"Bring Your Own Technology" Is In Your Future

IT leaders need to start thinking in terms of users making their own technology choices.

Consider the concept of BYOT, or Bring Your Own Technology.  The premise is that instead of IT dictating the supported computing platforms and cellphones, users will make their own selection based on what best meets their needs or preferences.

As a result you may have PCs, Macs, iPads and their coming slate competitors, iPhones, Droids and Blackberrys within your environment, and you'll be expected to support all of them.  Add to the myriad various models of each device and it becomes a mind boggling array of technology.

A couple of things are driving this trend.  The first is the consumerization of IT.  It used to be that the workplace had the best technology.  A consumer couldn't afford to have the type of technology used at work.  Now the best technology is within the reach of all and is coming at us in new forms and capabilities at a dizzying pace.  People are logically asking why they can't use the same technologies at work that they use at home.

The second driver is cloud applications like Salesforce.com and Google Docs.  These apps divorce themselves from the corporate data center and are accessible on just about any computing platform.  So users logically ask, “Why do I have to use only IT's standard?”

The third driver is VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, which allows IT to in effect convert client-server applications into cloud-like applications.  This separates the application from the hardware, allowing many hardware configurations to run the application.

While these seem like compelling arguments it hasn't gotten a lot of traction with IT departments yet.  I was recently at an IT conference and this topic came up during a panel discussion.  For the most part the panel members and the audience alike hadn't really done much in terms of BYOT other than a few that were experimenting the BYOT for cell phones.

Why isn't IT jumping on the BYOT bandwagon?  For the same reasons that IT created those uncompromising standards for technology that everyone likes to complain about in the first place.  Namely, cost control and security.

Cost control is a two-part issue.  The first part is the cost of the equipment itself and how we manage it.  Some users want the latest and most popular technology, swapping it out again and again.  How much is the company willing to fund? Does it only fund a set amount per year?

The second part of the cost issue is perhaps more perplexing to IT.  With the ever increasing pressure on IT to control costs, how do we do this when we don't control the technology choices  users are making?  Creating a support organization for all platforms is costly and daunting concept.

The security question isn't so much about the security of the applications itself.  We've been handling this for a long time and can control who sees what data and what they can do it within the application.

However, if we open up the platform we don't necessarily know how strong it is, how the users have configured it, how secure they've made it, where else they're using it and what else they're using it for.  A pretty scary scenario, indeed.  With the increasing sophistication of worms, rootkit hacking, malware and zero day attacks on operating systems, IT is understandably reluctant to open this up.

While we may have valid reasons for not jumping on the BYOT bandwagon right now, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking this will just go away.  As the consumerization effect continues to grow and technology evolves further this may become practical in some situations.

IT leaders would be well advised to monitor this situation and in the meantime take a look at expanding the standard offerings as a way of giving more choices.  We should also be trying VDI to see where it makes sense.

Like a lot of other "hyped" concepts BYOT isn't the universal answer but it just might be the answer for some situations.  Our job as IT leaders is to figure that out and not get caught up in the hype.

This article is also posted on Forbes.com.  Feel free to join in the discussion either on this site or at Forbes.com

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Why IT Must Embrace Facebook, Twitter, iPhone
• Where's My Flying Car?
• IT's Business Lesson
• Or the posts in the "Strategy & Management"  category.

Comments

[Elliot Ross]

Good Morning Mike,

A great post and one topic I have thought of frequently.

Allow me to add one more challenge; (this is just a quote from a blog post I did on this topic)

So if I chose to forgo the corporate supplied PC, and provide my own Mac, and it dies. Lets see, I unplug it and trek off to my repair outlet of choice. They tell me it will be back to me by Wednesday.

OK. Do I sit twiddling my thumbs until Wednesday?

Maybe call my my clients and say; “Hey – can’t help ya until next week, will call you back then!”

Somehow I don’t see that going over well with your clients. So the question is;

If staff supplies their own IT assets, and they are responsible for repairing them, what productivity loss do you face when they don’t have their machine until next Wednesday?

[Mike]

Elliot,

Thanks for the comment.  Excellent point.

In the BYOT model of the staff sourcing their own technology this is a real-world issue.  One way IT could address this to provide loaner equipment.  However, this involves more administration, cost etc.

The second model is where IT is resourced to support the myriad technologies.  This would be great but you better have deep pockets in order to be able to train and maintain the adequate support staff.

These highlight part of the reason why I think we'll see BYOT in limited situations and not as the standard operating model for most IT departments, at least for some
time.

Mike

[Dgschultz]

Great post Mike. I am speaking on Enterprise 2.0 and the Information Management and Technology professional at the ARMA conference in November and touch on this topic from the standpoint of Gen X/Y and what they expect in the workplace. I came across a study from Accenture that I thought had some very good points (find it here - http://nstore.accenture.com/technology/millennials/global_millennial_generation_research.pdf).

Some of the quotes really point out how IT is going to have to rethink its operation - "I do install software from the Internet without the permission from the IT department, simply because it makes my work easier and faster, and I don’t see the potential risk of doing that." "People prefer using their own technology, because they are used to it and have
everything set up their own way, so it’s personalized and easier to figure out." "People obviously want technology to be more user-friendly, faster,and simpler. If a certain software or application can provide this, then why not get it [even if it is not approved by the company]?"

I look forward to hearing more about this topic.

Douglas Schultz