BYOD - Bring your own device

Quite often we hear about BYOD-Bring your own device term. Is it a  new trend? or just a passing fad?

Lot of companies have been encouraging employees' to bring their own mobile device to work. This gives employees flexibility and increases productivity. Employees can connect to office network from home, while traveling, and even in coffee shops and perform their important tasks. Mobile apps,  Iphone, Ipad , tablets and many other software support BYOD phenomena. It definitely sounds interesting. But whether it is good for the companies or not..is yet to be decided.

BYOD definitely gives employees flexibility to work in odd hours, work away from office and work on urgent issues as and when required. This increases employee's productivity as employees are more comfortable using their own devices. In most companies employees need to pay for their data plan , mobile charges which reduces cost for the companies as well. So if the BYOD policy is implemented after giving a well discussed thought, definitely its a win-win situation for employees and employers.

But it comes with a cost! IT department not only has to set up infrastructure in place for desktop virtualization etc but they also have to keep security aspects in mind. Using own device to carry out business work can lead to leakage of sensitive data and information which can be very expensive for the companies. Some industries have mandate regulatory compliance rules and implementing BYOD in these industries is tough as nails.

Many business apps are compatible for apple ios , android etc and can be easily used by employees. But IT companies need to make sure which apps need more network space and bandwidth , and which takes less and accordingly assign to apps.


I thin it is here to stay but companies need to be careful about security aspects as well as the cost to implement it.