Many of us have been accused of taking work home, but a growing number of workers are actually bringing their home to work – or more accurately, bringing their personal mobile devices to the office for work-related purposes.

These individuals – part of a growing trend known as bring-your-own-device, or BYOD – use their devices to check work e-mails and use work-related apps, while at the same time utilising them for personal purposes, like checking Facebook and Twitter.

The penetration of highly capable devices – including smartphones and the ubiquitous iPad – has increased significantly amongst the US population. Consumers expect the same level of sophistication and connectivity from technology in the work place as they experience in their personal lives. More and more, this portion of the workforce is becoming “mobile-enabled” as a result of employees bringing (and paying for) their own devices.

As a result, many companies have responded to the BYOD trend by enabling corporate data access through personal devices – a policy that presents many opportunities but also many challenges. 

The opportunities
By embracing the BYOD trend, businesses can look forward to increased employee productivity and connectivity. Tasks that in the past had required employees to be at the office can now be performed remotely. Dynamic sales forces can now monitor their funnels and tap into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems while in the field. In many professions, 24-7 email connectivity is now taken for granted.

Many businesses have developed vertical specific mobile applications that improve employee productivity, as well as the customer experience. The productivity and availability benefits from increased mobilization cannot be doubted. There is, of course, the flip side, of a complete breakdown of work/home barriers – examples of pushback to reinstate this barrier are often the exception, such as Volkswagen in Germany, which recently instituted a rule that union employee work emails be turned off outside of work hours. 

The challenges

There are a number of factors that pose challenges around leveraging BYOD for enhanced business mobilization. The first is increased mobile OS fragmentation amongst workers – allowing workers to choose their own devices results in a mix of operating systems, each with their own unique development requirements, which often require IT departments to customise apps. Many users now have multiple devices and device types,  which only adds to this complexity.

Security is also a paramount concern. IT departments typically have the ability to remote wipe BlackBerry devices (and increasingly other smartphones as well) in cases where they are lost or compromised. This is a trickier process if the phone contains both personal and business data. Generally, the IT department has permission only to delete the business data. And, again, OS fragmentation adds an additional layer of complexity here.

Another issue of concern is the number and variety of business mobile apps currently available, which is often daunting and makes it hard for enterprise to keep up with the pace of innovation. Being able to continually evaluate what’s best for business is a growing challenge. As growth ramps up, CTOs and IT departments are often scrambling in real-time to define and institute policies to deploy, manage and secure enterprise mobile applications.

Pain points

In recent research performed by Altman Vilandrie & Co., CTOs described this problem as one of “drinking from a fire hose.” We have found this problem not just amongst larger enterprises, but also within small-to-medium size businesses (SMB) as well. What’s more, the lack of dedicated IT personnel within SMBs only exacerbates the problem.

CTO and IT department needs (and current pain points) can be summarized as: needing assistance in identifying the apps most relevant, and with highest ROI, for their businesses; developing or customising applications to best meet their needs; deploying these applications cost-effectively across their work force, and securing and managing these applications on an ongoing basis.

Great promise

The business mobilisation juggernaut is already rolling and it won’t be stopping any time soon. An opportunity exists for players, whether carriers, SIs or ISVs, to address the challenges faced by CTOs and IT departments. Consultative selling is critical to help businesses navigate the complexity. At the same time, a number of technology alternatives and trends are developing to address these challenges.
Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms (MEAP) are “write-once-deploy-anywhere” platforms (available from companies such as Antenna and Pyxis),  ideal for companies looking to deploy multiple mobile applications across a variety of mobile devices.

Increased HTML5 penetration provides an alternative to MEAP for developing cross-platform mobile applications
Mobile Device Management (MDM) platforms allow businesses to proactively manage the devices of their employees including installs and updates, setting permissions, and remote wipes. 

As our jobs and lives continue to become more mobile, the BYOD trend holds great promise for our productivity, or work/life balance. But unless companies develop policies to address security and other challenges to meshing these two worlds, this promising trend may turn out to be more of a bane for CTOs and IT departments than a boon.

Soumen Ganguly is a director at Altman Vilandrie & Company