Businesses Now Driving "Bring Your Own Device" Trend 232
snydeq writes "Companies are no longer waiting for users to bring in their own smartphones and tablets into business environments, they're encouraging it, InfoWorld reports. 'Two of the most highly regulated industries — financial services and health care (including life sciences) — are most likely to support BYOD. So are professional services and consulting, which are "well" regulated. ... The reason is devilishly simple, Herrema says: These businesses are very much based on using information, both as the service itself and to facilitate the delivery of their products and services. Mobile devices make it easier to work with information during more hours and at more locations. That means employees are more productive, which helps the company's bottom line.' Even those companies who haven't yet embraced bring your own device policies yet already have one in place, but don't know it, according to recent surveys."
Re:Offloading IT cost onto employees (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I've personally seen it work out is the company provides junk, if you want to bring your own, better stuff, thats OK.
I love it. The company doesn't buy me clothes, or shoes, or my commuter car, either. Where I work, I can get "company clothing" but its fairly hideous, I do much better at Target and don't have to look like a corporate advertising billboard.
The junkiest computer I use on a regular basis, is, no surprise, at work. The junkiest keyboard I use on a regular basis, is, no surprise, at work. The junkiest mouse, monitor, desk, chair, lighting, blah blah is all at work. Even climate control is better at home, seriously. Everyone seems to know someone who gets great smartphones paid for by work, but the rest of us get no phone at all, or a hideous recertified featurephone from the 90s, or at best a monthly $25 "cell phone use credit". One of my employers offered either $20/month flat rate for my own cell phone bill, or I could bring in an itemized detailed bill and collect the exact amount (handy if I spent hours on the phone talking to Kenya that month, otherwise I just took the default $20 for the month)
This is business as usual in the "real world", my diesel mechanic cousin owns all his tools... That wrench is his, not his bosses. Same with my electrician buddy and his tools. Its just how grown-ups do things.
In a way it all makes sense. If you provide a firewalled, isolated internet connection for your onsite contractors to VPN back to their home office over, why not let your own employees use that connection for their own purposes? If you provide your internal ticketing system / CMS / fileserver as a "software as a service" over the internet for your outsource partners, does it really matter if your employees access the same SaS apps over the internet instead of the LAN? Combine them both, and you got the guy bringing his ipad into work, connecting to your locally provided internet access, using the SaS ticketing system, no big deal.
Re:Offloading IT cost onto employees (Score:5, Interesting)
If the business has a clear policy of not providing tools, such as a lot of auto repair shops, then US income tax deductions are possible. Just barely possible but there can be complications.
In the usual commercial business world if you want to buy an iPhone for use at work there is no way it is going to be tax deductible unless you get the company to give you a letter stating it is a requirement of your job to buy the iPhone and that it will be used only for business purposes.
Absolutely the reason this is popular is cost shifting. You have 50 employees that you want to have iPhones... so the company can spend $25,000 or nothing. Gosh, who would have thought of that?
Now, if everyone buys iPhones there is very little problem with IT support. If 30 people buy iPhones, 10 people buy Android phones and the remaining buy a mix of Windows phones, Open Moko phones and something new that came out last week the IT job will be a nightmare. Same kind of problem happens where everyone buys a different tablet device brings them all to a meeting and someone has instructions for using some iPad-only app for displaying something important. Guess what? The help desk may not be able to resolve this to everyone's satisfaction.
This sounds like a lot of short-term thinking that saves some direct money immediately with a lot of long-term consequences and long-term expense. Mostly, it is really dumb move.
Bring any device you want to buy (Score:4, Interesting)
At my workplace if you need a mobile device with email, IT will supply you with a blackberry. If you want something else, then they will pay you half of your subsidized device cost (i.e. if you need to pay $200 for a new phone, the company will pay you $100), and will pay the monthly fee they would have paid for the Blackberry (I think it's around $55, so it won't cover the entire plan, but should more than cover work usage). You own the phone and the plan, if you leave the company, you get to keep the phone, but you're still on the hook for the plan. LIkewise, if you drop it in a lake, you're on the hook to replace it.
IT will help you set up the phone for Wifi and Exchange email. Your phone has to allow remote wipe through Exchange to qualify.
It seems like a cheesy way to get employees to help shoulder some of the phone expenses, but also lets employees have pretty much any phone they want, so I see it as a net win for me. And most people don't *need* an Android/iPhone for work - a Blackberry could take care of all of their true work-related needs. Another nice advantage is that the company doesn't get my phone bills, so they can't see who I'm calling (like a job recruiter). And, I don't need to worry about losing purchased apps on a phone that's owned by my company if they take the phone back - it's my phone and my apps.
Not a perfect solution, I'd rather that they just gave me an Android for free, but with dozens of choices out there, the IT qualified device is probably not going to be the one I want anyway.
Re:Offloading IT cost onto employees (Score:4, Interesting)
My company provides us good computers and takes requests if you need something (e.g. I wanted to switch to a MS ergonomic keyboard so they ordered me one).
They used to provide phones for the higher-ups, but now they do it for everyone with a business need (which is basically everyone except the mail room). The way it works is like this: If you don't want to deal with it, they buy you whatever the latest blackberry is and cover the service. The phone is yours to use as you please and you never even have to see a bill (although a lot of people who go this route just have a work phone and a personal phone which seems like a PITA).
If you want to handle the billing yourself, you get a $200 purchase allowance towards any smartphone that can synch with an exchange server plus a max of $100 a month towards the bill. You have to submit your bill every month for reimbursement but you don't have to carry a blackberry (and people who *really* want an iphone don't have to carry 2 phones).
It doesn't save the company money...they still pay the costs and if anything support costs might go up since they now support ios/android/blackberry/etc...but it makes the workers happy (though it does make them more available).
The situation is a little different than a mechanic with his tools...when I worked at a dealership, they owned their own tools (often with a small allowance and a huge discount though) but they also owned wrenches that they had been using for their entire 30 year career. Given a reasonable upgrade cycle on my laptop(plus lots of $$$ in software)/monitor/phone, you far exceed what would be reasonable for any employee to personally pay for. Plus, unlike tools which I could use at home or at other similar jobs, a lot of expensive software licenses that I need for my job would be replaced with different expensive licenses at another similar job (and unlike a case of snap-on, most of those licenses have zero resale value).
Re:Buy your own devices (Score:4, Interesting)
My employer knows that the second I leave the office my work iPhone is set to mute. it will be unmuted when I arrive the next day. IF I am on call then it does not get muted.
I got a call on my personal phone once from a manager at 11:00pm one night about a stupid question, the next morning, I billed his department for 1 day of On call tech and the hours from 5pm to 11:30pm as well as added that to my timesheet.
He freaked out but was told that once again he was supposed to call the NOC like he had been told 20 times before and they will have the on call guy call him back. Every time he calls someone other than the NOC his department will be charged for the emergency on call even and all the hours from 5pm until the call was resolved.
Solved the problem instantly. Once in a while we get another nimrod in the company that finds someone's cellphone number and bugs them after hours... the guys enjoy the once or twice a year $300.00 bonus in their check for answering a phone off duty because an idiot manager cant follow the rules.
Re:Legal Issue - can company erase YOUR machine? (Score:4, Interesting)
The company can demand you return their property. They can't however do an inspection to determine if you have. What happens is, it shifts the burdon of proof. The company has to prove by preponderance of the evidence that you do have their property so as to get a court order requiring you to return it.... If the company says they want to erase your laptop, you say you already deleted their stuff, they can't do much.
That's one of the reasons companies might want DRMed data and use application with much more DRM support if they want to move to this sort of remote model.
Re:also reduces IT costs (Score:4, Interesting)
You're thinking too black-and-white. If the company wants to save the cost of giving you a work phone, then you're allowing them to "borrow" your personal phone for work purposes, but only if they adhere to certain rules; this is basically a contract, though you really should get it in writing if you do any such thing. Why would you do this? Mainly so you don't have to bother with carrying around a second phone everywhere, having to manage that second phone, etc. Why would they? So they don't have to manage your work phone, so they don't have to pay for it (and the expensive monthly service), etc. In some situations, it can work out fine, as long as both parties respect the boundaries. You don't have to go whole-hog and refuse to use your personal phone for anything work-related; there is a middle ground, as long as the other side respects this.
Personally, I use my personal phone for work, but my situation's a little different as I'm a telecommuter. My company has provided all my other equipment, but my phone is my own. In practice, I almost never use it for work (we do everything over email and Skype most of the time, except for the occasional conference call), except for those rare occasions I have to travel for work, in which case I end up using it quite a bit for talking to coworkers while I'm at a customer site, for instance. Since my company's never abused it, I don't see any downside to this arrangement.