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Most Companies Will Require You To Bring Your Own Mobile Device By 2017
Lucas123 writes "Half of all employers will require workers to supply their own mobile devices for work purposes by 2017, according to a new Gartner study. Enterprises that offer only corporately-owned smartphones or stipends to buy your own will soon become the exception to the rule in the next few years. As enterprise BYOD programs proliferate, 38% of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and let them use their own, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner. At the same time, security remains the top BYOD concern. 'What happens if you buy a device for an employee and they leave the job a month later? How are you going to settle up? Better to keep it simple. The employee owns the device, and the company helps to cover usage costs,' said David Willis, a distinguished analyst at Gartner."
As enterprise BYOD programs proliferate, 38% of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016 and let them use their own
Do they get to monitor communications or wipe my own device now if anything goes wrong?
At my company there is a lot of internal chatter about BYOD, along with the security concerns (especially in terms of IP).
My stance: Just say no to BYOD. If my company deems it necessary for me to use a portable electronic device to perform my job, then either:
a) They supply it, and it remains company property, or
b) There is no option b
I don't want a smart phone. I choose not to use one - I only care to have a simple phone that does the bare minimum. If they want me to have a smart phone, they'd better provide it for me because I will not spend my own money for a device I choose not to have. Under Australian law (to which I am subject) I don't believe a company can force you to provide your own equipment.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Yeah, this happened to me once too. My boss was quite personally hurt when I handed in my letter of resignation AND rejected his counter offer to pay. My reasoning:
1. Never accept counter offers - this means that your employer is not paying you what you're really worth, and means that you'll always have to threaten to leave to get paid a fair amount.
2. Never accept counter offers - it's just a method for them to change the timing of when you leave to something more convenient to them.
If more people had the guts to trust in their own abilities, we would all be better off.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The mobile management software that's out there (and used by some companies that allow BYOD) works just fine on unlocked/rooted phones.
LegendMUD
I remember talking with a very successful businessman a long time ago. He asked me if I knew the diference between a job and a career? I said no. He said, it's simple, in a career you get screwed out of your overtime.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
A company paying $75 or so for monthly smartphone service pays for itself many times over in keeping employees tethered to the business and available for around-the-clock email and messaging. I expect companies will continue paying for service even for BYOD shops. If forcing employees to purchase a phone discourages them from using a phone for work then it will be a huge loss for companies.
This is how it works where I am (Fortune 500 technology company). The company pays all the service, including my personal calls and data use, and I pay for the phone. They negotiate shorter contract terms and lower up-front device costs. I get my choice of carriers and devices. They also negotiate discounted service pricing for my family.
The company does not wipe my entire device when I disconnect it from their system and remove their MDM, they just delete their content and leave everything else alone. They do enforce screen lock timeouts and require a PIN or password. They will wipe my device in its entirety if it's stolen.
This is a sane BYOD policy that balances the desire of the employees to have a choice in their electronic tether with their needs to secure their IP.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
That is what's done to hourly (especially to min wage workers) workers all the time. They deduct for background checks, uniforms, etc ....
Not generally lawful
Cellphones are one of the absolute most personal things ever created. Imagine if there's a legal dispute, and your company subpoena's your cellphone, or because you are using it for work, naturally asume they have the right to look at everything you've done. Oh, you're carefully protected friends list?, theirs. Your banking information?, theirs. Your pornography collection, (whether or not you've actually used it for such at work), theirs. Wife sends you a teasing pic during the day, which your forgot to delete, Manager looks at it, fired for sexual harassment.
In an ideal world, they wouldn't have access to anything on your phone, but the way things are going, anything used for work is considered fair game.
Also, yes, security, but that's nothing compared to the privacy implications.
1) Take a short and small trend.
2) Do a linear extrapolation that shows a ridiculous result.
3) ????
4) Profit
ObXKCD
Should I be buying my own desk? My own chair? Hell, my cubicle walls are clearly my responsibility too, right? If a company thinks an employee needs something for their job, then they should provide it.
Um no.
I'm the employee, you are the employer.
I come in ready to work, you supply the tools for me to work.
The tools are yours, you can monitor, adjust, replace, revoke, and have Orwellian standards on them. That's because you employed me and provided them.
Past that? fuck off.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Exactly. My company doesn't "technically" allow BYOD (though I imagine that enough pressure from users with the magic "Vice President" in their title will eventually change that), but even so I could totally use my phone. I have a work-provided device which uses ActiveSync, and nobody would ever really know I set my own phone up to receive company mail if I didn't tell them.
But fuck that. Using a separate device for work means that when I'm not on call or otherwise required to be available, I leave it at home and nobody can even attempt to reach me. My direct boss has my personal number for emergencies that might come up, but nobody else. I would never consider giving up the work/life separation that using two different devices affords. I work 40 hours a week, not 168.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I work for a foosball table manufacturer, you insensitive clod!
Gartner is so incredibly wrong here. You can't control a plethora of devices connecting to your office network. In reality, you'll have to assume that all devices that connect to you are inherently evil and users using them will be snooped on and their logon credentials will get sniffed. This means you first have to "weaponize" every application you run on your IT infrastructure and make it available as a web service. You'll have to issue two-factor authentication that uses a dynamic element such as a challenge/response hardware key generator. Only when you have everything like that in place, you can "safely" start using BYOD in a corporate environment. By then, there is no more need for people to actually be in the office to do their work, apart from meetings. For meetings, you can always call in or video conference from home. Effectively, the only way to pay for this is to quit renting office space and go completely virtual. Because you no longer rent office space, renting a separate server room will cost you dearly and you'll need your admins to have office space close to that room, so you're still running a brick company. Going to "the cloud" will be more or less mandatory for such a company, from an economic view point. I don't see a significant amount of companies do all this within the next four years. I do see a lot trying to save a few bucks on the abysmal hardware budgets they already have and fail horribly at productivity and security and reverse their decisions, spending much more in the process and not gaining anything.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Unionize.
Awesome, so as an employee *I* have to pay for my $700 smartphone -AND- the expectation will exist that I will be monitoring emails nights and weekends?
What a bargain for your employer, by chipping in $50-100/mo to pay for a fraction of your service plan, they get up to 20 hours per week of additional work out of you, according to this study:
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/byod-trend-is-making-employees-work-an-extra-20-hours-per-week-report-suggests-2012-08-22
This, on top of inflation-adjusted real wages that have not increased since 1973:
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/04/16/the-best-indicator-of-u-s-health-is-wage-growth-or-lack-thereof/
Slashdot headline next summer: "BYO Desk all the rage among newer workers"
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.