When it comes to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, chief information officers (CIOs) tend to become resistant, mostly because of management and security issues. BYOD is a trend which sooner or later will catch up with many companies, so IT managers must become more open to it, according to David Coyle, Gartner‘s research VP of the IT operations management team. “CIOs have to learn to lose control a little bit and let it go,” Coyle said.
During a question and answer session at Gartner’s Data Center Conference held in São Paulo this week, Coyle stressed that relaxing control is very important to making BYOD work.
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Ray Paquet, the managing vice president at Gartner Research, agreed, adding that, although device management is a major difficulty for CIOs, it is actually just as hard as managing installed PCs. “Despite all of the problems that BYOD might have, there are lots of opportunities, both from consumer and corporate perspectives. And it is also a tremendous opportunity to generate revenues,” Paquet noted.
ICT players boosting market
From the vendors’ side, many of them have released tools aimed at grabbing a share of the potential BYOD market. Avanade’s survey “Dispelling Six Myths of Consumerization of IT” found that companies are embracing the “consumerization” phenomenon and addressing “bring your own device” policies to accommodate younger employees and attract the best new recruits. According to the survey, which was based on the responses of more than 600 senior business and IT leaders in 17 countries, 88% of executives report that employees are using their own personal computing technologies for business purposes today.
Among C-level executives, 65% report that the consumerization of IT is a top priority in their organization. On average, companies are allocating 25% of their overall IT budgets to manage IT consumerization. And 60% of companies are now adapting their IT infrastructure to accommodate employees’ personal technologies.
Recently, after a period of beta trials, IBM launched its endpoint manager for mobile devices. Built on the Tivoli Big Fix technology that IBM acquired in the summer of 2010, the service allows businesses to manage the wide range of mobile devices that employees bring to work as well as standard endpoint management for desktop computers, all in the same software.
According to Eduardo Abreu, IBM’s manager for business development, traditional endpoint management solutions do not fit mobile device platforms, which have unique running needs that disrupt the traditional paradigm. The new platform aims to provide a single solution to manage several aspects of BYOD, such as hardware and software configuration and inventory, as well as energy use and securing data.
“The most important thing we needed to do was simplify the day-to-day management and control of mobile devices, while integrating security and policies,” noted Abreu.
Cisco Systems is also eyeing this market. The company has unveiled a holistic approach based on its Borderless Network architecture, which involves a unified policy, uncompromised user experience, and simplified operations and network management. Combined, these actions aim to help companies improve their mobile device management as well as create and manage their BYOD policies, noted Cisco’s Inbar Lasser-Raab.
However, in spite of advances in this area, security issues still represent a huge concern. A report by the security company Check Point Software Technologies, “The Impact of Mobile Devices on Information Security,” showed that 71% of businesses believe mobile devices have caused an increase in security incidents, citing significant concerns about the loss of privacy and sensitive information stored on employee devices, including corporate e-mail (79%), customer data (47%) and network login credentials (38%).
This increased concern could be linked to the increased number of personal mobile devices connecting to corporate networks. According to the report, 94% of businesses surveyed have an increased number of personal mobile devices connecting to the corporate network, with 78% of respondents seeing the number of devices more than double in the last two years.
“There are many ways to protect mobile devices,” noted Gartner’s Paquet, adding that CIOs must address security policies to allow BYOD.
