Depending on your perspective, consumerisation of IT is either one of the biggest challenges that CIOs and IT managers must come to grips with, or a buzzword that is quickly becoming threadbare from overuse. There are many signs, however, that this is a trend that few companies will be able to ignore for much longer.
One recent IDC study surveying IT managers from around the world found that leading companies - about a fifth of IDC's sample - are already emphasising the need for the IT organisation to work closely with business decision-makers to integrate consumer technologies into a wide range of customer-facing programmes and internal business initiatives.
Gartner, meanwhile, projects that by 2014, 90% of organisations will support corporate applications on personal devices.
This trend is ripe with both threat and opportunity for the IT department. IDC says the consumerisation of IT creates many new opportunities, including increased employee productivity, improved customer interactions, and faster and more agile business operations and decision-making.
But it also results in significant IT management and security challenges as end-users start to access corporate systems and data with their own tablet computers, smartphones and even notebooks.
South African companies are also wrestling with what this change in the way end-users use IT means for their businesses. Even a company like Vodacom, which one would imagine to be at the leading edge of using mobile technology, is still trying to figure what consumerisation will mean for its workforce. It's in the early phases of creating a coherent policy for mobile device management.
Vodacom has around 6 000 employees. At least 60% of them could be considered to be mobile, depending on how one defines it. Most employees depend on their mobile phones for e-mail at the very least - e-mail is still the killer mobile application, says Chris Lazarus, managing executive for Vodacom Business.
In addition, it also supports a range of mobile business applications such as the SAP and Oracle enterprise software as well as the K2 workflow system. There are also a few specialist apps for managers and technicians, such as push-based alerts and notifications for technical faults at base stations.
Subtle encouragement
Four or five years ago, Vodacom subtly encouraged employees to use the BlackBerry platform, but did not sustain this policy over the years, says Lazarus. The approach has evolved organically to allow staff to choose whatever platform they want to, he adds.
Before usage of mobile data exploded, there was no real reason for companies to care about which cellphones their end-users bought.
says Gabi Strijp.
BlackBerry is still the dominant platform, but there has been significant uptake of the Apple iPhone among executive users. There is a smattering of Android as well, with adoption growing strongly over the past year. A number of users have also bought Apple iPads for work purposes.
Consumer IT devices have been infiltrating the corporate workforce for just about as long as the cellphone has existed. But before usage of mobile data exploded, there was no real reason for companies to care about which cellphones their end-users bought with their own money or with a company subsidy, says Gabi Strijp, executive head of business mobility at Vodacom Business.
The question of whether to opt for an employee-liable model for device ownership, where the employee is directly responsible for his or her cellphone account, or a corporate-liable approach, where the company directly pays the bill, is the starting point for a mobile policy, says Lazarus. This will play a major role in determining how much control a company has over the devices its end-users choose.
Vodacom - like many other companies - initially cared more about how much money users were spending on their cellphone packages each month than what they were doing on the corporate network with mobile devices, says Lazarus. Over the years, Vodacom has shifted away from company-liable cellphones to employee-liable devices for the simple reason that it involves far less administration.
“It is easier to say to an employee, 'Here's a R1 000 allowance each month for your cellphone'. Give us the cellphone number but we don't want to know which operator or device you chose,” says Lazarus. If a user wanted to spend more each month to buy the latest device, Vodacom saw no reason to object.
“Even in our wildest dreams, we didn't think about standardising,” says Lazarus. “Nobody, including ourselves, foresaw the impact that data applications would have on the market.”
By 2014, 90% of organisations will support corporate applications on personal devices, according to Gartner.
Gartner
But now that end-users expect to be allowed to choose their working tools, Vodacom has realised that trying to enforce a standard from the top down would be futile.
Consumerisation may have started with mobile devices, but it seems unlikely to end there. Already, some employees at Vodacom are bringing a range of notebooks and tablet computers that they bought themselves to work.
“Five years ago, the IT department would not have supported Apple Macs,” says Lazarus. “But senior executives are bringing them into the organisation. Today, the business dictates what the productivity tools are.”
“Almost every part of this [scenario] goes completely against the teaching of the average IT guy,” says Strijp. “No one wants to support Microsoft and some other platform in the environment.”
Semi-rigid approach
Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, one of SA's largest full service corporate and commercial law firms, takes a less flexible approach to policy management. The law firm was one of the first companies in SA to adopt the BlackBerry smartphone platform in 2005. It distributed devices to partners in the law firm, some attorneys and senior administrative managers.
Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr initially took the decision to standardise to reduce supports costs as well as to introduce consistency and reliability into the environment. Since then, the firm has moved away from a completely rigid mobile device policy to what national IT manager at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr Ralph Hopkins describes as a 'semi-rigid' approach.
It expanded the range of devices end-users may use on the company network to include Apple iPhones. Today, around 90% of the firm's users are on BlackBerry devices and the balance use iPhones. iPads are also creeping into the infrastructure.
The firm is happy with this approach since both the Apple and BlackBerry platforms integrate tightly with Microsoft Exchange and offer a range of tools that can be used to secure devices and enforce policies, says Hopkins. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server software provides a full range of policy management tools.
iPhone deployment options on Microsoft Exchange, meanwhile, include support for mobile device management, which enables businesses to wirelessly configure settings, monitor compliance with policies, and wipe or lock managed iPhone devices.
Security was a major factor in the decision to standardise on the BlackBerry platform, and it remains one of the major concerns for the law firm. All smartphones must be password-protected and will be remotely wiped clean of all of their data should they be lost or stolen, says Hopkins.
Unlike Vodacom, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr has also restricted the amount of network services and applications users can access on the road. Its mobile strategy is almost exclusively focused on the traditional personal information management applications such as e-mail and calendar, since these are the tools that its attorneys need most when they're away from the office.
But the IT department recognises that these devices are the employee's property and has not sought to dictate which applications they may install on their handsets.
Gen-Y Facebook fans
Vodacom admits that its permissive approach to policy management in its mobile environment has introduced some challenges. The number of network points per user the IT department needs to manage per employee has tripled or even quadrupled as end users added personal devices to their work toolbox.
No longer does each user access the network through a PC or notebook, but also through a smartphone and possibly even a tablet. Enforcing policy consistently across all these devices is a huge learning curve, says Strijp.
And not only do users expect to be given the freedom to choose their own smartphones and notebooks, many of them also want to be able to use the applications and services they believe will allow them to get the job done.
Usage of tools such as mobile instant messaging services WhatsApp and BlackBerry Messenger and the online file-sharing and backup service DropBox has blossomed in Vodacom. End-users also take it for granted that they will be allowed to make use of social media during working hours.
In the past, corporate policy forbade the use of Facebook and other social networks during work hours and on company PCs because managers feared they would be a drain on productivity. But Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys - himself an avid user of social media tools such as Twitter - has reversed this policy because he believes social networking can be a valuable tool for productivity and customer service.
“We have a lot Generation-Y employees coming into the organisation who expect to have access to these tools,” says Strijp. “This is something that affects job satisfaction and the culture of the company.”
This point underlines that policy management is no longer simply an arcane IT function, but also a business issue that impacts on the agility and productivity of the organisation. For that reason, Vodacom sees policy management as something that needs to be driven by both the IT department and the business.
While IT managers and CIOs need to consider the harder aspects of policy management such as security, connectivity, procurement and expense management, business managers need to consider people and process issues such as culture and productivity, says Lazarus.
End-user devices and apps change the working patterns of the workforce - they don't just affect the IT infrastructure, says Lazarus. These tools may empower employees to work flexitime or remotely, and also have a direct impact on how efficiently they are able to work.
Where you go
“Today, work is not where you go, but what you do,” says Lazarus. “This discussion is your problem if you are managing people. It's about things like creating a friendly working environment for young mothers or helping employees to avoid travel in traffic.”
Policy, says Strijp, is about understanding and managing risk. Organisations should not only consider the dangers of their network being compromised or a smartphone getting lost along with the sensitive information it stores, but also about the risk of a workforce not being able to work at its optimal level because it cannot effectively use the devices and tools at its disposal.
That said, Vodacom recognises that it will need to put more management and security controls in place to safeguard its systems and manage the mobile workforce and its devices in an optimal manner. Most of its existing security for mobile connections to its network relies on the access point name (APN) protocol and the various security measures that lie behind the firewall.
The mobile operator has three APNs for different user roles that provide different levels of access to employees depending on their seniority and roles. But for now, Vodacom has not insisted that users take steps such as encrypting data or installing anti-malware software on their handhelds.
Lazarus anticipates that this will change soon. Vodacom is also piloting a range of mobile device management options to find a solution that will help it manage and enforce policies across a diverse base of end-user devices. One of the major challenges is that the market is still in flux, with trends such as tablet adoption still in their early phases, says Lazarus.
The one certainty is that the complexity most CIOs will need to manage in their IT environments will continue to grow as new consumer applications and devices worm their way into corporate technology infrastructures.
Now that end-users have developed a taste for freedom, it will be hard to impose control on them again.
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