Expectations and Roadblocks as BYOD Matures

Survey of IT and executive respondents reveals planned functionalities that could turn BYOD into a competitive advantage.

Insurance Networking News, January 22, 2013

Justin Kern

The quick rise in enterprise mobility has signaled a range of user expectations, with plenty of roadblocks during the process, according to a new vendor-backed survey.

The first-time survey, “BYOD: Managing the User is the Key to Big Gains and Fewer Setbacks,” was conducted by tech market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of Dell and its Quest Software division. It included responses to questions on enterprise BYOD policies, maturity and concerns from 1,485 IT and executive respondents.

To varying degrees, BYOD programs have brought along new enterprise capabilities, such as linking and managing devices per user (42 percent) and delivering applications to users based on their role (38 percent). The indication from the survey is that enterprises want to be able to do more with their mobile programs. Current capabilities out of reach but expected as part of BYOD programs include: delivering applications to users based on their role (30 percent), effectively provisioning devices and applications when users leave, change roles or get new devices (29 percent), linking and managing devices per user (28 percent), associating applications to roles (26 percent), and preventing unauthorized application downloads (20 percent). This gap between immediate capabilities and anticipated ones reflects an “awareness gap” when it comes to enterprises and their BYOD programs, according to the survey’s authors.

There are still plenty of missteps along the path toward BYOD, as 90 percent of enterprises said they faced unexpected obstacles in implementation. The top problems amounted to a mixed bag: abuse of policies (36 percent), theft or loss of devices (33 percent), lack of device application or data control (33 percent), users leaving enterprise with sensitive information (32 percent), and unauthorized data distribution from a device (29 percent).

Overall, there is a definite split in the approach enterprises are taking when it comes to BYOD users: 44 percent have or plan to focus BYOD on managing the user, with the difference aimed at managing particular devices. The opposing approaches in the survey reflect a BYOD “phenomenon forced upon businesses by their employees and partners,” said Roger Bjork, director of Enterprise Mobility Solutions at Dell. And the mix of front-facing capabilities and potential boost in worker productivity gives special importance to developing the appropriate enterprise BYOD methodology, said Bjork.

“One of the key differences in the risk/reward profile for BYOD implementations is not just the fact that mobile devices are more pervasive, but added to that, the fact that there is so much passion from a variety of stakeholders involved: business leaders are eager to take advantage of new business models to accelerate their competitiveness; end users are certainly passionate about the devices they carry and wish to use them as their secondary compute source; security officers work to define policies to keep pace with rapid technology advances; and IT professionals are now seeing this movement as a way to accelerate IT transformation to become stronger business partners,” says Bjork.

This story originally appeared at Information Management.

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