Who Should Own The Enterprise Handset?
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
I’m writing this while on my way back from the annual Interop technology-fest in Vegas. The floor looked busy and according to the organizers, attendance was up 30% from last year (directionally encouraging even from a low recessionary bar).
I participated in a Panel moderated by Philippe Winthrop, Founder of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation, on the title topic as part of the Wireless & Mobility track.
A number of questions were posed and discussed during the session around the notion of device liability – including:
- Should a company allow and/or support Individual Liable (IL) devices?
- Should there be a difference between how IT treats IL and Corporate Liable (CL) devices?
- One main reason for having CL devices is for regulatory compliance. Can IL and GRC co-exist?
- Can companies mandate that they control IL devices? What about the Big Brother factor?
- So, is it about the device or the data?
- What about new devices like the iPad?
- From a TCO perspective, is one strategy better than the other?
- What’s the next big issue in the IL/CL debate?
What was clear from the discussion, but also from the pre-Interop industry debate on this subject, is that the IL/CL debate will rage on for a while to come. Philippe covered the topic last year, and we have seen a stream of opinions from eWeek and others.
As a starting point, there needs to be some agreement on exactly what is meant by liability – financial, privacy, data protection, regulatory. There were a range of opinions in the room around what constituted ‘liable’ – pay for the device or the plan or both, lock down the device totally or only secure the data you care about or access to the applications you care about. What is consistent not only from this session, but from similar forums at CTIA and other more direct customer interaction is that:
- Everything needs to start with Strategy. What are the business goals you are trying to meet? The use of Mobility Tools and IT in general is a slave to the business need. A fully locked down, secure mobility solution is useless if users side step the controls in order to get the job done.
- Almost every function is touched by the mobility question (Finance, Line of Business Managers, IT, Legal, HR, Compliance)– the need to establish a mobility center of excellence is critical to success.
- Segmentation of the types of users (road warriors, desk-bound occasional users, etc) and the types of devices you offer as “standard,” “tolerated” or “denied” form the foundation for what appropriate controls are put in place, independent of who is ‘liable’ for the device, plan, data, etc.
- Expectations are different. The workforce today is demanding to use their device of choice. The locked down, 2-year old corporate device just doesn’t cut it. Planning for this dynamic is the reality.
Safe to say, fragmentation and complexity reign. We are are in the early stages of the enterprise mobility cycle – the pace of innovation is our friend but also our enemy. Thankfully we have previous technology maturation cycles in security, collaboration and other categories, to ensure we make the most of this incredible opportunity – whoever is liable for the device.
Tags: enterprise mobility, mobility management, smartphone
