A couple of weeks ago we talked about how the BYOD phenomenon had moved beyond employers simply accommodating, managing and securing employees’ mobile devices and were starting to look at how these devices, and the functionality they bring, could be exploited to strategic advantage; an idea dubbed ‘holistic mobile engagement’. It seems that, by and large, Australian organisations are yet to reach this level of maturity.
Brett Winterford, editor of itnews.com.au, spent two months canvassing the opinions of close to 50 CIOs and desktop/mobility managers to gain insights into their strategies on enterprise mobility, and the costs of provisioning and supporting mobile devices. His report is available free on the itnews web site. It carries detailed costings for the ongoing support and management of various devices, with options ranging from “cut-throat BYOD” to “Gold plated BYOD”.
More interesting, and perhaps surprising, was the conclusion reached from those 50 interviews: that the drivers for BYOD are pretty basic. itnews identifed two primary reasons: to attract and retain talent that wants to use its own device; to offload some of the costs of devices and their network access costs to users.
Whatever the drivers for BYOD, once user devices are permitted in the corporate environment, a mobile device management tool is a must have. Some respondents reported that deployment of MDM systems was much more complex than anticipated, with the result they incurred substantial support costs.
The report recommends using a SaaS model for MDM deployment or outsourcing MDM altogether to a third party specialist..
Given the challenges of managing a wide variety of BYOD devices, the report concludes that the majority of Australian businesses coping with demands from staff for the support of their choice of devices would be better off embracing a variant of a Choose-Your-Own-Device' (CYOD) program under which employees get to choose from a menu of supported devices to gain access to a wider range of applications than those bringing their own devices.
“Providing broader choice than a single corporate standard device can bridge the gap between the otherwise mutually-exclusive drivers of empowering users and achieving cost savings,” it said.
Such a strategy, the report argued, would achieve an acceptable comprise between the employer enforcing its device of choice onto employees or allowing them free reign to bring their own device of choice into the corporate IT environment.
Under this scheme, as proposed in the report, the enterprise supports a shortlist of three approved smartphones and tablets that employees can purchase at the expense of the enterprise on prenegotiated plans. Devices remain staff property, access to corporate applications is managed via MDM/MAM tools. One choice among the three approved devices on the menu is swapped out for a newer device every year. Employers choose to vary the cost to the business by varied approaches to monthly employee expenses, stipends or loan schemes.
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