BYOD

While the UC vendor community still emphasizes the importance of mobility, one topic that doesn't get nearly enough attention is mobile security. Fortunately, there have been a number of developments that had improved the overall ability to secure sensitive information on or accessible through mobile devices, but organizations still must take steps to put them in place. And unfortunately, many organizations still seem to feel that "denial" is an adequate approach to security.

BYOD, BYOC, BYOE...Alphabet soup...Net is...telecom, network and applications support, nightmare for IT departments

Like many folks who are early adopters, we jumped into the BYOD game as we thought it would be good for the bottom line, particularly since we have a flexible, virtual workforce combining dedicated FOX group professionals, combined with subject matter experts that we bring in as and when required.

IT research firm Gartner, Inc. has predicted that by 2016, 20 percent of enterprise BYOD programs will not succeed because their mobile device management (MDM) implementations would be too restrictive.

As we move into a new year, it's clear that the accelerating changes in communications capabilities are affecting corporate purchases and usage, especially for voice communications. The growth in mobile, in peer-to-peer communication, in communications capabilities embedded into business applications software, in new devices, in BYOD, in WebRTC - all these and more are changing personal and corporate communication patterns.

BYOD, mobile devices, and cloud applications are scrutinized for the risks they pose to corporate security. Fifty-two percent of IT decision makers said that workers have read or seen corporate documents that they were not given access to, while 45 percent believed that employees within their organization were willing to sell company data if the right price was offered, according to a new study by SailPoint Technologies, Inc., an identity and access management (IAM) provider.

Through the first three quarters of 2013, there was a steady rise in the corporate purchasing of smartphones, according to Strategy Analytics. This may suggest that enterprises are rethinking the extent by which their BYOD programs are allowed to grow.

In the third quarter of 2013, 73 million smartphone units were bought directly by business users or by companies for their business users. This represents an increase of 34 percent in excess of the total sales volume of business smartphones a year ago.

Smartphones and tablets have changed the landscape of business applications, expanding end user multimodal access to information and people for both consumers and enterprise employees. BYOD concerns have required organizations to find a way to keep job-related activities separate from personal use of a user's mobile device. This was done with technology described as "dual persona" container sandboxing on the mobile device, where the business container is controlled by the organization, and the user controls the personal container.