a good practice for IT teams is to dynamically adapt the experiences with Windows on the basis of the user’s context, for instance, by optimalisation for touch when a remote connection is made with a tablet. But other options are security-aimed measures, like the limitation of administrative rights.

The possibility to dynamically personalise and adapt a desktop based on context provides an IT team with an important countermeasure against the loss of standardisation. Reducing the complexity of arranged matters frees time so IT teams can focus on new BYOD challenges.

Employee pressure
Where BYOD is concerned, the company’s employees cause the biggest pressure. This all started with the rise of the smartphone and increased considerably when it became clear that it offered more possibilities than just synchronising itineraries and contact persons. It really ran out of control with the advent of three developments in the market:
• the introduction of tablets
• the revival of Apple products
• the launch of Ultrabooks™ by Intel

Invasion of tablets
The huge success of the iPad was a big surprise for the electronics world. When in 2012, the 3rd generation iPad was launched, Apple announced that it had already sold over 55 million of this apparatus. The introduction of tablets has given the IT departments in companies completely new tasks, because often, tablets are adapted to the user’s wishes but can still be used on the shop floor. Many users, mainly in executive positions, want to be able to access corporate data with their tablet. Meanwhile, the IT department has to hurry to overcome the problems related to the efficiency and consequences of these apparatus to the company network, because basically, these tablets and other apparatus were not designed to be used in a corporate network. The huge increase in the use of tablets, combined with the fact that it is driven by the demands and preferences of the users, makes this new aspect of BYOD an inevitable challenge for IT teams.

The Mac is back
In the mid-nineties, Apple was on the verge of collapse. But then Apple had a remarkable revival, and eventually took up a position as one of the world’s most valuable companies. While the whole world was enjoying the iPod, iPad and iPhone, Apple quietly kept working on the development of the Mac. After the introduction of the OS X operating system, more and more technical professionals outside of the graphics sector started using Apple products. There are two additional factors that have proved to be extremely beneficial to Apple: the positive user experience with the iPhone and iPad caused the customer to consider the purchase of a Mac, and the trendy, modern and hip design of the MacBook Air attracted the attention of employees who do a lot of traveling.

Rise of the Ultrabook
The success of the MacBook Air was the reason for the development of the Ultrabook™, an Intel initiative and brand name. The chip manufacturer supplied a standardised framework for small notebooks, also known as Netbooks. Next, almost every producer of hardware boarded this train, big names like HP, Dell and Lenovo, but also (at the time) smaller companies like Samsung and Sony. In spite of the Apple revival, the majority of employees still used Windows machinery. But research showed that amongst these users, there is a growing need for something else, something new.

Abolish standardisation
To an IT department, standardisation is sacrosanct. One of the strategies used, mainly in the beginning, was the limitation of the number of computers in a company. This, they suggested, made a difference in repairs, maintenance and spare parts. After that, the focus shifted to standardisation of software. Many companies used a so-called “golden image” of an operating system. In theory, this was a good idea because this reduces the costs considerably. In practice, however, this caused more trouble because all computers had to be formatted first and afterwards the new image had to be installed.

Because BYOD is based on various apparatuses on which working is possible, the entire standardisation concept can be abolished. For an IT department, it is an extremely difficult job to manage all equipment (PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and so on). Of course it is possible, but a company has to take into account that this entails additional costs, for instance, staff and extra apparatuses.

New approach
In spite of the fact that the whole BYOD concept is still rather new, it is imperative for IT teams in companies to heed this development. If they do not, then employees will take matters into their own hands, which will not be conducive to productivity. Nowadays, there is ample hardware and software available to adequately manage this development.