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One of the hottest topics among IT leaders we consult with is crafting an appropriate policy for employee ownership of mobile devices such as smartphones, and increasingly tablets. Often IT managers are evaluating the potential to reduce costs by letting employees simply connect their own personal devices to corporate applications instead of procuring and provisioning company-owned devices.
Why not simply allow employees to bring their preferred communications devices to work, and reimburse employees for corporate usage? This approach could, in theory, reduce capital costs, keep employees happier (since they’d be able to select their own preferred devices), and reduce management overhead (since IT wouldn’t be in the business of supporting these devices). By simply reimbursing employees for job-related device use, companies can sidestep some potentially knotty human resource, accounting, and legal challenges related to personal use of company-provided devices.
On the surface, then, reimbursement for employee-owned devices would appear to be a no-brainer. The catch? Mobile devices are no longer just phones. They’re headed towards becoming the default user computing and communications platform for a growing sub-segment of workers. With the introduction of tablet devices such as Apple’s iPad, Samsung’s Galaxy, Avaya Desktop Video Device, and the forthcoming RIM PlayBook, Cisco Cius, and, the distinction between mobile PCs and smartphones is rapidly blurring. Already, 11% of organizations say they have at least some workers who use wireless/mobile devices exclusively. Those with wireless-only employees say that the size of these user populations ranges from under 1% to a whopping 38%.
The key point here, again, is that in most organizations, mobile devices are increasingly becoming critical components of the user-computing infrastructure. In other words, IT has to ensure application performance on mobile devices because these devices are now critical to employees being able to do their jobs, and this can be difficult or impossible if IT doesn’t control the device.
Moreover, the emerging application marketplaces for mobile devices are heavily skewed towards consumer applications, and aren’t set up to support customized corporate applications (many of which represent competitive differentiators). “Are we going to have to get into the business of writing iPhone apps?” asks the CTO of a large financial-services firm that’s allowed some users to select their own devices. Vendors such as Cisco are moving to create enterprise application marketplaces, but it remains to be seen how this space will evolve.
The move to employee-owned mobile devices can also play havoc with an organization’s plans for desktop virtualization. How does a company effectively “virtualize” a mobile device—particularly if it’s not company-owned? And how does it push virtualization client software onto employee-owned devices? Finally, security and compliance are a huge issue when a company’s proprietary data is stored on a personal device.
In response to these challenges the mobile device management (MDM) platform market is exploding. MDMs enable IT to implement centralized policies, application controls, and remote device management for both employee-owned and employer-provided devices, across a range of platforms (e.g., iOS, Android). Many of our clients are investing in MDM capabilities over the next year as a way to meet the challenge of supporting employee owned devices in a manner that’s consistent with security and governance requirements.
The bottom line: There are no easy answers. IT managers should eschew a superficial approach that treats mobile devices as “just” phones, and recognize that they’re a critical component of the user compute environment. Decisions about whether or not to provide mobile devices should be made in that context.
