Recently the talk is all about Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD) to work. We are not only talking about accessing emails using your own device, but also about accessing your workspace and your corporate applications and documents.
Accessing emails is the easy part, not the rest though. Technically, it looks quite simple but most users will not think about security. How do you secure the corporate identity and documents?
The problem with bringing your own device to work is that the device is still your personal asset. If the IT department tightens the security of your device too much, it will seem that your personal device becomes a corporate asset. If they do not tighten the security, the corporate assets are not well protected. They are trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Some say that virtualisation is the answer, but do the math and you find that it doesn't add up. A simple Windows machine requires at least 2 cores and 4 GB of ram. Assuming that you have a blade server that has 40 cores and 96 GB ram, each blade server can only take about 20 users. How many blade servers do you need for the whole organisation? How about the network bandwidth allocation? I believe 20 laptops cost less than 1 blade server with 40 cores and 96 GB ram.
Unless your corporate applications consist of all web applications, BYOD may not work for your organisation. This is assuming that your personal device is able to edit the documents that is being stored on a central server.
Based on the current technology, I'm not sure how BYOD will map out. It doesn't yet seem to be a cost effective solution.
2 comments:
I think that companies should supply devices for their employees if security is an issue. They should also make sure employees understand the importance of security.
Yes, that is correct. That is why I think BYOD may not go further than accessing emails. It's just too tricky to manage a device that is not yours.
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