Why is byod important

End-users now expect to be able to use their own devices, and IT needs to facilitate that behavior. How do you enable a BYOD policy when it comes to delivering software to students across campus? The days of corporate IT providing managed desktop-type computer devices are dwindling. This is apparent throughout the corporate, Higher Ed and public sector industries.

The wider benefits vary largely by industry and the use case for BYOD:. Productivity gains — Bring your own device is widely implemented in a business setting to take advantage of the employee productivity gains that come from giving staff access to key IT resources and applications on-demand, on any device. If your employees already have their own devices that are ready to use — most of which are mobile and they keep with them at all times — then enabling the access of organization-provisioned resources on those devices will see businesses see huge gains in:.

Get your employees up and running faster and get them doing their job quicker, without IT getting in the way, and see the output of your workforce increase massively.

Your users want to and will use their own devices to access work resources. This could mean malicious applications and known security threats, respectively. Hospitals or similar bodies are making it increasingly easy for users from both sides of the organization to access key resources, in terms of:. BYOD has grown in healthcare for entirely different reasons to its growth in business.

Within a healthcare environment, for example, the cost of distributing hospital-managed computing devices is very high. Delivering a managed desktop or device to the entire workforce within just a single hospital alone is a huge overhead and needs an extensive IT provision to support it.

It has achieved this by:. Although the second point may sound like a risk to patient data, it is in fact necessary when it comes to sharing medical advice between multiple healthcare organizations.

If you combine increased access with the need for hour response, BYOD becomes a necessity. In fact, BYOD in healthcare can arguably have a bigger impact than any other industry, as it has the potential to save lives and improve the health of millions of people, worldwide. Indeed, the setup of IT within universities and colleges — and schools — is extremely complex, so much so that BYOD can provide a wide range of benefits. Taking all these factors into account, this makes for a very difficult-to-support IT environment.

As you can imagine, with that environment comes a wide variety of challenges, no more so when it comes to delivering key IT resources to managed devices across campus; and sometimes across multiple campuses. If we take delivering software to end-user devices as an example, how do you deliver all those academic applications to any managed device the university owns? Well, doing just that is very difficult, and usually requires a multi-million-dollar VDI investment virtual desktops to satisfy all the student demands.

With that, they expect to be able to just use their own device to do what they need to do. The benefits also extend to the students themselves. Enabling BYOD means students get the flexibility and mobility they expect.

They can work from anywhere and anytime they want, for example:. Students hate having to go to a certain place at a set time just to get access to a single application. By using EdTech to enable a BYOD policy, you can improve student outcomes by delivering resources on-demand to student-owned devices. Any academic application, any device, anywhere, anytime. Arrange a demonstration of AppsAnywhere, how it works and what it's capable of.

There will be as much time as you need during the demonstration to pose your questions on BYOD and how AppsAnywhere can slot into your university's software delivery systems and processes. By far the biggest risk is not having any sort of BYOD policy in place. Network security is paramount.

In addition to addressing immediate needs, the right solution will be scalable and manageable, and can grow with an organisation as its mobility strategy evolves and changes. Coates outlines three stages for implementing a BYOD policy, starting with secure device management.

Let employees work on mobile devices and make sure nothing catastrophic happens. This leads to great improvements in productivity and loyalty. First by tracking and deploying mobile applications and then establishing mobile collaboration through secure app-to-app workflows, where mobility can be a true catalyst for change.

There are already several key players providing BYOD solutions, ranging from complete sandboxed access through to more lightweight but user-friendly solutions, which are policy-driven. The key issue is to guard against data loss or leakage. Smith has some practical advice for anyone trying to develop a BYOD policy: "Where any device accesses or stores corporate data, a full risk assessment should be carried out against a variety of threats, and appropriate mitigations put in place.

This could include anti-malware, encryption, passcodes, remote wipe, preventing jailbreaking, and sandboxing. An effective BYOD solution will enable you to secure the data, not just the device. With this approach, IT departments need not worry about compromising security in the name of usability. Just consider the hours your employees spend commuting: work-related information received during this time is all the more likely to be seen and acknowledged immediately.

This is a compromise which many workers will gladly accept, especially if clear guidelines have been established that aim to minimize discontent. BYOD is part of workplace flexibility, which millennials in particular value as being one of the key factors leading to job satisfaction. Workplace flexibility in general increases loyalty, morale, and employee engagement. Personnel who are allowed to decide on the tools they use and choose where they use them have a greater work—life balance and are, as a result, not only more productive but also less likely to take sick days or leave the company.

As for non-desk or remote workers, they have limited options for getting connected. Have you ever tried to calculate just how much money it would cost to provide all of your employees with corporate, mobile devices?

This cost can now be shifted from the company to the employee. Once your employees are allowed to bring their own devices to work there are certain questions that need to be answered. Below are five topics that every BYOD policy should cover.

In general, our customers have experienced few if any problems with BYOD. Tracking and testing internal communications is a must. Do you have a game plan? See how measuring these six metrics can help you prove the value of work. See how three companies launched their mobile communication apps in record time.