BYOD & Macs in the Enterprise

New York Times article today about how some companies are implementing a BYOD (Buy Your Own Device) policy at the office—i.e., giving employees a stipend and letting them buy the computers and smartphones they want rather than the cheap crap usually found on a company’s short list of supported standards. (‘Standard’ is usually corporate-speak for ‘cheap commodity item.’)

“We heard from people saying, ‘How come I have better equipment at home?’ ” said Mike Cunningham, chief technology officer for Kraft Foods. “We said, hey, we can address that.”

As it turns out, people are happier and more productive using the tools they like rather than ones the bean counters think they should have. This is why bean counters and most upper-level management should stay out of technology decisions and work on the things they understand.

A similar B.Y.O.D. program at Citrix Systems, a software maker that also helps its clients implement such programs, saves the company about 20 percent on each laptop over three years. Of the 1,000 or so employees in Citrix’s program, 46 percent have bought Mac computers, according to Paul Martine, Citrix’s chief information officer. “That was a little bit of a surprise.”

It’s been called the consumerization of IT but it really just means that people are willing to spend a little more of their own money on the good stuff, and they’re tired of their employers equipping them with second-rate technologies at the office. And you know all that money the company saves buying those cheap devices? They’re spending most of it on the back end trying to maintain them and fix them and patch the security holes and update the anti-virus protection and, in most cases, pay Microsoft a fee for the privilege.

I understand that corporate IT departments can’t support every device out there while also maintaining security and stability and high quality user support—it’s a harder job than most people realize and there has to be some middle ground between what the user wants and IT’s responsibilities to the organization.

The ideal scenario—it’s happening now, to some extent—is a collapse of this outworn distinction between ‘business’ and ‘consumer’ devices and the emergence of tools that do both equally well. I know quite a few people who are buying iPhones for work, out of their own pockets, rather than accept a free Blackberry from the company. A few are even carrying two devices—the smartphone they want to use and the Blackberry that the company requires them to have. Absurd.

via Daring Fireball

Posted: September 25th, 2011
Filed under: Apple, Employees, Mobile, Security & Privacy Tags: , , , | No Comments »

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