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Who Should Own Your Smartphone?
snydeq writes "The great corporate barrier against employees using personal smartphones in business contexts has been breached, writes InfoWorld's Galen Gruman. According to a recent report from Forrester Research, half of the smartphones in use among US and Canadian businesses are not company-issued equipment. In fact, some organizations are even subsidizing employees' service plans as an easy way to avoid the procurement and management headaches of an increasingly standard piece of work equipment. Gruman discusses the pros and cons of going with a subsidized, employee-owned smartphone plan, which is part of a larger trend that sees IT loosening its grip on 'dual-use' devices, including laptops and PCs."
The personal phone I carry is none of my IT department's business, and I like it that way--thank you very much. I don't want to EVER get into a situation where my workplace has a legal case for subpoenaing my personal phone.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm going to have to go with "Me", Regis.
I have no problem using or not using it for work. If they want something specific, they can feel free to shell for it.
As far as "connecting" to the network, I have no issue with what you use, assuming it isn't a device made for malevolence. However, when you come running into my office at 4:56 wanting help with your $latest_awesome_phone, that I know nothing about, then I start to wonder if letting you use your home device for work was a good idea. Or when you want me to enable IMAP because that's all that a single employee's phone supports (and we use Exchange/MAPI like most similar companies), then again, I wonder why we let people use personal devices.
But it is great to think of dumping all the procurement/management onto the end user...
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Or when you want me to enable IMAP because that's all that a single employee's phone supports (and we use Exchange/MAPI like most similar companies), then again, I wonder why we let people use personal devices.
You know, because ticking a single box to enable IMAP is hard. And because you wouldn't want to allow pretty much every device under the sun, rather than a few in the exclusive have-paid-microsoft/are-microsoft club to connect.
I'll let the 'environment control me' when I get a budget large enough to take on whatever the end-users can throw at me. Until that unlikely day occurs I will continue to control my environment, extending it as much as my budget allows. To do anything else is fiscally irresponsible and simply bad for business regardless of what you think.
I can't agree with you. IT's job is to keep the network and devices running. Not to be jerked around by the latest whims of the users. IT has responsibilities beyond making the users happy. If that can be accomplished while continuing to ensure the safety and security of the network, fine. But dropping a random device into the network is irresponsible. And unencrypted IMAP may not be acceptable use to some companies. So it's more than "just ticking a checkbox".