Thursday 25 July 2013

BYOD or UYOD


There is much said about BYOD in recent times, but I suspect the intent of BYOD is being lost in the debate.

The intent of BYOD may better be described as Use Your Own Device, or UYOD.  

There are plenty of reasons, good reasons, why enterprises are not keen to allow their employees to connect consumer or non-enterprise sanctioned devices to the enterprise network.  There are issues of virus and malware protection, data access and protection and architectural standards.

However, there is also lots of good reasons why you want to enable your stakeholders, including employees, customers and suppliers, to be able to transact with you regardless of their location, the time of day or the device they are using.  It could be as simple as web mail access, time sheeting, purchase order submitting or requesting leave.

In reality if you let people connect to web mail, or to your network via a VPN, from their home PC you are supporting users to use their own devices.

I wonder if the word ‘Bring’ causes the confusion and angst?  Users interacting with your systems either via VPN or internet pages are likely doing that on devices that are not enterprise sanctioned.  This issue for the enterprise is not whether or not it is happening, but how to provide great service in this environment, especially when your CEO wants to drive cost down and service levels up by leveraging the internet?

I suspect what you will need is a browser strategy - a plan to deliver every piece of information possible, and every transaction practicable, via a browser.  Once you have done that, users can use their own devices with ease and the concepts of BYOD revert to being nothing more than a fad we have passed through.

Cheers!

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