Is Cloud service support a requirement for BYOD?
Unfortunately, much of the focus of this movement has been on the devices themselves instead of the business and personal drivers. BYOD is not really about the devices, but about the secure access to information from enterprises and other providers in a simple to use and flexible fashion.
If you have any experience with technology devices, you will recognize that there are thousands of options available on the market today, with the average American operating 6.6 mobile devices by the end of 2011. The life span of these devices is measured in months, so any approach that depends on a limited selection of product versions from even a single vendor will not stand the test of time.
While the number of smartphones and tablets has exploded over the past few years, there are other devices that users will expect to use to access corporate applications, some of which we can’t even imagine today. Consider the number of “consumer devices” such as 200 Million game controllers and 40 Million e-Readers which have the ability to connect to the internet. Additionally, there are the televisions, blue-ray players, and other consumer devices that are propagating throughout homes. What role they may play? Should the CIO decide that for the employee base?
Information Technology is only at the start of this journey, since the device count is likely to explode to 30 billion, 50 billion devices worldwide by 2020. Applications for these environments will all need testing and life cycle management. So strategic planning will be required both at the enterprise and the application levels.
This kind of explosion in capability is exactly why HP has been focused on converged cloud. There are a range of functionality required some best addressed by private, some public cloud capabilities. There is also a need to test and spin up environments using a variety of operating systems and underlying software -- like we’ve never seen before. Enabling organizations to address these needs in a repeatable, highly productive fashion is an area HP is putting its innovation shoulder behind. One-size-fits-all does not match an enterprise’s needs. HP's effort is on services that enable choice, confidence and consistency -- that is what will be required to address the flexible needs of the business and all these devices.
