The phenomenon known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is rapidly sweeping the enterprise IT world for several reasons, including greater user productivity and satisfaction, and immediate corporate cost savings.
The basic reasons behind BYOD’s popularity are simple: People generally buy mobile devices they like, and are happy when they can also use those devices to make themselves more effective at work. And in general enterprises can save a lot of upfront dollars by having employees make work-device purchases out of their own pockets.
But nothing good comes for free. Ice cream tastes great, but it’s loaded with calories. On the surface, BYOD is a treat for IT — lower equipment costs, and employees who work longer hours. But underneath, there’s a potential trapdoor to BYOD success: The sour taste that comes with hidden network access costs, where a binge of unexpectedly expensive megabytes could swallow up any potential savings BYOD brings to the enterprise table.
With corporate applications quickly moving to the cloud, mobile is rapidly becoming not just a feature but the reference architecture for how employees interact with the enterprise network. The “company laptop” and “company phone” are quickly fading away, augmented or replaced by personal iPads and smartphones that stay with mobile workers all day long. Corporations who don’t get on the BYOD train may find themselves with a frustrated workforce, one willing to “go rogue” and use unapproved devices and services.
But to really empower a mobile workforce, corporations must look beyond the “D” of BYOD and remember the “N” — because in the long run, like razors and blades, devices are cheap but networks can be expensive. A successful, future-looking enterprise BYOD strategy will evolve to something you might call “BYON” for Bring Your Own Network — a new twist that embraces not only a choice in end-user devices, but also mixes in a flexible, smart plan for secure, consistent connectivity to fuel the new mobile apps transforming how business gets done.
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