It’s an argument with passionate supporters on both sides of the issue, many of whom contend that their opponents are completely out to lunch. You might think we’re talking about politics, but we’re not. We’re talking about the debate over “bring your own technology” (BYOT) policies in the enterprise.
The two sides in the BYOT debate can be summed up this way:
PRO: Why spend so much money buying and supporting employee computers when they probably already own one? Let’s let them use their own computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones at work.
CON: Are you crazy??
It is tempting to sympathize with the con argument. Before you decide, however, look at some of the companies that have decided to go BYOT — radical, edgy little firms such as Microsoft, Kraft, Unisys and Intel. Critics of BYOT fear that the loss of corporate control over employee computers will become a nightmare for support and security, but in the right context it’s possible to minimize these problems while leveraging advantages like getting your IT department out of the client technology procurement business.
To start, set minimum technical standards for employee-owned computers. In the vast majority of cases these will not be difficult to meet since most retail computers these days are if anything overpowered. Still, you obviously don’t want an employee dragging an old 486 with 16MB of memory into the office.
Some enterprises offer a subsidy for employee-owned computers, which can actually work out to be a thrift strategy. Employees given, say, a $500 computer subsidy will probably buy a better computer (one that’s faster and less prone to break down) than they would get via company-wide procurement. And the business will, in fact, spend less per machine than it would pay to buy them directly.
A clear support policy can eliminate confusion and protect your IT department from distractions. In practice, most of the computer problems people encounter are not unique to a specific computer model. Providing support for business applications is usually a task that’s independent of the hardware or OS. For those rare problems involving hardware or the OS, employees can use vendor or third-party support. An employee’s motivation to resolve problems will be high since it’s their own computer, which they probably use both for work and personal tasks. In this sense, their computer is no different from their car, or wardrobe or whatever else they rely on to succeed at work.
Also require users to run anti-malware software from an approved list of choices. Although it may seem like letting users run their own systems is a giant malware threat, the reality is that they would need to run anti-malware scanners on corporate-owned machines anyway. If anything, the diversity of defensive software that users will employ may make your enterprise more secure. Simply put, no anti-malware defense is perfect, and settling on one product might actually increase your exposure to the threats.
It certainly helps to maximize the deployment of virtualized or cloud-based applications in a BYOT environment. In most businesses, users need only a few select applications. Custom applications can be built to run on a client-server model, so your users are simply using their personal computers as terminals, likely through a Web browser. This is ideal because all corporate data is actually housed on the server and is never stored on the employee’s own computer.
For desktop applications, virtualization allows employees to run a sandboxed “office PC” in a layer independent of their native OS. Your IT department can maintain total control over the virtualized platform, including application deployment, giving them the same degree of security and support they would have over company-owned computers, but without actually bearing the cost of the hardware.
It is unlikely that BYOT will go away — the cost savings are real, and the cultural shift can’t be reversed. Embracing smart, carefully-crafted BYOT policies that work is often the smartest way to say ahead of the curve.
| 
|
