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I think you’re right on Martha, having started several companies managing mobiles devices is a total pain and puts a heavy strain on IT. This strain is somewhat necessary, because people are more engaged in mobile phones and are used to getting support from carriers stores or kiosks (very hard to find support for Windows except from friends, etc.). Thus employees can essentially take a huge load off IT by adopting an “IL” strategy. In one of my companies I moved to a tiered stipend based on the role of the employee, with one caveat – the employees adopts a phone that supports BES or ActiveSync.
However, at the end of your article you say MDM will solve that challenge. There is more to it than MDM. While MDM focuses on the “device”, why not focus on the App? Think about it this way, if a company felt comfortable that the App and the related company data is secure (cached, online access, etc.), do they care about the device itself? If you can PIN code the App, encrypted data at the App level, and remotely control policy (such as wipe the specific App), the company might not care about the device. Now for some self promotion – that’s our vision of Mobile Application Management here at App47. That’s what we built and are delivering now via the Cloud. You can see Chris Schroeder, our CEO, discuss this more here at the EMF.
Devices are important, but App is what drives value. That’s what the focus of Mobile Application Management should be.
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Sean – While mobile application management is critical moving forward, let’s not discount the need for mobile device management as well. This plays directly into the seven layers of the OSI model: http://bit.ly/lhWFyd
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IL vs CL is the business management chicken and egg. There are a number of levels which need to be considered before adopting one or the other. I have had the pleasure of working with both solutions in enterprises, and what I see is that this policy is a field of grain, it is constantly changing. Some moved and stayed, some moved and returned and others just have bigger priorities.
With smaller organizations I find it less of an issue. Employees are expected to fix their own problems, and if they spend two hours at the store, they will likely make it up over the weekend.
What I normally find is that an executive has looked at the $25 difference between what it costs now and what it will cost with a stipend. That is what we are getting to is a $25-$30 delta in a corporate environment. Doesn’t really lessen the need for the security add-ons, you have to give up some control and allow the firm to look at your device/contents/records.
What some do not see is what happens when they expected IT’s workload to reduce and it does not always go that way. For example, the IT person is working three issues and a user politely knocks on the door/cube, waving their device gently in the air, saying, “I can’t get to email…can you help me, please?” “I can’t spend the afternoon at the ATT store, and I have a conference call in 30 minutes and left my laptop at the house.” That fix, if the IT support knows little to nothing about the (choose a device), is a big cost to the organization in time and support. They will likely stop what they are doing for the other three people and try to understand the device which is one of a hundred different brands they saw this week/month.
Perhaps the enterprise just spent thousands or millions of dollars defending an action related to a personal device on the network. Can a company stop an employee from using the device while driving? Can they stop one from using their personal device while driving and conducting company business… more difficult.
Perhaps a fired employee is still using their private number and dinging the reputation of the organization. Keeping the number may be part of a business continuity plan.
Perhaps finance is getting a whopping annual bonus for leveraging the wireline and wireless contracts.
Perhaps the contract is built in a way to allow for network flexibility.
I have seen organizations with so much legalize surrounding the use of a personal device on the network that employees just take the path of least resistance and stay on CL.
Another client that moved to IL and several employees did not qualify for credit worthiness to take on the account. Ouch, now the company knows something personal about this individual. This type of information is career impacting and could be used for or against the enterprise.
Some firms in regulated industries would rather be safe than sorry. Perception of doing all they can do is sometimes the best course of protection against those looking to take a company down.
On the upside personal satisfaction is good and likely there was more thought put into the decision than just the way it is…
All in all, in this business environment, “just because that is always how it has been” is not an answer. A better answer would be “I don’t know.” Take a look around the new organization, your involvement may be able to have high impact by recommending enterprise impacting changes. 0 0 -
As long as employees are using basic Mobile stuff like Email, Calendars, etc allowing employees to bring in any device should be O.k. IL should be fine.
What happens when and if companies roll out app clients for backend applications like a company Order processing system or a app frontend to a CRM system for sales people or service people on the road? HTML5 interfaces should still solve that problem but apps are used because they have features that not easily duplicated in a Mobile web interface through a browser. In those cases would a company be forced to or justified in using only a few platforms? 0 0 -
That is another option to BYOD, the enterprise limits the choices. App performance can be affected by the carrier data treatment as well. Anyone experiencing a difference between corporate and consumer data?
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This is a very interesting subject and I agree with most of what has been said above: IL devices so long as corporate Apps/data can be wiped by IT through MDM (or EMM…) is all very good… from an IT perspective!
Where I disagree is that you imply that users would all go for IL (or a majority of users at least). I would define myself as pretty geekish or at least tech-saavy, but I’m also part of what HR calls GenY. My former company, a carrier, gave us devices and very (extremely) competitive plans for our professional and personal use so everyone dropped their personnal mobiles when entering the company. We only had one mobile phone… Great, right? except that means that your company can reach you anytime. Of course you can screen the calls, but how many times are you going to screen your boss, even if you’re on vacation? Who can resist reading their emails once the little red light flashes on a Blackberry or the push disc on the iPhone reads “5″… Most people I know who’ve experienced this have gone back to having two separate phones for two separate parts of their lives.
I believe users are going to start fighting back against “one single device”… The question of IL vs CL may actually die before being answered! I’m pretty surprised that companies have not yet measured how interesting it is for them to have employees that are always available, which is something you get from having a single professional/personal device. Companies should be the ones pushing forward, not employees!
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@Mathieu – As a fellow Parisian, I understand what you are saying regarding the work/life balance. However, do you think having a 2nd device…one that is only for work…can help address this issue, or is this just an issue of corporate culture?
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Make Mine IL
The last company I worked for had an individual-liable (IL) policy. They allowed us to use our personal smartphones for work, and they gave us a stipend towards the bill each month. I was happy to have the freedom to choose my Android device over the previous company-issued BlackBerrys.
The company that I will start at next week has a strict CL policy. I must purchase one of their approved smartphones and use it exclusively for work. I will get reimbursed for the cost of the phone, and they will pay the monthly bill, but I will be forced to carry around two phones instead of one. I asked my boss-to-be why they had this policy in place, and she told me that’s just the way it’s always been.
I understand companies not wanting just any device to connect willy-nilly to their corporate network, but giving employees the opportunity to choose which smartphone they use goes a long way toward employee satisfaction. Carrying two smartphones vs. one might not seem significant, but it’s just one more device that one has the potential for being lost. And I should know: I accidentally left my smartphone on the rental car shuttle bus back to the Logan Airport terminal on Tuesday. Fortunately another passenger noticed it on the seat, and the shuttle bus driver circled back around to me to return it. Shout out to Dollar Rent A Car at Logan! Thank you!
But I digress. Employee satisfaction is at the top of the list for having an IL device policy, as is satisfying the CXOs who like to bring in their shiny new toys to try out at work. Cost reduction is another big plus, allowing enterprises to transfer some (or all) of the cost of the device and contract onto the employee. This also enables a broader number of employees to gain access to data and services due to lower overhead enterprise costs.
Advocates for strictly CL policies argue that security is the biggest factor in keeping all devices CL. But with proper mobile device management (and overall enterprise mobility management) in place, security becomes a non-issue for IL deployments. Support for different OSes and different versions of the same OS are certainly factors to consider as well, but again, MDM should solve that challenge. For me, IL deployments are clearly the way to go.
Martha is a freelance writer covering emerging technologies in the enterprise mobility space. Prior to her freelance career, Martha served as editor in chief of Mobile Enterprise Magazine and R&D Magazine. She holds a BS in Mathematics and a BS in Physics from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and an MS in Physics from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. You can connect with Martha here.