Go on, buy your workers a smartphone. You know it makes sense

A matter of choice

Led from the top

CYOD promises a choice of approved devices without the security and standardisation challenges of BYOD, but the benefits outweigh the pitfalls only if the demand is truly there.

BYOD was never planned by IT departments, arriving instead as a natural response to the inexorable rise of smart devices and their enormous popularity at home and in business.

“Such habits work their way down an organisation like streams, overcoming obstacles via workarounds"

Often the demand for richer consumer experiences came from the top. Much of the initial disruption attributed to BYOD arguably came as a result of senior executives with early generation iPads who just went ahead and connected them to their corporate networks, regardless of the security implications.

“Such habits work their way down an organisation like streams, overcoming obstacles via workarounds as they flow to all levels of a business," says John.

"The pressure is on to provide a consumer experience in business. CYOD can dam this flow and provide safer, well-managed routes for everyone."

The push from BYOD towards CYOD is mostly driven by procurement rather than by IT or employees. IT steps in when application access comes into play, and there has been a move away from proscriptive access to controlled applications that are tested and manageable.

The nature of each individual business also has a bearing: a global team of remote business analysts has more interest than a cubicle-bound rep in using consumer devices seamlessly wherever they are.

Healthy option

CYOD is more common for smart mobile devices than full operating system devices. Laptop schemes exist – Apple, Lenovo and HP are all ready to support enterprise mobility – but users are more likely to consume information on chosen devices than create it.

They are also more self-supporting on smart devices. And because businesses need to configure and support laptops and full enterprise applications, people on all sides are generally content with a Mac or Windows machine running standard operating environments and ordered conventionally.

It is CYOD with smart devices that is attracting marked uptake. An independent study of IT decision makers commissioned by Azzurri Communications revealed that CYOD has grown at twice the rate of BYOD (12 per cent versus six per cent), with 31 per cent of organisations now running company-wide CYOD (against 17 per cent BYOD).

Organisations overwhelmingly cited CYOD as more suitable, with 60 per cent opting for it as most appropriate for their business and just 13 per cent favouring BYOD.

Accountable public-sector budgets are a hot market for BYOD. Azzurri helped implement a BYOD/CYOD project last year at University College London Hospitals (UCLH).

The hospital trust expanded an employee-owned smart-device programme following initial success with patient surveys conducted using tablets, which boosted response rates from ten to 80 per cent. It developed apps for a choice of hospital-owned devices.

When device costs became prohibitive UCLH added BYOD – a pioneering move in public healthcare – with a successful trial of 150 devices belonging to healthcare managers.

“We’ve seen an increase in employees forgoing the use of provided mobile devices and instead using their own devices at their own cost,” says Mark Taglietti, head of IT service delivery at UCLH.

"Access to Trust services on the move not only improves productivity but also provides a cost saving to the organisation – a win-win for all."

Another study, this time from Acronis and the Ponemon Institute, revealed that 60 per cent of companies admitted to having no formal own-device policy at all.

Acronis points to its customers. Parrish Construction Group gives employees mobile devices loaded with Acronis Access, and each claims to save an hour a day by accessing previously office-bound data by tablet or phone from remote work sites. All the blueprints and budgets they need are accessible seamlessly on tablets.

March of progress

HP believes there is opportunity here to drive new ways of working and back the IT department by fully supporting enterprise mobility.

“Planning for the short term and simply allowing employees to use their own tablets is a very small part of this,” says a spokesman.

“The focus needs to be far longer term than that, building an agile infrastructure that will evolve and adapt to changing technologies and demands. Future-proofing is critical. Cloud and mobility will increase, and businesses must invest to move along with it.”

The larger the company, the more formal these plans are likely to be, and the more they will include menus of approved devices that employees can choose from. Smaller companies tend to be less rigid, with formal CYOD policies less likely to be followed if they exist at all.

“It’s not just about giving employees devices, it’s about developing simple applications that provide secure access to corporate files. The tide is continuing to turn and people now see past earlier security issues,” says Lofgren.

Microsoft believes the key to simplifying device choice for employees is to understand what the people using them need to achieve and what their challenges are.

“We’ve managed to help businesses move to Lumia within days of their decision. LumiaBizTrial allows businesses to assess our solution, and we will help customers migrate as quickly as they wish,” says Adrian Williams, director of B2B sales for Microsoft UK and Ireland.

Friendly applications

As businesses move apps to the cloud, they will be Java/HTML-based and browser accessed. This makes cross-platform compatibility easier and more secure because there is less information on end-user devices.

It also makes mobile device management and freedom of choice for end-users a lot less scary for company boards and IT teams.

Cornum believes that cloud-friendly applications are changing the whole scenario before it has even taken hold, making the devices that we choose or bring just a matter of personal preference. In practice most of us will actually just need a browser.

“We’re seeing a 2.0 of CYOD coming to pass right in the middle of people trying to figure out the 1.0,” he says.

It is almost irrelevant who owns what device if companies put the right policies in place. Ultimately CYOD is more acceptable to more people: the board loves compliance and predictability, IT gains control and manageability and end-users get a cool device paid for by their company that makes them more productive.

And if most employees had actually read those first-generation BYOD policies they happily signed, they probably wouldn’t bring their own devices into work anyway for fear of events conspiring to wipe and reset a device that thought it was safe. ®