Term Paper as part of the Management Information Systems And Technology course at IIM Bangalore.

1. Handheld Devices & BYOD: Are Enterprises There Yet?
Term Paper by Team ‘Unhygienix’
Anusha Subramanian, Shadin Cornelio, Siddharth Shashidharan, Vishrut Shukla
Management of Information Systems & Technology (MIST)
(Term III - PGP 2012-14)
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Introduction
The consumerization of IT has led to a shift in the IT culture of companies by making it more employeedriven and less reliant on IT departments, implying that consumer technologies are increasingly being used
in the workplace, as opposed to specific enterprise IT solutions. The increase in faster, easier-to-use and
better consumer devices has caused this shift by compelling employees to bring their personal devices to
their workplaces as well. Sensing an opportunity to satisfy their employees’ desires of flexibility and
mobility, a number of large corporates such as Cisco and IBM have become cheerleaders of the ‘Bring Your
Own Device’ (BYOD) concept and have begun permitting employees to use their own smartphones, tablets
and laptops on the corporate network. BYOD is increasingly touted to enhance the time spent by employees
on work-related issues and facilitate more effective collaboration. Cisco has described this concept as “WorkYour-Way” with the vision of allowing employees to work on any device at any time and from any place.
Limit
Basic
Advanced
Environment requires
tight controls
Basic access for
additional devices
Any device, anywhere,
enhanced security
Any device, anywhere,
anyone
IT approved devices
Broader device set
Wide range of devices
IT managed devices
with mainly on-site
access
IT managed devices
with on-site access
Corporate and employee
owned devices with full
on-site / off-site access
Wide range of devices
Corporate and employee
owned devices with full
on-site / off-site access
Custom native apps
Enhanced services for
Guest/customer devices
All other devices
prohibited on network
Employee owned and
Guest devices with
Internet only
Device-side security,
Internet on Guest device
Embrace
Typical Use Cases
Financial services
firms restrict access
to confidential
financial data
Educational
institutions allow
basic services to
everyone (eg: email)
Healthcare providers
offer differentiated
services based on role
(eg: select corp data)
Mobile sales
enterprises offer
videos and
collaboration sessions
Fig. 1: Different Levels of BYOD Adoption Scenarios (Reproduced from Cisco Bring Your Own
Device - Device Freedom without Compromising the IT Network Public Whitepaper, April 18, 2012)
However, BYOD is not a cakewalk when it comes to implementation and has its own share of issues that
affect fundamental information security policies in organizations. According to a research study undertaken
Handheld Devices & BYOD: Are Enterprises There Yet?
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2. by Logicalis, around 17.7% of the employees surveyed claimed that their IT departments were uninformed
of their usage of personal devices at the workplace, and 28.4% suggested that their IT departments
preferred to actively ignore paying special attention to the IT consumerization trend despite being aware of
it. This is set to change though as data security, featuring as the #1, #2 and #3 concern for top CIOs today has
recently gained back the limelight thanks to high profile data breaches at firms like Yahoo! and LinkedIn.
Unsurprisingly, more than 50% of the firms surveyed by Forrester Consulting reflect serious concerns about
BYOD speculating whether adopting this phenomenon is a gateway to hell by opening a fatal can of worms
for IT policy enforcers.
There is however no doubt that BYOD is keeping everyone across the board busy and is a truly enterprisewide project engaging the engineering teams, application teams, security and compliance teams as well as
executives and human resources personnel. Technical experts are busy ironing out the remaining wrinkles
in the technology architecture. IT policy makers are debating about clear guidelines and best practices that
they should adopt in order to prevent BYOD from slipping out of control. Business executives are weighing
the predicted productivity improvements and revenue gains against the serious security challenges and
careful change management to be undertaken when deciding to throw the switch in favour of BYOD.
Notwithstanding, industry watchdogs and experts are busy debating whether BYOD is another one of those
mere fads presently generating a lot of buzz at its peak of inflated expectation or whether it will persist and
proliferate to change the way companies conduct business.
Field Data
For the purpose of gaining first-hand insights into the above mentioned topics, the authors studied world’s
leading network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems, Inc. - one of the early adopters and enthusiastic
cheerleader of the BYOD trend. Cisco, which has applied the BYOD programme within its corporate
organization for employees and is encouraging partners to follow suit as well, also offers BYOD solutions
portfolio for clients under its ‘Borderless Network’ vision. The aim of the field research was to find out how
mobile technologies fit into Cisco’s organizational philosophy, the current scale of handheld device
usage/deployment in the organization, the design of the technology architecture, early signs of impact
created by the adoption of tablets and BYOD in business terms, top management’s, IT policy makers’ and
employees’ perspectives about the new trend, how the enterprise’s IT Policy has been modified to
accommodate these changes, strategic and operational challenges being faced by the company in BYOD’s
adoption and key takeaways for the future.
 Executive Perspective: To get deeper insights from the topmost decision-making level regarding BYOD
adoption, the authors interviewed Mr. Johnson Jose, Senior Director, Cisco I.T. in detail. According to Mr.
Jose, the product companies are set to gain the most by shifting to employee-owned devices as besides
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3. saving IT support costs for the company, the boost in employee productivity translates into business
profits without fail. The services companies that bill their clients based on the number of hours billed
may see a contradiction with BYOD as tremendous increases in employee productivity may negatively
impact the number of billed hours for such companies and hence, they may only support BYOD from the
outset. Mr. Jose also mentioned that though the technology and security architectures are almost fully
ironed out for a wide-scale BYOD deployment model, the biggest challenges of dealing with employee
resistance to change and climbing a steep adoption curve still remain to be addressed as not all
employees, especially at the senior level see value in changing the way they work daily with their
devices. He stressed that consistency of user experience and alignment of changed policies with simple
logical human behaviour will be critical to ensure the success.
 IT Policy Maker Perspective: As part of the detailed field research undertaken, the authors conducted a
personal interview with Mr. Kiran S. Narayan, I.T. Manager at Cisco Systems about the implementation
and future of BYOD at Cisco. According to Mr. Narayan, stage-wise rollouts of pilot BYOD programmes
are well underway in different parts of the organization beginning with the support for smartphones and
tablets. The choice of devices is explained by the fact that these are the most widely used categories in
electronic media apart from PCs and laptops. Cisco currently has over 100,000 end points that include
employees’ personal devices being used for a broad range of work-related tasks. Again, Mr. Narayan
stresses on the fact that from the corporate point of view, the motivation for implementing and
encouraging BYOD is increased productivity, enhanced user experience and more flexibility for users,
rather than savings in cost. According to Mr. Kiran, it is interesting to note that the growth in BYOD
mirrors the trend in two other important areas – data usage and virtualization. Data consumption
around the world has seen an explosive growth in the recent past due to better network infrastructure
and connectivity. Cisco uses a thin client known as Virtual Exchange Information (VXI), an interface
based on virtualization to provide highly secure connectivity to the company network from anywhere
and on any supported device. In 2010, Cisco introduced its popular AnyConnect VPN Client, a secure
remote login software that creates an encrypted connection from the user’s end device into the company
network. Before a foreign device is granted access to the company network, Cisco IT first checks if the
device conforms to a prerequisite set of features, known as a ‘posture’. This comprises of some basic
software such as anti-virus package, basic security agent equipped with screening intelligence to name a
few. Thereafter, device identity is established and credentials are verified. As Mr. Kiran pointed out, this
is done because the company needs to know what type of device is being granted or denied access in
order to avoid compromising on security of the network. The company is currently experimenting with
different user bases to identify the best way in which BYOD can be introduced on a larger scale beginning
with the laptops segment. However, even within Cisco, BYOD cannot be implemented throughout the
company because the sensitivity of work varies from one area to another. Another issue that IT policy
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4. makers in Cisco are grappling with is the stark difference in the architecture and development cycles of
different platforms running on handhelds such as iOS, Android and Windows. Mr. Kiran is quick in
pointing out that while Apple has a relatively longer development period for each updated version of its
iOS, Android versioning is much more rapid. Windows for the mobile platform is pretty nascent and
faces several stability issues. This is demanding scaled up efforts from Cisco IT teams who are tasked
with making access to company network available on these devices in a secure and consistent manner.
Analysis of BYOD in Enterprises
Drivers of the BYOD Phenomenon
 Devices Lead BYOD’s Promise of Delivering ‘Beyond the Buzz’: The truth is that the BYOD trend does
much more than only addressing some of operational issues which it is mostly perceived to resolve. It is
about end users being able to use the computing and communication devices of their own choice whether
purchased by the employer, purchased by the employee, or both. The fact that multiple devices exist
today for multiple needs (refer to Fig. 1 for device sales) is widely believed to ultimately make way for a
single device which will be used for all their computing and communication needs. However, most
experts seem to disagree as there will be different devices best suited to some particular uses for example
Fig. 2: PC & Non-PC Sales 2011 (in millions)
(Source: Deloitte, 2011)
laptops have larger screens, faster performance and
support
more
applications
which
tablets
and
smartphones cannot deliver. The United States and India
are already leading other countries in the percentage of
knowledge workers using mobile devices (at nearly 70
%), and countries like China and Mexico are not far
behind. This finding feeds positively into the BYOD
phenomenon as it indicates that people are using
multiple mobile devices, such as laptops, smartphones,
and tablet computers, to help them accomplish their
tasks. Supporting the above claim with some relevant numbers here, it is estimated that by the end of
2013, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed earth’s population; whereas by 2017 the
world will see over 10 billion mobile-connected devices i.e. nearly 1.4 mobile devices per person. Out of
these, 86% will be handheld or personal mobile-ready devices and not surprisingly, the biggest gain in
traffic share will come primarily from two areas: a) machine-to-machine (M2M) usage, fuelled by the
emergence of the ‘Internet of Things’ and explosion of ‘big data’ (5% of all mobile connections in 2012,
17% in 2017); b) smartphones (16 % in 2012, 27% in 2017). The highest growth area will be handheld
tablets growing at a CAGR of 46% followed by M2M at a CAGR of 36%. From an enterprise perspective, on
an average, IT leaders expect the number of computing devices to rise from 2.3 per employee in 2012 to
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5. 2.8 in 2014. Table 1 lists the increase in device units and
Type of
Device
Growth in
Devices,
2012-2017
CAGR
Growth in
Mobile Data
Traffic, 20122017 CAGR
above estimates, one can argue that BYOD, presently climbing
Smartphone
20%
81%
up its technology lifecycle curve, will continue to stay at the
Tablet
46%
113%
Laptop
11%
31%
M2M Module
36%
89%
corresponding increase in the mobile data traffic on these
devices. Based on the promising outlook established via the
‘peak of inflated expectations’ for quite some time, before
dipping down to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ point, if at all in
future. Cisco’s IBSG survey results confirm this as well since
according to the survey, 42% of smartphones and 38% of
Fig 3: Global Device Units and
Mobile Data Traffic Growth
(Source: Cisco VNI Mobile Forecast 2013)
laptops used in workplaces are now employee-owned thus showing that BYOD, far from being an
emerging trend, is already quite entrenched in enterprises.
 Highly Collaborative Applications & ‘Network as a Platform’: The latest published Cisco Visual
Networking Index (VNI) 2013 provides interesting insights about increasing IP traffic in the world. Global
mobile data traffic grew 70% in year 2012 and reached 885 petabytes per month at the end of 2012, up
from 520 petabytes per month at the end of 2011. To put things into perspective, global mobile data
traffic in 2012 (885 petabytes per month) was nearly 12 times greater than the total global Internet
traffic in 2000 (75 petabytes per month) and for the first time, mobile video traffic exceeded 50% of the
entire traffic in 2012. Cisco further forecasts 11.2 exabytes per month of mobile data traffic by the year
2017 and these figures appear conservative by all estimates since they do not reflect the tablet and
smartphone traffic that has largely remained on fixed corporate networks such as office WiFi’s etc. The
concept of ‘Network as a Platform’ has already gained momentum in enterprises as work applications,
pervasive mobility and new collaboration tools all use rich media, driving a large increase in the amount
of video and multimedia traffic traversing the network. In addition to this, as more and more enterprise
applications
get
exported
to
cloud-based
infrastructure, network data traffic can only
move in one direction, that of exploding growth.
Exabytes
per
month
Fig. 4: Worldwide Mobile Data
Traffic Forecast (2010-2017)
(Source: Cisco VNI Mobile Forecast 2013)
Interestingly, a 2012 research conducted by
Cisco points out that 47% of employees in
66% CAGR 2012-17
companies under the study were officially
designated
“mobile
workers”,
however
a
staggering 60% of employees actually use a
mobile device for work. In India alone, the
corresponding proportions are 51% and 69%
respectively.
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6.  Overlap between Work and Personal Fuels into the User’s Motivation: Most enterprises are openly
recognizing the fact that contrary to the prevalent view about work being a place where people go to, it is
actually an activity which people do. Extended connectivity through secure mobile and remote access to
the corporate network allows employees tremendous flexibility and increased productivity by blurring
the line between designated personal and work time. Mobility allows friends, family, and colleagues to
reach them at any time. Thus as employees often end up interweaving work and personal tasks, they
probably do not want to carry and switch between personal and work devices and rather use the same
device currently held in their hands to attend to all kinds of tasks including corporate work as well. In
brief, today’s knowledge worker is never really “out of the office”. BYOD is attractive because strict lines
of demarcation over what content can be accessed, downloaded, or used on a company-owned device are
blurred on a device owned by the employee giving them great control by design. A major caveat to this,
and a pretty serious one, however is that co-mingled data on the user devices may lead to security and
privacy challenges, which will be explored further in the following discussions.
 Management keeps productivity gains in mind and not cost savings: From primary discussions the
authors have had with executives in corporates and based on the secondary literature already available
on BYOD, it has been established that executives are seldom adopting this trend keeping only the
resulting cost reductions in mind. As Deliotte’s CIO Matt Peers puts it succinctly, executives must never
subscribe to that point of view by allowing themselves into a short-sighted, cost reduction mentality
which, apart from being quite counterproductive, can be outright
dangerous as well. While it may seem contrary to what BYOD was
perceived to be – another one of the cost cutting measures by
large corporates, it is found that while the cost of
procuring, customizing, maintaining, servicing and
disposing company-owned devices will definitely go
down with this policy being around, the expense of
application security, access authentication, backend infrastructure
and regulatory compliance tends to increase. Realizing this trend, the
top-of-the-mind return that corporate management is expecting from BYOD rollouts in
their organizations is a boost in employee productivity (and therefore revenues) due to
the choice and flexibility enabled by this policy. There are, however, mixed empirical results with respect
to productivity gains caused by BYOD. A recent study conducted by business communications expert Sam
H. DeKay concludes that the research does not convincingly demonstrate that BYOD improves the
productivity of employee communications and other computing functions in an organization on its own.
On the other hand, a 2012 survey of 202 BYOD decision-makers in enterprises conducted by Forrester
Consulting in the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany found that more than 80% of
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7. employees reported an increase in productivity due to BYOD as they could communicate more frequently
with co-workers from anywhere. Therefore, corporate decision-makers should give careful thought to
adopting a BYOD implementation if their primary rationale is to enhance workforce productivity.
Additionally, there will always be certain industries like investment banking and defence, where the very
nature of work will discourage the adoption of BYOD, primarily driven by the need for absolute security
of data.
Typical Use Cases for BYOD & Order of Effects
Home Workers / Telecommuters are, by default, prime BYOD candidates,
especially if they belong to the contract workforce. The freedom to use their
own personal device can lead to increased productivity. Device level and
network security needs special attention in case of telecommuters.
Mobile Workers who travel most or all the time, often to client sites
will be benefited if permitted to use their personal mobile devices or
employer-provided devices at the client location. The most secure
option for many of these workers is typically an encrypted VPNconnected secure device that accesses the virtual corporate
Fig. 5: First-Order, Second-Order and
Third-Order Effects of BYOD
network of their employer. Ensuring a ‘no local data stored’
approach i.e. all data is fetched on-demand from the corporate
server and is flushed out when the connectivity gets lost, leads
to peace of mind for IT policy enforcers as a lost laptop or a smartphone does not post a security threat to
the enterprise. Sales Professionals will largely benefit from BYOD as they can access data about the
customers and transaction history via the corporate CRM on their handheld device anytime in the field.
Permanent Employees who commute daily to office at times choose to take work home. Since they work
at night, on weekends, during holidays, while on flights and in airport lounges, most such users prefer a
handheld device they are familiar with. Here, BYOD comes to their rescue by allowing them to use their
new breed of smartphones and tablets to connect securely to the company network. Since companyprovided devices though more expensive, are more secure and easier to remotely manage, BYOD’s
successful implementation in each of the above use cases hinge heavily on addressing security and
privacy concerns.
Challenges and Risks with BYOD Adoption
Experts and IT policy enforcers across the board believe that while many of the benefits of BYOD, such as
letting users exercise their choice of using any device anywhere and anytime are accepted to add to
employees’ satisfaction, productivity and business revenues, they are somewhat antithetical to the
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8. traditional IT requirements for strict security, device service and support. Some of the key challenges that
may potentially turn BYOD into ‘Bring Your Own Demise’ are identified as follows:
 Providing Device Choice and Support to Users: Traditionally, the IT team in organizations maintained
a pre-determined list of approved workplace devices which employees could choose from, typically a
standardized desktop, laptop, and perhaps even a small, standardized set of mobile phones and
smartphones for sales workers and mobile workforce. The BYOD adoption mandates IT to essentially
support all kinds of user devices but keeping practicality in mind, it is a tough problem to solve.
Handheld consumer devices are evolving so rapidly that it is impractical to pre-approve each and every
brand and form factor. It is also somewhat impractical to expect IT organizations to have the same level
of support for each and every device that employees may bring to the workplace. The policy designers
are struggling to find a mid-way to keep supporting the BYOD vision to the farthest extent possible
within the constraints of the practical limitations of IT support and implementation. Presently, most IT
decision-makers have established, at a macro level, the types of devices they will support on their
network based their decision on unacceptable security readiness or other user experience factors.
However, the support for newer devices keeps getting added from time to time. As far as servicing the
user devices are concerned, most organizations have uniformly favoured the adoption of self-support
models with very limited or no specific device-level support from corporate IT’s side.
 Maintaining Secure Access to Corporate Network: The primary success criteria of any BYOD
implementation is to ensure security is not sacrificed. IT teams are struggling to establish the minimum
security baseline that any device must meet to be used on the corporate network, including WiFi
security, VPN access and perhaps add-on software to protect against malware. In addition, due to the
wide range of devices, it is critical to be able to identify each device connecting to the network and
authenticate both the device and the person using it. IT department needs to minimize the risk of data
loss or incursion. Securing corporate data, applications, and systems is essential for any BYOD strategy.
 On-Boarding of New Devices: Bringing in a new user device onto the network for the first time should
ideally be simple, self-service with minimal or zero IT intervention and should be clientless i.e. without
the requirement of any pre-installed software on the new device. All IT should be able to do is push
updates to the on-boarded devices as the policy mandates.
 Enforcing Company Usage Policies: Adoption of BYOD must provide a way to enforce policies in line
with explicit business requirements as well as regulatory compliance needs depending upon the
industry. This can be challenging on a wide flavour of consumer devices like tablets and smartphones.
For example, access to the Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and the usage of specific applications may
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9. be subject to different policies depending on whether the users are on their personal time and network
or whether they are accessing the corporate network during work hours. The growing usage of
unapproved collaboration tools on user devices for corporate work is a serious concern as well.
 Protection of Data and Loss Prevention: In industries bounded by strict
regulations, the IT department needs to show compliance is possible with
BYOD adoption, which can be more challenging, compared to when
corporate-owned and managed devices were involved. Cloudbased file sharing and storage services may be convenient for
personal data of employees, but can be potential sources of
leakage and information breaches for confidential corporate data.
Mobile device management (MDM) products and services often come
across as the obvious, reflexive response to the need for more secure mobile
computing, but a growing number of experts now agree that the answer to BYOD is
not to control the device (which was the case for company-owned devices), but to control the data.
Mobile Application Management (MAM) and software-based authentication is the preferred approach
among IT departments now.

Device Management and Visibility on the Network: Many of the handheld devices support multiple
connectivity modes ranging from wired and wireless Ethernet (Wf-Fi) to 3G/4G mobile networks.
Switching between these different modes during a session is common and IT needs to ensure visibility of
all the devices on the corporate network and beyond taking this into account.
 Ability to Revoke Access Privileges for Devices: Under unexpected circumstances during the lifecycle
of a device or employee, it may become necessary to terminate access to the corporate network and data
from the user’s device. This becomes a common concern in case of a lost or stolen device, employee
termination or even an employee changing roles within the company. Using MAM, IT department needs
to ensure they have the ability to immediately revoke access granted to any device and possibly wipe
some or all of the data and applications remotely from the device, if the situation demands so.
 Managing the Increase in Connected Devices: The increasing number of devices connected to the
network, most likely with each employee having more than one device simultaneously connected, can
lead to IP address starvation as most legacy IP address plans were created under the assumption of
fewer devices. This will demand that the IT department hastens the need for IPv6 deployments both
inside the enterprise network and at the network edge via to allow secure remote connections.
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10.  Keeping the Implementation Simple and Accessible for Users: Different brands and form factors of
devices may require different steps for on-boarding and getting connected to the network. The security
policies differ depending upon how and where the user is trying to connect. For example, corporate WiFi
may require only credentials, whereas connecting through a public wireless hotspot may mandate the
use of a VPN connection and increased security steps. A BYOD solution needs to be as simple as possible
for users, should be able to provide a consistent experience across device no matter where and when
users are connecting from. IT must ensure critical tasks such as mobile printing should be supported
from each of the wide range of user devices to guarantee a seamless experience.
Policy Prescriptions and Best Practices for BYOD Adoption
To address the challenges and complexities identified above, the authors prescribe the following IT policy
design and approach for BYOD rollout in any organization:
deployments are easy with users who only need low
levels of IT support, possibly using self-support
communities to share best practices. Deployments
may be more difficult with users who have high
mobility needs but also require high support levels,
such as executives. Conducting such an analysis will
help in understanding the entitlement policies and
support models and may prevent cost overruns in
the IT budget.

Low Need for Support High
 Understanding User Segments & Needs: BYOD
Admin/Clerical
Call Center/Support
Finance
Executives
Sales Reps
Healthcare Worker
IT Support
Educator/Trainer
Technical Support
Engineers
IT Staff
Technical Sales
Low
Need for Mobility
High
Fig. 6: User Segments & Needs
(Reproduced from Cisco Whitepaper)
Selecting a BYOD Adoption Strategy: The IT decision-makers need to select one out of the four levels
of adoption strategies as described in Fig. 1 earlier based on their business requirements and risk profile
of exposing users to BYOD policies.

Lost or Stolen Device Policy: The IT policy must choose one out of the different solutions with varying
degrees of capabilities to reach out to a device remotely and destroy data or applications to ensure they
remain confidential.

Choosing the Right Application & Data Strategy: Adopting the right approach towards serving data
and content on the wide array of user devices under BYOD is perhaps the most critical decision the IT
has to make. The current architecture allows the choice from among the following options:
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11. Native Application
Native
Application
Data
Centre
HTML Layer
Native Application
Data
Centre
Web
Browser
Desktop Virtualization
Client
Native Application
Desktop
Virtualization
Client
Native
- Local data on device
- Maximum performance
- Native device experience
- Offline possible
Browser
- Local data on device
- Portable to many devices
- Browser experience
- Always connectivity required
Virtual
- No local data on device
- Maximum security
- Translated experience
- Always connectivity required
Data
Centre
Fig. 7: Application & Data Mode Choices in a Typical BYOD Deployment
(Reproduced from Cisco Bring Your Own Device - Device Freedom without Compromising
the IT Network Public Whitepaper, April 18, 2012)

The Human Factor - User Cooperation & Change Management: Under BYOD, where the real benefit
for the employee comes into play is the concept of working your way (WYW) as Cisco calls it, but often
there are cultural and generational mindsets that make it difficult for employees to see value in this
change. CEOs, CIOs and executives in organizations need to dig deeper to find out if their employees are
culturally ready and mature enough to adopt the WYW life for success. The change leaders need to
understand and communicate the benefits of BYOD clearly: a) great place to work; b) work-life balance;
c) reputation; d) employee loyalty and turnover and e) long term socio-economic impact of adopting a
more flexible work style. Change management needs to be carried out in a careful manner to avoid
alienation of older employees who may not see much value in moving away from the current model of
work owing to a variety of reasons like loss of dedicated space, disturbances from family, out-of-pocket
costs, socializing nature vs isolation, productivity, change in management style and company culture.
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12. Conclusion
Old Wine in a New Bottle? The authors conclude that BYOD is not a new concept altogether. For years now,
there have been a minority of disgruntled users, employees who cannot abide by company-prescribed
devices. Mac users, for example, have always fought against the predominance of Windows laptops at work,
claiming they hinder productivity. For an entire generation, now in their thirties and beyond, the primary
means of content consumption was the PC/Mac, followed by the laptop. Naturally, these evolved to be fullfledged productivity enhancing devices, to the point where the idea of doing any work without a laptop
became inconceivable. However, a paradigm shift has been observed in the way the next generation of
employees are perceiving handhelds. For this new generation, the idea of demarcating work and their
private life seems unnecessary and therefore, they expect to be able to surf the web, play games, connect to
their office workstations, text, chat and e-mail on any and all of their devices. This is the demographic that is
primarily going to drive BYOD adoption in companies, as they try to engage with employees and provide
them with a flexible work environment.
BYOD as a Source of Competitive Advantage: In a stark difference when compared to the previous cycle of
smartphone adoption by enterprises, this time, the CIOs across the board are thinking long-term by talking
about BYOD as a source competitive advantage - in enabling retention of the best talent and employee
satisfaction and in higher productivity, allowing work from anywhere, on any device. In this endeavour,
many companies are actively developing apps and endpoint protection services for tablets and smartphones.
Some companies are also trying to pre-empt new releases of phones (like the iPhone 5), so that users can
have a seamless transition. In public forums and site meetings, CIOs are making all the right noises about
empowering employees and reduced controls, banking on improved productivity to pay off their
investments in this early adoption of this new trend. This optimism surrounding BYOD, however, needs to be
supported wholeheartedly by IT departments by finding ways to efficiently provide secure connectivity and
consistent user experience across the ever-growing pool of devices with different form factors and brands.
How will the Future Evolve? On a final note, the authors speculate tthe road ahead and what BYOD can
make possible in the long term. Globally, 89% of IT leaders from both enterprises and midsize companies
support BYOD in some form and 69 % view BYOD “somewhat” or “extremely” positively. Companies are
slowly developing a vision for BYOD in the workplace which ties into their long term strategy, of which
telecommuting may become a habit for a majority of employees. The world could be at the cusp of a
breakthrough – one where companies break out of cubicles and mostly fixed office hours to become truly
‘virtual enterprises’. The transformative benefit of BYOD lies in employee-driven innovation — by allowing
employees to decide how, when, and with which tools work is done, adopters of BYOD can potentially unlock
the next wave of value. Rather than rushing in for an unplanned deployment in their organization, by
fostering BYOD with proper management policies and strong governance model, companies can harness a
latent and potent source of gaining competitive advantage over others in the business arena.
Handheld Devices & BYOD: Are Enterprises There Yet?
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13. References
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Mobile-Friendly Workplaces, Lev-Ram, Michal, Fortune; 8/13/2012, Vol. 166 Issue 3
Gartner: Enterprises Must Adopt Tablets Early, Channel Insider; 4/6/2011
Business Embraces Tablets - With Caution, Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek, 10/3/2011
BYOD Finds Increasing Support Among Businesses, Nathan Eddy, eWeek, 1/9/2013
Cisco ConnectedWorld Technology Report, Published by Cisco Systems Inc., 2011
BYOD: Enabling The Chaos, Gordon Thomson, Cisco Security EMEA Article
The iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report (Q4 2012), iPass Inc. 2012
BYOD: OMG! or A-OK?, SC Magazine: For IT Security Professionals, Sept/Oct 2012
Are you ready for the BYOD yet?, David Raths, T.H.E. Journal, May 2012
Study: IT Saying Yes To BYOD, ‘the network’ - Cisco’s Technology News Site, 5/16/2012
IT Consumerization: When Gadgets Turn Into Enterprise IT Tools, MIS Quarterly Executive, Sept. ’12
It Shift to Tablets – Have You Prepared?, Puneesh Chaudhry, SiliconIndia, July 2012
Visual Networking Index – IP Traffic Chart, Cisco Visual Networking Index
BYOD: A Global Perspective - Harnessing Employee-Led Innovation, Cisco Internet Business Solutions
Group Horizons (Survey Report), Joseph Bradley, Jeff Loucks, James Macaulay, Richard Medcalf,
Lauren Buckalew, 2012
For BYOD Best Practices, Secure Data, Not Devices, Thor Olavsrud, ComputerWorld Article
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Policies Affect Everyone, Peter S. Vogel, 5/18/2012, Link
Enterprise Security Challenges in the Emerging BYOD Era, CMR Research, Link
Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017, Link
Bring Your Own Device – Agility Through Consistent Delivery, PWC Advisory Services Report
Cisco Bring Your Own Device - Device Freedom without Compromising the IT Network Public
Whitepaper, 4/18/2012
Handheld Devices & BYOD: Are Enterprises There Yet?
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