How the smartest companies are letting employees use their personal gadgets to do their jobs
For lots of workers, the company BlackBerry just doesn't cut it anymore.
As people pack increasingly sophisticated smartphones in their personal life, they're clamoring to use those gadgets in the workplace as well. And many of their bosses are loosening up. They're ditching the traditional BlackBerry-or-nothing policy and allowing a wider range of mobile devices, including tablets such as the iPad.
This arrangement can bring benefits for both sides. Businesses don't have to buy as many phones for employees. Employees, meanwhile, don't have to carry two devices around, and people who didn't get a company phone before can have one now.
But there are a lot of potential pitfalls, too. Few smartphones offer the security features that the BlackBerry is known for. IT departments also struggle with supporting business programs on newer mobile operating systems such as Google Inc.'s Android. What's more, allowing personal phones raises a tough question: How much control does a company have over the device? What happens, for instance, when somebody leaves the company—and their phone is loaded with sensitive business documents?
Read the full article here from the Online Wall Street Journal
Work-life balance doesn't mean today what it did even five years ago. The days of having two mobile phones, one for work and one for personal use, are fading fast. However, your employer might still prefer to see some boundaries because how secure are company e-mails on your smartphone, anyway? And what restrictions should there be about apps you can install on a company-issued device?
A new app, currently in a closed beta for devices on Android 2.2 and up, seeks to solve the work-life balance issue by turning one phone into two.
Called Divide, by startupEnterproid, the app creates two environments on a single device, one for personal use, and one more secure system for business use. Users will be able to flip between the two environments, rather than dabble in both simultaneously.
With the rise of personal mobile devices, a growing number of enterprises have scrapped the homogeneity mandate: instead of requiring employees to use a standard smartphone, more IT departments are now looking at some degree of control over employee-owned (or "employee-liable") devices, to manage and secure them.
"The corporate standards dam is breaking, as platforms like Android and iPhone push their way into the enterprise," says Gartner Vice President Phillip Redman. "Most companies will accept these, and prepare guidelines and processes for managing and securing them."
The release of the latest Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group study has just been announced. The study: Enterprise Mobility Management: Optimizing the Full Mobility Lifecycle, demonstrates the potential of mobility in the marketplace and enables companies to take full advantage of the opportunities this explosion provides. The research group highlighted that 98 percent of enterprises are currently or intending to implement mobility initiatives. As a result, gaining control of the potential chaos created by the influx of new mobile platforms and devices, the invasion of employee-owned mobile devices used for company purposes and new mobile software applications has taken on a whole new priority...
