Years ago, the idea of Bring-Your-Own-Device corporate policies held a lot of promise. It offered employees autonomy of devices, the illusion of choice and preference, and slashed the amount of corporate-owned devices already-stretched-thin IT teams were responsible for.
However, in a post-pandemic world where the walls of the hybrid workplace are expanding, simpler, smarter means are needed to move and protect corporate data among business applications across clouds to employee devices.
With mobile becoming the definitive platform for business innovation, a new Nemertes white paper discusses the pull-back of BYOD due to the lack of anticipated cost savings and the need for smarter control of a corporate mobile fleet.
The paper reads:
The vision: Not having to pay for devices your employees use saves millions annually.
The reality? Trying to integrate and manage devices the company doesn’t own or control usually creates more problems than it solves.
On one side of the ledger, companies may be able to reduce hardware costs by not paying for the devices themselves.
On the other side:
• Compatibility issues with multiple operating systems
• Increased help desk calls to help users with untested issues on applications with different
operating systems
• Increased security risks in having to deal with both multiple points of penetration, as well as
employee-owned devices that contain multiple uncertified applications and potential infections.
The reality is, it’s very difficult to manage devices you don’t own (pre-pandemic, nearly 30% didn’t even try, and there has not been a rush to do so since), and to level-set reasonable expectations among end users, and to deal with the additional security issues them using their own devices creates. Companies are starting to realize the true costs of BYOD, and these costs are leading many companies to bring mobile devices back in house.
As you see, while the reverse trend to bring devices back in-house appears to be an easy fix, it’s no longer enough to simply own and distribute corporate devices to the workforce with standard security and help desk support.
To read all Nemertes Research’s analysis of corporate mobile programs, access the full report by clicking here.