How Does the Cloud Help Businesses Successfully Adopt BYOD Programs?
Changing economic conditions and increasing business infrastructure needs have made it critical for businesses to create optimized IT solutions. With that in mind, ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) is a new buzz term in IT circles, a policy that allows employees to corporate networks. BYOD programs have become increasingly popular because it can improve employee productivity levels.
Gone are the days when each employee had to use different electronic devices for different purposes. For instance, top management folks might use a desktop, a laptop and two or three mobile devices. Today, the revolution in the mobile segment has made it possible to use a single high-end device to handle all the business activities of an employee. When a company allows the BYOD policy, employees can carry one personal device to connect to work networks, access data and emails, and attend to personal and business calls as well. Integration of business processes makes life easier for employees.
Second, employees feel happier if they are allowed to use a specific brand. If you love Android phones, you can use an Android phone. Psychologically, the employee feels more comfortable on an Android phone, and this spills over into job satisfaction, improving productivity levels. In addition, employees have the expertise to operate their chosen devices efficiently. So, businesses processes run at a faster pace. And employees will take extra care while handling their personal devices.
Third, a BYOD environment offers the flexibility for employees to work from home. Whether you are in the office, at home or traveling, business processes can still be managed effectively. Video conferencing is a vital aspect of business delegations. With a BYOD environment, video conferencing can be efficiently arranged.
What about security?
While everyone talks about the immense benefits of BYOD policies, corporate data security is a concern. Businesses have to deal with growing online threats, network intrusions, and license agreements. In addition, the IT team needs to handle new requests for adding personal devices into the network every day. Stolen or lost devices create another headache for data management teams. Although higher security policies are in place, they cannot comprehensively manage BYOD environments. Cloud computing technologies offer the flexibility for businesses to effectively handle BYOD issues. For more on this, check out GMO Cloud’s Security Page.
In a BYOD environment, businesses need to implement intuitive mobile device management solutions (MDM). Cloud-based MDM solutions allow businesses to overcome security challenges. Every device that accesses the network goes through an authentication process. Personal devices within the network are given specific privileges based on certain criteria like location, designation, group and IP address. ‘Containerized’ data allows you to protect critical data from getting leaked. Corporate data is isolated from other mobile apps. In a traditional IT infrastructure, this is not possible.
By implementing powerful cloud-based infrastructure, businesses can use the power of a BYOD environment to speed up the performance. The key to success in business lies in how quickly company can adapt to technological changes. BYOD is the new trend. Businesses that embrace this new concept have a better chance of staying ahead of competition.
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About the Guest Author:
Kaushik Das is an engineer, research analyst and a technical writer in the areas wireless, IT, enterprise software, next-generation hosting, storage and renewable energy. He specializes in competitive analysis, market research, industry insights, white paper and actionable web content development.
