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November 13, 2014

AT&T Offers an Update on Its Toggle BYOD Solution

It’s been years since the rise of the bring your own device (BYOD) trend. Many companies have since introduced solutions aimed at helping businesses get a better handle on the challenges created by BYOD while retaining their employees’ ability to benefit from the enjoyment, flexibility, and productivity that using the devices of their choice enable.

AT&T was among the early entrants to this space with its AT&T Toggle solution, about which MobilityTechzone wrote back in 2011.

More than three years later, we’re circling back with AT&T to see how AT&T Toggle has progressed. Here’s what Sundhar Annamalai, executive director of big data and advanced solutions at AT&T, had to say in a recent interview with MobilityTechzone.

Why do we need AT&T Toggle?

In today’s business world, mobility is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity. In order to take full advantage of the changing culture, organizations need to implement solutions that address employee privacy while providing a highly secure platform that helps protect proprietary information. We understand the importance of that need, and offer AT&T Toggle as the answer.

With AT&T Toggle, a company’s IT department can manage work-related functions remotely, applying mobile and security preferences based on employee responsibilities. This ability enables CIOs to help protect business data – one of their top priorities – while simultaneously saving on the costs of issuing separate devices to employees.

Who is the AT&T Toggle target customer?

AT&T Toggle is an ideal solution for businesses of all sizes and industries. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2020, 85 percent of organizations will adopt BYOD in some form. Small businesses are able to adopt AT&T Toggle more quickly than larger organizations, as they were more advanced in the mobile management environment. Companies in the health care and education industries are also big adopters.

Who specifically is using AT&T Toggle?

For example, health care institutions are moving to BYOD to reduce costs and increase productivity and convenience. Using Toggle will allow their communities to use their personal devices for work with a high level of security – which is of the utmost importance in the health care industry. Their staff will be more mobile and connected.  As a result, they can improve workflow, and ultimately, patient experience and outcomes.

We can’t disclose what are sales are, but we’ve found that a lot of companies – especially those in health care and education – are interested in BYOD.  

Our readers in Calfornia may be interested to know about a court ruling earlier this year and how it relates to their interests and to AT&T Toggle. Explain.

Providing access to corporate assets via an employee’s personal device isn’t just a technology issue – it’s a policy and a people management issue as well. Therefore, successful deployments involve stakeholders from across the organization, including HR, lLegal, business executives as well as IT, in developing the policies and the people strategies to effectively deploy a BYOD strategy.

The California Court of Appeals has ruled that companies must reimburse employees for work-related use of personal cellphones. The ruling is placing pressure on CIOs to modify their BYOD programs.

With AT&T Toggle, organizations have a BYOD management tool which helps them to meet the requirements of that ruling and helps satisfy the critical security concerns of CIOs while supporting growth strategies for CEOs and enabling today’s always-connected employees to efficiently balance their personal and professional lives.

What makes AT&T Toggle unique in the sea of BYOD solutions?

AT&T Toggle has helped shape the market for BYOD workspace solution. When deploying a BYOD solution, the separation of personal and professional data is critical for both the company and its end users. Thanks to new innovations in the industry, some of the dual-persona solutions can segregate corporate data from an employee’s personal data.   

AT&T Toggle even takes it one step further by offering a second dedicated voice line that can be used for business calls and enables the company to purchase AT&T wireless data plans for business use. These enhancements help companies to manage corporate data while providing peace of mind to employees that their personal information won’t be shared or inadvertently erased. We believe it is an incredibly powerful offering.

With the availability of dual-persona solutions like AT&T Toggle, organizations finally have a BYOD management option that helps satisfy the critical security concerns of CIOs while supporting growth strategies for CEOs and enabling today’s always-connected employees to efficiently balance their personal and professional lives. AT&T Toggle is also complementary to many traditional device management solutions.  

How does AT&T Toggle integrate with other corporate solutions?

AT&T Toggle administrators can wrap and manage corporate and available third-party apps and make them highly secure for distribution through AT&T Toggle hub, a custom enterprise application store. And a third-party application ecosystem – application developers and vendors – can enable their commercially available applications for use within the AT&T Toggle workspace.




Edited by Alisen Downey


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