The rise of bring your own device (BYOD) programs is the single most radical shift in the economics of client computing for business since PCs invaded the workplace, according to Gartner Inc., the Stamford-based high-tech prognostication company, which analyzed the sector in a report issued in late August.
BYOD is the term used by Gartner and others to describe employees who use their own mobile phones, laptops or other devices to perform business and access corporate data, whether using cloud-based platforms or others.
Some companies provide subsidies for workers to purchase their own devices. According to a separate study published this month by Farmington-based Global Information Inc., nearly two thirds of corporations surveyed said they will have adopted some level of BYOD plan by the end of this year, with just 11 percent having no such plan in place in the near future.
As the case with consumer embrace of the iPad and copycat tablets, Gartner says it is more likely workers will adopt-emerging devices for work purposes in advance of their information technology departments grasping their significance.
“With the wide range of capabilities brought by mobile devices and the myriad ways in which business processes are being reinvented as a result, we are entering a time of tremendous change,” said Gartner analyst David Willis in a prepared statement. “It won”™t stop with ”˜bring your own PC”™ ”“ ”˜bring your own IT”™ is on the horizon. Once these new devices are in the mix, employees will be bringing their own applications, collaboration systems and even social networks into businesses.”
Consumers today are far more likely to order upgrades at a faster rate to keep up with the most sophisticated technology the market has to offer. Consumers also enjoy equipment and domestic service pricing that often matches the best deals an enterprise can get on behalf of its users, Gartner added.
Corporations themselves, however, often see their own costs rise due to the extra time it takes IT personnel to manage the requests or needs of workers using differing mobile devices. Once companies start including file sharing, business applications and collaboration tools, the costs to provide mobile services go up dramatically.
In its second quarter results, Cisco Systems Inc. attributed a 12 percent increase in revenue from security products in part to the proliferation of mobile devices under BYOD environments.
Milford-based Perimeter e-Security hosted a webinar on the topic in mid-August.
For those companies that maintain formal BYOD agreements, typically workers agree to a set of security and management policies, and often in exchange for partial reimbursement of service plans.
“Just as we saw with home broadband in the past decade, the expectation that the company will supply full reimbursement for equipment and services will decline over time, and we will see the typical employer favor reimbursing only a portion of the monthly bill,” Willis stated. “We also expect that as adoption grows and prices decline employers will reduce the amount they reimburse.”
In the meantime, developers have their eye on the opportunity. In August, a Stamford software company called InstallFree released a software application delivery service called Nexus, which it says allows people to create, edit and share files on any computing device using full versions of their favored productivity applications.
“We created Nexus to solve ”¦ (the BYOD challenge); for customers to be able to use applications like Microsoft Office across these cloud storage providers and from any device,” said Rakesh Narasimhan, CEO of InstallFree, in a prepared statement. “After years of helping IT departments at large enterprises design and manage systems for desktop application virtualization, we adapted our experience with virtualization in the enterprise to benefit customers in all segments with InstallFree Nexus.”
