What is Driving BYOC?

[#1]

As a request from a number of businesses, I am writing a detailed white paper regarding BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer). It is clear from all of the questions and momentum, that this initiative is not going to go away in the short term, and in fact will be mainstream at some point in the future. In the upcoming white paper I will be providing a point of view.

This blog posting is to provide some thoughts on today where the BYOC is being driven in the enterprise, it may surprise you

But first, the disclaimer. All of the opinions stated on this blog are mine and do not represent those of my employer.

Based upon my research and observations, there are five forces that are driving BYOC:

-End user requests

-New hires

-Consumerization

-Tops down

-Incumbency

Let's quickly discuss each of these, and as always, I am very interested in your thoughts and opinions.

There will always be a group of end users, that no matter what IT does, and whatever IT provides, simply will not find what they are seeking. In some cases given their jobs and talents, it may well be appropriate. There are others that simply want "what they want". For these end users, BYOC legitimizes their anxiety over IT.

New hires represent an interesting case as well. Because of the Great Recession many businesses extended the useful life of desktops and laptops. It is totally reasonable for the consumer owned devices to be newer and more current than the business devices. To recruit new talent with a 4 or 5 way old laptop may not be cool, so new hires drive BYOC in some of the scenarios. At a minimum the new hires secure the newest internal devices (on another blog we can discuss the impact of this on the organization)

Consumerization is catching up to the enterprise PC, but there are still significant enough differences to warrant a separate device (in my opinion). However, given the consumerization you will see more convergence and desire to have a BYOC because a consumer PC is a personal not a business device, and therefore offers perceived benefits.

In a surprisingly high number, it is the senior leadership that introduces and drives BYOC. Listening to end users, seeking to add the "wow" factor, and not necessarily checking with IT, HR or security, tops down buys into the leadership role  and quite often like Captain Picard of Star Trek declares to "make it happen' directives.

Lastly, think about this - if you are not the incumbent enterprise provider, or have a large installed base, BYOC is a  great disruptive strategy. Instead of discussing the 80% optimization and costs, the conversation is about a cool device that represents a very small niche of end users.

When you add all of these drivers together, add to this all of the interconnecting points, and the impact of the aging PC fleet due to the Great Recession, it is an interesting mix.

There will be a point in time, in the short term, where virtualization, cloud computing and hypervisor can make this reality occur, but that is for the more detailed white paper and blog postings to come.

[#2]

Hi Bruce,

It certainly one that pops up regularly for me, as the ageing fleet in majority of businesses is creaking at the seams, where it has chosen not to lifecycle the hardware, and has little interest in forecasting replacement of these devices.

One thing that stands out for me is the difference between consumer and corporate responsiblity in the BYOC situation, and the current attempts to blend personal and business use on the same device.

I'd be interested to see your views on HR and Security departments involvement around policy in this also as part of your whitepaper, as to me, the technology is the easy part.

Best Regards, Neil

[#3]

Disclaimer - All of the opinions stated on this blog are mine and do not represent those of my employer.

Bruce,

I think one thing often overlooked as a driver for BYOC, or perhaps should be restated as BYOD for Bring Your Own Device, is the "now" generation.  When you and I were high-school we probably started thinking about what to do with our friends on Friday night on Saturday morning the preceding week.  Fast forward to present time … our kid’s text each other at 5:00 on Friday afternoon for what they want to do that night.

Executives look at (or maybe the experience with their kids) how quickly things can happen.  IT departments, charged with operational excellence, look at the expense of operations, business continuity, and support (of a diverse set of users many of which did not grow up with immediate access to technology).

I think the driver is not necessarily lower cost to the enterprise (the cost of the notebook hardware is a fraction of the total cost of providing a seat to an employee) but, speed and agility.  We actually saw a similar phenomenon with the introduction of the PC way back in the late 80’s early 90’s.  Many Data Center directors thought PC’s were toys and would be a passing fad because everyone depended on the IT staff to write reports …. Little did we know at the time, what the impact users having access to spreadsheet applications would be on the IT department.

Now, we are beginning to see the impact of "immediate and relevant" applications on driving a new experience.

Coop