'Net Features : cisco

Is BYOD the Problem?

Administrator — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:00:00 GMT

By Simon Bain, Founder and CTO, Simplexo

There is a great deal of talk about Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and a lot of statistics suggesting that it is a huge phenomenon taking place across the corporate world. Redshift Research, in a report it delivered for Cisco, tells us that “95 percent of organizations allow employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the workplace” with 84 percent of these saying that they provide support for these devices.

However, most instances of BYOD currently relate to people’s use of their own smartphones to connect to the Internet or email to access company documents. Five years ago people simply had two mobile phones – one personal and one issued by work. Today, these two devices have merged into one.

However, remote access to office files using personal devices is not really the issue. What has really got IT decision-makers excited is their increasing difficulty to be able to track company data and understand what is happening to it outside of the enterprise environment.

BYOD is not the problem, cloud storage is. It is now very simple for employees to store documents, for free, using any number of file storage providers such as Dropbox or Google drive. There is also an increasing number of applications that can be downloaded that help with office work. Where data is stored and how securely within these applications is often a mystery. In either case, once out of the enterprise IT environment it becomes impossible for CIOs to know where company data is or who has access to it.

However, it is not just technology, but rather the changing relationship we are having with it as a society that is the real driver of change. For the first time, IT decision-makers are no longer in charge of how IT is used in organizations.

Very quickly, we have all got used to being able to easily choose from a limitless supply of applications in our personal lives, all at little or no cost. This is the antithesis to the corporate environment, which has deployed software and services in a top-down and inflexible manner, giving employees little or no choice. This new and growing consumer-based culture allows for IT services to grow organically to meet the ever-changing demands of the enterprise. So on one level this is all very good news. However, the result is that those entrusted with responsibility for IT have a growing lack of control over data and how it is used.

The fact is, IT departments are never going to be able to compete with the simplicity and ease-of-use that comes from having an instantly downloadable application. This needs to be accepted by enterprise organizations at the earliest possible opportunity as it is only in doing so that they will be able to change their own worldview and work with the new consumer-led culture of IT deployment that is growing at an ever-increasing pace.

I expect to see an explosion in enterprise-grade applications in the next 18 months as the market recognizes the growth in demand from enterprise organizations and IT decision-makers recognize that they need to give their staff a choice of technology within controlled environments.

We could well see, for example, enterprises partnering with third-party app stores that only allow applications that keep data in a recognized and controlled environment. Employees will benefit from having access to a shopping cart of applications to choose from and IT departments will know that they have tight service level agreements with providers detailing required security and data locations. Developers will have clear instructions as to what data security and other hoops that they need to jump through to have access to the market created by the third-party app provider. This is just one possible outcome of many in what is a rapidly changing and volatile market.

Such paradigm shifts will not be an easy process for many organizations. Staff will still complain that the tools they really want to use sit outside any secure environment and will be tempted to use them. The trick will be to have both sticks and carrots - firm and enforceable data control policies and a never-ending search for the best range of applications to meet changing demands.

Cloud computing has been spoken of as the most revolutionary thing to happen in IT for a generation. However, this is only true for the IT department. The most visible revolution is just around the corner as employees take full control of how they use technology to meet their daily needs in work. BYOD smartphones are just the tip of the iceberg.

About the Author: Simon Bain is the founder and CTO of Simplexo Ltd's software solutions and is a highly respected figure in the structured markup industry and a frequent spokesman on XML applications.

Watch Out: Millennials in the Workforce

Allison Howen — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:30:00 GMT

The Internet is just as important as air, water, food and shelter, according to one in every three college students and young professionals that participated in a recent study from networking leader Cisco.

The global report focuses on the next generation of the world’s workforce – of which I am a member – and it has arrived at some interesting conclusions about millennials and our technological needs, as well as our career expectations.

The most important takeaways from the study are simple. 1) Technology is an integral part of people's lives today and also to the success of modern businesses. 2) As younger people like myself continue to enter the workforce, companies should expect and foster more Internet- and social media-savvy work environments.

Below are some of the main findings from the study:

Technological Needs

The influence of technology is seen everywhere – from millennials claiming that the Internet is as important as air, to the recent baby-turned-YouTube-phenomenon that thought a magazine was a broken iPad. With that being said, the rest of the statistics in this report emphasize just how important technology is, especially in the future.

According to the report, 64 percent of college students would choose an Internet connection over a car, while 40 percent claim that the Internet is more important than dating, going out with friends and listening to music. Furthermore, 66 percent of students and 58 percent of young workers claim that a mobile device (laptop, smartphone, tablet) is the most important technology in their lives – with 19 percent claiming that smartphones are the most important devices that are used on a daily basis.

Career Expectations

So what does this type of information mean for the future? One might conclude that the future workforce will more diligently include technology into their careers, and may not care as much about salary as prior generations have.

The study revealed that 33 percent of college students and young employees would prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility and work mobility over salary when accepting a job offer. Additionally, 40 percent of college students and 45 percent of young employees would accept a lower-paying job that has more flexibility with regard to device choice, social-media access and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.

“These findings among college students and young employees indicate the freedom to access social media and use devices is increasingly important to the next generation of the world’s workforce – in some cases, more important than salary,” says Sheila Jordan, VP Communication and Collaboration IT, Cisco. “The results in the Cisco Connected World Technology Report demonstrate how companies need to acknowledge this fact in greater numbers, and respond accordingly – for many industries, the status quo of previous work environments is becoming a thing of the past.”

Findings also showed that 56 percent of millennials would not accept a job from a company that bans social media, or they would circumvent the policy.

And, in perhaps one of the most surprising statistics from the study, 29 percent of students believe it will be their right – more than a privilege – to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.

Personal Analysis

While the findings of this study can further emphasize my generation’s stereotype of being entitled to anything we want, I personally don’t know any millennial who thinks it is their “right” to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule. Additionally, the college students and “young professionals” that I know are simply happy to have jobs in the current economy, and would not decline a job based on a social-media policy.

SugarCRM Gets Social with IBM, Google, Cisco and Citrix

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 14:00:00 GMT

CRM solution SugarCRM released several additions to Sugar 6 including most notably integration with applications from IBM, Google, Cisco WebEx, and Citrix Online.

“Today’s professionals are demanding business tools that enable them to work the way they want to work – in a connected, always-on world with fewer barriers,” said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM. “No other CRM platform offers the breadth of social business and collaboration offerings in such and open and flexible manner.”

Sugar 6 improved its integration offerings for the IBM Lotus Collaboration product family, resulting from the recent acquisition of iExtensions CRM from iEnterprises. SugarCRM and IBM are also announcing general availability of Sugar for IBM LotusLive, first introduced earlier this year, which lets users schedule/host Web meeting from inside their CRM solution and creating a more broader social collaboration platform.

Better collaboration tools are definitely in focus right now. For example, the latest edition of Sugar 6 will offer integrations with popular web meeting tools including Cisco WebEx Meeting Centre and Citrix-GoToMeeting, and let users upload, manage and share Google Docs right inside the Sugar 6 user interface.

Activity streams in Sugar 6 also got a few new features. Sugar Activity Streams include the ability to reply to individual posts, view user profile photos within posts, integrate a Sugar user’s Facebook news feeds, as well as integrate the Twitter streams that a Sugar user follows.