iPhone and Android in the office yield higher profits, happier employees

Yet another case of happy employees and in turn employers. Through hesitant IT departments, have learned to love the benefits BYOD brings.

IT admins have been understandably resistant to BYOD. After all, granting user-owned gadgets access to sensitive data and critical applications poses not only a security threat, it also creates compatibility challenges and tech-support headaches. However, embracing BYOD appears to be worth the trouble: Organizations that support consumer tech are nimbler and more profitable says a new survey from software and consulting company Avanade.

According to the company’s survey of C-level execs, business-unit leaders, and IT decision makers from around the globe, organizations that have adopted consumer tech were 73 percent more likely to report improved sales and new customer acquisitions than BYOD holdouts. Fifty-eight percent reported a greater ability to bring new products and services to market, and 54 percent said their companies were more likely to report increased profits.

What’s more, the survey found that companies were enjoying intangible benefits from embracing consumer tech, including happier workers. Those organizations are 37 percent more likely to report improved employee satisfaction, according to the report, as well as “a greater emphasis on creativity and greater ability to solve problems.”

As to how employees are using their consumer devices for work, 54 percent of respondents said most of their employees use smartphones for basic work tasks such as checking email, reading online documents, and managing schedules. Forty-two percent said most of their employees use smartphones for advanced purposes such as CRM, project management, content creation, and data analysis. Meanwhile, 33 percent said that the majority of their employees use tablets for basic work tasks, the same percentage who said most employees use tablets for advanced purposes.

Although companies are reporting benefits of incorporating smartphones and tablets, they are still playing catch-up with the technology. About 70 percent said they had changed at least one business process in support of emerging mobile tech, such as in IT management, sales and marketing, HR, or customer service. But only 20 percent reported changing four or more business processes. Considering the potential disruption of smartphones and tablets, that number should arguably be higher.

Part of the problem, says Avanade, is disagreement in organizations as to who is responsible for devising new processes in support of BYOD. “Major business change involves many functions and departments, but Avanade’s research shows that more than half of respondents (56 percent) believe that IT departments are now responsible for managing elements of the company not traditionally in the job description of IT, such as improving business processes and collaboration across the business,” according to the report.

Additionally, 51 percent of respondents said that IT should play a role in creating and supporting consumer tech for business purposes; 28 percent said it was up to HR.

The report also pointed to a noteworthy disconnect between C-level execs’ BYOD bullishness and that of employees lower on the corporate totem pole: 71 percent of C-level execs said they believed the rest of their organization could accomplish work tasks outside the office walls, versus 32 percent than the rate of IT staff and business unit leaders who reported the same.

The report said that 61 percent of organizations reported that most of their employees now use personal computing devices in the workplace, and 35 percent of respondents deemed “training for all employees” to better support consumer technologies in the workplace as the top investment priority for 2013 in the next 12 months.

2.

Cambridgeshire: BYOD, But Expect To Foot Bill

In leu if a local financial scandal, A CIO for Cambridgeshire in UK, has decided to for go any official BYOD program associated with the county, in fear of bad press association with the local scandal.

You can bring your own device to work for Cambridgeshire County Council — just don’t expect anyone to reimburse you for using it.

Speaking at a local government technology conference last week, Alan Shields, strategy and architecture team manager for the council, told delegates that any staff members who ask to use their own IT will get no money or financial incentives for doing so — as he and his team cannot contemplate being “pilloried” in the local press if they did.

Shields was referring to a story published in the Cambridge News, the local newspaper of another Cambridgeshire town — home of the prestigious university — that excoriated the way a $3.7 million (£2.3m) accounting error crept into the city government’s 2013-13 business plan. Although it did not mention BYOD, the article criticized the city’s “financial planning processes” and used the phrase “budget black hole.” A revised plan suggests on-going fiscal pressure; the body is expected to pare costs down by $11 million (£7m) for the year.

All of this might be expected to make the idea of BYOD more attractive to politicians like Shields, but he needs to be cannier than that to make such a strategy work. Instead of bragging about cutting costs with BYOD, he dubs his technique “headline of the local newspaper method.”

“I don’t want to see headlines saying, ‘Council pays £100 [$158] per staff so they can use iPhones’,” he told the conference. Instead, staff will get simple instructions and then get left on their own — at zero cost to local government: “We won’t pay for the cost of the phone, we won’t pay for the cost of the tariff. We won’t even train you”

Shields said the whole scheme couldn’t operate at all unless it was supported for free by the eat-all-you-want data plans the employees’ get with their own technology. “We call it ‘use your own device,’ not ‘bring your own device,’” he said. “You spend your own money, and we will not reimburse anybody. It is a purely voluntary scheme.”

If that seems a tad harsh, Shields remains practical.”In the environment of U.K. local government, “with what is deemed to be public money, you’ve got to be careful.”

3.

Reality Check: Virtualization can be a safe alternative for BYOD adoption

Whether you should adopt BYOD is a case by case situation. Whether you can adopt it safely is a definite yes.

Despite the “conservative” label it may get—especially from employees—this concern is a valid one. Allowing access to corporate systems and data through personal devices can open huge and varied gaps in information security. However, a combination of good governance and technology can minimize the risks and make the benefits (mobility, flexibility and productivity) worthwhile for most companies.I say “most” companies because when thinking about opening the company to BYOD, the first exercise should be examining whether it really fits your business strategy. Regardless of the hype, BYOD is not for everyone. In some market segments, where the legal and/or marketing pressures on data confidentiality are very high, the risk may not be worth it. In other cases, the model may make sense only for some departments. The first step is to assess if BYOD makes sense for your organization.If you decide to embrace BYOD, you must set policies and technologies that will support the process. One method that can be a great tool for enabling corporate BYOD adoption is virtualization. By using virtualized solutions (like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, known as VDI), the ICT manager maintains applications and data “at home,” or inside corporate boundaries, regardless of the platform used to access them— whether employees are using personal or corporate desktops, notebooks, tablets or smartphones.By ensuring the ICT manager has control over the information and the homogeneity of the environment, virtualization complements the solution packages that are usually used to prepare for BYOD very well. Such packages should also include MDM (Mobile Device Management) and DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solutions as well as information backup systems.

The critical point of virtualization is connectivity, which can become a bottleneck and negatively impact user experience. Thus, updating and adapting the corporate network infrastructure—a mandatory action on any BYOD project—becomes even more relevant when you want to add the use of virtualization. A deep assessment and a battery of tests are needed to ensure that data access is transparent to the user.

4.

BYOD policies stifling Ultrabook sales, claims Intel

The BYOD trend has reportedly slowed laptop sales. With the options of fast pocket computers, what’s to keep you buying your ultrabooks?

Intel claims that employees who are being offered the choice of bringing their own devices to work have not been investing in laptops.

Rob Sheppard, business client product manager at Intel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has acknowledged that it needs to work harder to make Ultrabooks a success in the enterprise environment and prevent legacy devices from being cannibalised by tablets and smartphones.

“BYOD is happening with phones and tablets [not] with PCs. The idea that business would give [money] to users to buy a PC – that’s not happening,” he told journalists at an Intel event in London.

“There are too many complications around it especially when you start to look at things like tax [and] purchase costs.”

Sheppard claimed that Intel’s strategy was to initially focus on the consumer market, but he acknowledged that the chip maker needed to work harder in the business market as there are only a dozen enterprise-friendly devices.

“The business designs are behind consumer, that’s not surprising because you need to put more effort and energy into designing and building for [the enterprise],” he continued.

“Ultrabook [sales] are actually growing in terms of the overall market. We expect to see a significant growth this year.”

In terms of features in business Ultrabooks, Intel has setting a base level spec, but has been leaving specification choices such as ports down to individual OEMs.

It doesn’t appear that Intel is going to force the Thunderbolt connectivity, which it co-developed with Apple, onto OEMs anytime soon either as Sheppard recognised that demand is low at this stage.

Although Intel has not released any sales figures – analysts cut sales estimates at the end of last year. IHS iSuppli had initially predicted that 22 million Ultrabooks would ship by the end of 2012, but in October this forecast was slashed to 10.3 million units.

It remains to be seen whether the inclusion of touch screen panels, all-day battery life and lower pricing will attract businesses throughout 2013.

5.

AppSense Unveils MobileNow, Unlocks BYOD Potential for Organizations and Employees

Every BYOD service provider has a personal touch to BYOD management. AppSense has put their personal touch on their Mobile Now Program.

AppSense, the leader in people-centric computing, today released MobileNow, the only 100% SaaS based mobile device, application and data management solution designed for Enterprise and Mid-Market organizations that bridges application/data access, corporate compliance and strong security to personal devices in work environments. MobileNow provides a full set of product features that move beyond simple mobile device management capabilities to provide IT with the strongest, deepest policy controls possible across mobile devices, applications and data.

“MobileNow has driven our top line by unleashing our organization from the challenges of BYOD. As a federally chartered credit union we are highly regulated and need to keep our data highly secure. Our employees now have seamless, secure access to corporate data and apps from their mobile devices, while IT can easily manage data security and compliance,” said Sachin Kundra Vice President of IT for Chevron Federal Credit Union. “MobileNow is the only solution that offered features beyond MDM, and was exceptionally easy to implement. We were up and running in a single afternoon.”

Governance, Risk and Compliance Challenges off the Table for IT Departments

With MobileNow, IT departments can easily manage a diverse set of employees using multiple devices, as well their applications, securely and seamlessly, independent of the type of device used.

• Combined Mobile Management Product: MobileNow combines the benefits of Mobile Device Management (MDM), Mobile Application Management (MAM) and secure native email so IT can manage a single, all-in-one solution with no required infrastructure. MobileNow provides IT with the option to use business applications on corporate or personal devices, but still manage and enforce corporate policies and controls.
• Secure and Isolate Business Applications: MobileNow securely isolates business applications – both in-house and 3^rd party apps – from personal applications and ensures business data is always encrypted, compliant and protected by the policies that IT sets – all while delivering a frictionless and fully native experience to end-users.
• Flexible, Easy to Use Solution: Through a SaaS deployment model, organizations are up and running in minutes with zero capital expenditure as no hardware is required. MobileNow’s MDM and MAM capabilities can be deployed independently to leverage existing legacy solutions or as an integrated suite.

Users Achieve Application and Data Access Nirvana Without Handcuffs of IT

MobileNow users are given the freedom of choice to create their own mobile experience through:

• Instant Application and Data Access: Users have the ability to access applications and data anywhere, at anytime and on any device without fear of being locked out or waiting for permission.
• BYOD Support: Allows users to freely use devices and applications of personal choice while seamlessly compliant with corporate security and access policies.

“We are at a tipping point where any-time, any-where access to corporate apps and data is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement,” said Ajay Arora, CTO of Mobile at AppSense. “Companies that embrace enterprise consumerization will fly past IT departments that don’t allow users flexibility. MobileNow frees users of corporate boundaries and enables IT to enforce the security and compliance controls they require over sensitive corporate apps and data. AppSense MobileNow delivers the best of both worlds: freedom for users and seamless control for IT.”

MobileNow is available today for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. To learn more about MobileNow and for a free 30-day trial, please visithttp://www.appsense.com/mobilenow.

MobileNow is part of the AppSense user virtualization technology solutions that also includes DesktopNow and DataNow.

About AppSense

AppSense, the people-centric computing company, is the leading global software provider of user virtualization solutions that transform organizations into productive mobile workforces securely governed by IT. AppSense works with customers to reduce IT complexity and enable enterprise consumerization with independent management of the user experience across all mobile devices and desktops. User virtualization improves the deployment, management and migration of multi-platform desktop and mobile environments. The company is headquartered in New York, NY with offices around the world.