BYOD Challenges IT to Develop Effective Management and Security Policies

Recently, a new buzzword has emerged in the world of enterprise and SMB IT and mobility management: bring-your-own-device, or BYOD for short.

“Everyone is struggling with this question of how to manage the proliferation of devices,” noted Nancy Ridge, VP of Telecombrokers, during a conversation at Interop 2012 in May. “The average person today has four devices and there are predictions it will soon be seven.”

Anyone who is charged with any aspect of running a business from a communications standpoint is becoming rapidly aware of the challenges associated with BYOD. Employees want to use their mobile devices to do business everywhere they go. They want access to corporate networks, and the ability to download applications anytime, anywhere.

Which begs the question: how can IT effectively manage all of this and ensure security at the same time? The days of thinking BYOD can be stopped, or even curtailed, are done. Within the next year, Ridge predicted, 70 percent of businesses will be forced to incorporate BYOD management into their IT policies.

Helping companies figure out how to do that is a major focus for Telecombrokers. The organization sits down with IT people, helps them figure out where the pain points are around BYOD, and works collaboratively to develop policies using a granular approach.

For example, Ridge said, a basic question is how a company will approach BYOD management: on a per device basis or a per application basis? And, who will be allowed to participate? These are basic questions, but they must be answered.

“Some companies don’t even know who in the organization is going to be part of the BYOD policy,” she noted.

Starting from those basic questions leads to other aspects of BYOD and how it ties into things like desktop-as-a-service, which takes the desktop management component out of the IT department by outsourcing it.

Looking at broader cloud applications like desktop-as-a-service inevitably leads beyond mobility and into things like the network itself, and meeting bandwidth needs. Both are areas Telecombrokers has been working in since it started in 1998.

Like everything else in IT, bandwidth has of course evolved considerably in the past 12 years.

“For a long time, the T1 was the dominant speed everyone was using,” Ridge recalled. “Then, we bonded T1. Then we shifted to where the new T1 was 10 megs. Today it’s going to 10 gigs.”

Ridge added that because topics like mobility management, BYOD and cloud applications all eventually relate to each other, Telecombrokers puts a heavy emphasis on collaboration to serve its clients—whatever that might mean. It works with independent agents and professionals in LAN management and VARs alike to bring value to the marketplace.