Bring Your Own Device



Bring Your Own Device

Introduction

The use of mobile devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones is an inexorable tendency. These devices are not only easy to use, but they are also very powerful and facilitate the work. For work-related tasks, many companies have reported that employees are using their own devices. The percentage of such employees is increasing with every passing day. The early response for using non-company issued devices at workplaces was between refusal and denial. However, the employees feel that the use of their own devices is a facility and it can be helpful to them. In this connection, the organizations must now lay out some policies and conditions for allowing the employees to use their own devices (BYOD) on the workplace. The strategy of BYOD is rapidly being adopted in the companies and the policies are being designed to empower the workers in this regard ( Cisco, 2013).

According to a rough survey conducted on companies, forty four percent of the companies have already adopted formal BYOD policies. However, the number of organizations is increasing. It is believed that these devices, which include even the desktops, allow mobility and new working trends. The main objective behind adopting the system of BYOD is to increase the output, better staff recruitment and worker maintenance. With BYOD, organizations are also capable of reducing IT management of company-issued computing devices at the workforce. Moreover, companies are cutting down the cost of hiring IT professionals for the maintenance and management of these devices.

With the increasing use of own devices, concerns of security, IT costs and application management are making their way. However, these concerns can be addressed with the help of a datacenter, which can access all applications and information, hence it controls IT costs with maximum security. The following paper highlights the trends in BYOD affecting large organizations and how the demands are of the users are being met in IT companies. It also throws some light on how significant it is for a company to take into consideration the needs of all stakeholders while establishing and executing an IT strategy (CITRIX , 2013).

Factors Leading to BYOD

The rising readiness in companies to adopt BYOD at workplace is often related to making the organization IT friendly. It is one of the reasons, but not the main driver behind the adoption. The companies reported the key drivers for the approach are bringing in and keep top talent and young energetic workers, allowing difficult and remote working, maintaining high standards of IT and decreasing the cost of IT management.

Figure 1:Source : http://s3.amazonaws.com/legacy.icmp/additional/citrix_byo_index_report.pdf

Key factors for adopting BYOD strategy in Figure 1 are:

Facilitates working in and outside the office

Well equipped staff

Bringing and keeping top talent

Reduction in the IT management costs

Bringing and keeping new talent

Bringing and keeping home-based users

Reduction in training costs

Facilitates self IT service

Develops continuity in business

Easy to handle propagation of devices

Attracting third-party workers/contractor

Benefits of the Policy BYOD

The most expected benefit of the BYOD policy is worker's job contentment, output, better mobility, a ...