Category Archives: BYOD

AirWatch, BYOD, End-User Computing, Mobility, VMware

VMware Blog: Top 3 Mobility Concerns for Today’s Healthcare Organizations

This post originally appeared on VMware’s AirWatch blog and was authored by Scott Szymanski. Be sure to check VMware’s blog for more great content.

 

mobilityMobile devices have been a huge hit for healthcare. In fact, a recent report from Research and Markets expects mobility in healthcare to grow from $24 billion this year to $84 billion in 2020. From accessing medical records to real-time translation services, doctors and nurses are seeing an incredible transformation in how they administer care using mobility.

While this is exciting for patients and doctors alike, healthcare IT teams must reconcile the government red tape and employee concerns inevitable with new technologies. These teams must meet HIPAA compliance and maintain patient trust without creating a labyrinth of security that medical staff find difficult to navigate regularly.

Fortunately, many healthcare organizations, including Florida-based Adventist Health System, have delivered successful mobile transformations across their teams. Watch the Adventist Health System video to learn how mobility is transforming healthcare. Then, take a look at the top three healthcare concerns to consider when researching mobility.

Security

There’s hardly anything more cringe-worthy in healthcare than security. From electronic medical records to staff communications, there is a lot of sensitive client and staff information that needs protecting. And if this information is left in the open, it could have devastating repercussions. According to IDC Health Insights, 50% of healthcare organizations will have experienced anywhere from 1-5 cyberattacks—and one-in-three attacks will be successful.

Luckily, security and mobility can work together. Look for enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions that can track devices, push applications, enforce security policies and more without getting in the way of physicians. Some solutions can even wipe lost or stolen devices remotely, ensuring IT can quickly react when problems arise. Keeping information safe starts with strong security.

 

Simplicity

While security is primary, don’t forget the importance of simplicity. Mobile devices are redefining how medical staff diagnose, treat and report on patient health, and the last thing doctors need is another “helpful tool” that hinders timely and effective patient care. Devices that are difficult to use generally aren’t used at all, and worse than that, they could be used incorrectly in ways that might circumvent the security you worked hard to put in place.

Remember: sometimes less steps equal greater success. Simplifying the sign-in process to devices and applications might encourage a doctor to check a patient’s records twice before ordering a prescription. Tablets and smartphones could reduce training and the number of troubleshooting incidents serviced by IT, leading to independent but connected physicians across your entire medical network.

 

Patient Engagement

No matter how you use mobility, remember who physicians care about most: patients. Delivering timely and accurate information to patients is one of the most important elements of quality healthcare. Patients want to know their treatments and why they are receiving them. Unfortunately, according to a study done at the North Shore University Hospital in New York, less than half of patients surveyed were able to state their doctors’ diagnoses, an issue that could affect patient health and trust.

With connected mobile devices, you could deliver up-to-date patient information to physicians in real-time. Not only could this contribute to more accurate diagnoses, patients might feel safer sharing information with their doctors, ultimately leading to better care. Mobile devices are also more interactive than traditional computers and paper charts, and they could help doctors better illustrate medical procedures or conditions in ways patients actually understand. More informed patients are happier patients, and mobility could be the solution in your organization.

 

GreenPages has strong AirWatch expertise. If you have any questions or need any help on AirWatch projects, be sure to reach out!

Apple at work, BYOD, config manager, Mac Management, Manage Macs, managing macs, Microsoft SCCM, Parallels Business Solutions, Parallels Mac Management for Microsoft SCCM, System Center

This is the Easiest Way to Manage Your Company’s Macs

In a recent article by Mary Branscombe over at CIO, she discusses the alarming rate at which Macs are emerging in the workspace—and even more alarming, the lack of businesses that are actually managing those Macs. “You almost certainly already have Macs in your business, connecting to your network and downloading key business documents. You just […]

The post This is the Easiest Way to Manage Your Company’s Macs appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Alistair Blaxill, BYOD, Enterprise IT, Mobility, News & Analysis, Phoenix

BYOD threat larger than anticipated – survey

BYOD isn't being managed effectively by many IT departments

BYOD isn’t being managed effectively by many IT departments

Over half of UK workers over the age of 18 are using mobile devices and tablets in the workplace that are entirely unmanaged by their organisation’s IT department according to a recently published survey.

A survey of just over 1,000 UK workers commissioned by IT and managed services provider Phoenix shows the while over half (51 per cent) primarily use their own device in the workplace, close to 60 per cent of those workers do not involved their organisation’s IT support in setting up or managing their devices.

Phoenix managing director of partner business Alistair Blaxill said the results demonstrate UK organisations are much more exposed to cyberthreats than most appreciate.

“Mobility is one of the most significant driving forces for the IT sector and an increasing number of people want to be fully connected to work all of the time. However, the emergence of BYOD in the workplace is creating a real challenge for IT departments, with workers using their own unmanaged devices to access corporate networks and sensitive data,” Blaxill said.

“The findings of our survey underline this trend in the UK and it reinforces the need for businesses to stay on top of how employees access IT and ensure that they are appropriately protected.”

Blaxill said the best way to ensure IT can adequately protect these devices is by changing the way they interact with employees – and to speed up delivery of support services to incentivise bringing IT into the fold.

“Employees’ attitudes to IT support are changing and they want instant, real-time solutions to their device issues. Our survey tells us that just 23 per cent and 32 per cent of workers received their IT support either primarily face-to-face or a mix of face-to-face and remotely respectively. Savvy employers are now looking to provide workers with an IT support service that mirrors the personal experience they receive outside of work when resolving issues with their own personal devices.”

BYOD, cloud policy, Opinion, Trustmarque

Giving employees the cloud they want

Business are taking the wrong approach to their cloud policies

Business are taking the wrong approach to their cloud policies

There is an old joke about the politician who is so convinced she is right when she goes against public opinion, that she states, “It’s not that we have the wrong policies, it’s that we have the wrong type of voters!” The foolishness of such an attitude is obvious and yet, when it comes to mandating business cloud usage, some companies are still trying to live by a similar motto despite large amounts of research to the contrary.

Cloud usage has grown rapidly in the UK, with adoption rates shooting up over 60% in the last four years, according to the latest figures from Vanson Bourne. This reflects the increasing digitalisation of business and society and the role cloud has in delivering that.  Yet, there is an ongoing problem with a lack of clarity and understanding around cloud policies and decision making within enterprises at all levels. This is only natural, as there is bound to be confusion when the IT department and the rest of the company have differing conceptions about what the cloud policy is and what it should be. Unfortunately, this confusion can create serious security issues, leaving IT departments stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Who is right? The answer is, unsurprisingly, both!  Increasingly non-IT decision makers and end-users are best placed to determine the value of new services to the business; but IT departments have long experience and expertise in the challenges of technology adoption and the implications for corporate data security and risk.

Cloud policy? What cloud policy?

Recent research from Trustmarque found that more than half (56 per cent) of office workers said their organisation didn’t have a cloud usage policy, while a further 28 per cent didn’t even know if one was in operation. Despite not knowing their employer’s cloud policy, nearly 1 in 2 office workers (46 per cent) said they still used cloud applications at work. Furthermore, 1 in 5 cloud users admitted to uploading sensitive company information to file sharing and personal cloud storage applications.

When employees aren’t sure how to behave in the cloud and companies don’t know what information employees are disseminating online, the question of a security breach becomes one of when, not if. Moreover, with 40 per cent of cloud users admitting to knowingly using cloud applications that haven’t been sanctioned or provided by IT, it is equally clear that employee behaviour isn’t about to change. Therefore, company policies must change instead – which often is easier said than done. On the one hand, cloud applications are helping increase productivity for many enterprises, and on the other, the behaviour of some staff is unquestionably risky. The challenge is maintaining an IT environment that supports employees’ changing working practices, but at the same time is highly secure.

By ignoring cloud policies, employees are also contributing to cloud sprawl. More than one quarter of cloud users (27 per cent), said they had downloaded cloud applications they no longer use. The sheer number and variety of cloud applications being used by employees’ means costs can quickly spiral out of control. This provides another catch-22 situation for CIOs seeking balance, as they look to keep costs down, ensure information security and empower employees to use the applications needed to work productively.

The road to bad security is paved with good intentions

The critical finding from the research is that employees know what they are doing is not sanctioned by their organisation and still engage in that behaviour. However, it’s important to recognise that this is generally not due to malicious intent, but rather because they see the potential benefits for themselves or their organisation and security restrictions mean their productivity is hampered – so employees look for a way around those barriers.

It is not in the interest of any business to constrain the impulse of employees to try and be more efficient. Instead, businesses should be looking for the best way to channel that instinct while improving security. There is a real opportunity for those businesses that can marry the desires of employees to use cloud productively, but with the appropriate security precautions in place, to get the very best out of cloud for the enterprise.

Stop restricting and start empowering

The ideal solution for companies is to move towards an integrated cloud adoption/security lifecycle that links measurement, risk/benefit assessment and policy creation, policy enforcement, education and app promotion, so that there is a positive feedback loop reinforcing both cloud adoption and good security practices.  This means an organisation will gain visibility into employees’ activity in the cloud so that they can allow their favourite applications to be used, while blocking specific risky activity. This is far more effective than a blanket ban as it doesn’t compromise the productive instincts of employees, but instead encourages good behaviour and promotes risk-aware adoption. In order for this change to be effected, IT departments need to alter their mind set and become the brokers of services such as cloud, rather than the builder of constricting systems. If organisations can empower their users by for example, providing cloud-enabled self-service, single sign-on and improved identity lifecycle management, they can simultaneously simplify adoption and reduce risk.

Ignorance of cloud policies among staff significantly raises the possibility of data loss, account hijacking and other cloud-related security threats. Yet since the motivation is, by and large, the desire to be productive rather than malicious, companies need to find a way to blend productivity and security instead of having them square off against each other. It is only through gaining visibility into cloud usage behaviour that companies can get the best of both worlds.

Written by James Butler, chief technology officer, Trustmarque

BYOD, Education Technology Solutions, Parallels Access, Parallels Access for Business, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop Business Edition & Parallels Mac Management, Parallels Desktop for Mac, Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition, run windows on mac, Windows on mac, Windows on Mac in school

Employee Interview: Five Minutes with Parallels’ Kevin Greely

Check it out—Scott Patterson, Assistant Editor of Education Technology Solutions in Australia, recently interviewed Parallels’ own Kevin Greely. Read their conversation, discussing the ‘School of the Future’, BYOD, and more emerging trends in technology:   Based on what you are seeing, what does the ‘School of the Future’ look like? Kevin, Parallels: I’m 20 years […]

The post Employee Interview: Five Minutes with Parallels’ Kevin Greely appeared first on Parallels Blog.

BYOD, Featured, IT Management, Shadow IT

Game of Thrones: Five Takeaways for IT

By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud

After a long wait, Game of Thrones Season 4 has officially started (no spoilers for the first episode of season 4 – I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy).  Amidst the action and excitement, there are some lessons IT can take away from seasons 1-3 of the show. Here are five of them:

The War Lies to the North

After Robert Baratheon dies, there is all out war for rule of the Iron Throne and control of the Seven Kingdoms. Joffrey Lannister usurps power after the passing of the king and executes the Lord of Winterfell, Ned Stark. This sparks Ned’s son Robb to march on King’s Landing to attempt to overthrow Joffrey. Meanwhile Robert Baratheon’s younger brother Renly, his older brother Stannis, and Daenerys Targaryen are also all raising armies to try and defeat Joffrey. By the end of season 3 however, it becomes known that the deadly “White Walkers” are back after thousands of years. Some people realize that the war everyone is fighting right now is insignificant because the real war lies to the north.

The lesson for IT: There is often a good amount of unrest between the IT Department and other business units. Maybe Accounting gets frustrated and places the blame for a systems failure on IT, but IT claims it was the Accounting Department’s fault for not following proper protocols. Maybe there is unrest between Marketing and IT around budget allocation for new tradeshow equipment. The lesson here is that IT needs to partner with the business and work together in order to achieve the overall goals that will determine the success of the company.

Liberate Your Users

Daenerys Targaryen, or Khaleesi, is looking to take back the throne that used to belong to her family. Without an army, she purchases a large number of slave soldiers. Instead of treating them poorly and forcing them to fight for her, she frees them all and says it’s their decision if they would like to stay and fight by her side. She then goes from city to city freeing slaves. The result? An extremely loyal and passionate army.

The lesson for IT: People will respond better if you give them choices as opposed to dictating how everything is going to work. Employees are going to bring their own devices to the workplace whether you allow it or not, so empower them to do so by implementing a BYOD program. Shadow IT is going to happen. Employees are going to bypass IT and use AWS. Provide them with a way to do so while you control costs, security, and governance.

Innovation Is Key

When Stannis Baratheon launches a full scale attack on King’s Landing with a large fleet of ships, things look pretty dim for the Lannister family. Stannis has more man power and weapons and has the advantage of being able to cut off supply lines to the capital. Tywin Lannister, King Joffrey’s uncle, is forced to think outside the box to try and defend his city. He ends up catapulting barrels of deadly wild fire onto the attacking ships, successfully fending off Stannis’ forces. 

The lesson for IT: Continue to innovate and look for creative ways to solve problems. It can be difficult to get to the strategic initiatives when your team is bogged down by day-to-day mundane tasks. IT leaders need to make innovation a top priority in order to keep pace with the needs of the business and the rapidly evolving technology landscape.

The Wall of Security

Security is critical to the survival of any organization. Winterfell and the North always relied on “The Wall” to keep out marauding Wildlings. The Wall is hundreds of feet high, made of sheer ice, and guarded by the Men of the Night’s Watch. Getting a large group of people past The Wall is extremely difficult. However, when an assembly of the Night’s Watch has to abandon their posts to head out beyond the wall, a group of Wildlings is able to scale it and cross to the other side.

The lesson for IT: It’s obviously important to have the proper security measures in place in your organization.  The lesson from the Wall though is that no matter what security you have in place, there are always ways to infiltrate your environment no matter how secure it may appear. This is why you need to proactively monitor and manage your environment.

Choose Your Partners Wisely

As the war with the Lannisters drags on, Robb Stark is in desperate need of more soldiers. Robb strikes a deal with Walder Frey to have one of his uncles marry one of Frey’s daughters to unite the families. Robb chose the wrong partner and things don’t go according to plan (and by not “going according to plan” I mean Robb, his wife, his mother, and his countrymen are brutally murdered during the wedding ceremony…).

The lesson for IT: There are a lot of factors to take into consideration when you’re deciding who to align yourself with. Choosing the right vendor for your organization depends on many factors including the specific project you’re working on, your existing environment, your budget, your goals, your future plans, etc. You don’t want to make a hasty decision on a specific vendor or product without thinking it through very carefully. This is where a company such as GreenPages can act as a trusted advisor to help guide you down the right path.

Any other lessons you can think of?

 

Download this whitepaper to learn how corporate IT can manage its environment as if it is “deployed to the cloud.” So, if and when different parts of the environment are deployed to the cloud, day-to-day management of the environment remains unchanged—regardless of where it is running.

 

 

applications, Big Data, BYOD, Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Public Cloud

Grading the Internet’s 2014 Tech Predictions

 

The time is here for bloggers across the internet to make their tech predictions for 2014 and beyond (we have made some ourselves around storage and cloud). In this post, a couple of our authors have weighed in to grade predictions made by others across the web.

Prioritizing Management Tool Consolidation vs. New Acquisitions

Enterprise customers will want to invest in new tools only when necessary. They should look for solutions that can address several of their needs so that they do not have to acquire multiple tools and integrate them. The ability to cover multiple areas of management (performance, configuration and availability) to support multiple technologies (e.g., application tiers) and to operate across multiple platforms (Unix, Windows, virtual) will be important criteria for enterprises to assess what management tools will work for them.  (eweek)

Agree – I have been saying this for a while.  If you want a new tool, get rid of 5 and consolidate and use what you have now or get one that really works. (Randy Becker)

 

Bigger big data spending

IDC predicts spending of more than $14 billion on big data technologies and services or 30% growth year-over-year, “as demand for big data analytics skills continues to outstrip supply.” The cloud will play a bigger role with IDC predicting a race to develop cloud-based platforms capable of streaming data in real time. There will be increased use by enterprises of externally-sourced data and applications and “data brokers will proliferate.” IDC predicts explosive growth in big data analytics services, with the number of providers to triple in three years. 2014 spending on these services will exceed $4.5 billion, growing by 21%. (Forbes)

Absolutely agree with this.  Companies of all sizes are constantly looking to garner more intelligence from the data they have.  Even here at GreenPages we have our own big data issues and will continue to invest in these solutions to solve our own internal business needs. (Chris Ward)

 

Enterprises Will Shift From Silo to Collaborative Management

 In 2014, IT organizations will continue to feel increased pressure from their lines of business. Collaborative management will be a key theme, and organizations will be looking to provide a greater degree of performance visibility across their individual silo tiers to the help desk, so it is easier and faster to troubleshoot problems and identify the tier that is responsible for a problem. (eweek)

Agree – cross domain technology experts are key!  (Randy Becker)

 

New IT Will Create New Opportunities

Mobility, bring-your-own device (BYOD) and virtual desktops will all continue to gain a foothold in the enterprise. The success of these new technologies will be closely tied to the performance that users can experience when using these technologies. Performance management will grow in importance in these areas, providing scope for innovation and new solutions in the areas of mobility management, VDI management and so on. (eweek)

Disagree – This is backwards. The business is driving change and accountability.  It is not IT that creates new opportunities – it is the business demanding apps that work and perform for the people using them. (Randy Becker)

 

Here comes the Internet of Things

By 2020, the Internet of Things will generate 30 billion autonomously connected end points and $8.9 trillion in revenues. IDC predicts that in 2014 we will see new partnerships among IT vendors, service providers, and semiconductor vendors that will address this market. Again, China will be a key player:  The average Chinese home in 2030 will have 40–50 intelligent devices/sensors, generating 200TB of data annually. (Forbes)

Totally agree with this one.  Everything and everybody is eventually going to be connected.  I wish I were building a new home right now because there are so many cool things you can do by having numerous household items connected.  I also love it because I know that in 10 years when my daughter turns 16 that I’ll no doubt know in real-time where she is and what she is doing.  However, I doubt she’ll appreciate the ‘coolness’ of that.  Although very cool, this concept does introduce some very real challenges around management of all of these devices.  Think about 30 billion devices connected to the net….  We might actually have to start learning about IPv6 soon… (Chris Ward)

 

Cloud service providers will increasingly drive the IT market

As cloud-dedicated datacenters grow in number and importance, the market for server, storage, and networking components “will increasingly be driven by cloud service providers, who have traditionally favored highly componentized and commoditized designs.” The incumbent IT hardware vendors will be forced to adopt a “cloud-first” strategy, IDC predicts. 25–30% of server shipments will go to datacenters managed by service providers, growing to 43% by 2017. (Forbes)

Not sure I agree with this one for 2014 but I do agree with it in the longer term.  As more and more applications/systems get migrated to public cloud providers, that means less and less hardware/software purchased directly from end user customers and thus more consolidation at the cloud providers.  This could be a catch 22 for a lot of the traditional IT vendors like HP and Dell.  When’s the last time you walked into an Amazon or Google datacenter and saw racks and racks of HP or Dell gear?  Probably not too recently as these providers tend to ‘roll their own’ from a hardware perspective.  One thing is for sure…this will get very interesting over the next 24 to 36 months… (Chris Ward)

 

End-User Experience Will Determine Success

Businesses will expect IT to find problems before their users do, pinpoint the root cause of the problem and solve the problem as early as possible. IT organizations will seek solutions that will allow them to provide great user experience and productivity. (eweek)

Agree – 100% on this one. Need a good POC and Pilot that is well managed with clear goals and objectives. (Randy Becker)

 

Amazon (and possibly Google) to take on traditional IT suppliers

Amazon Web Services’ “avalanche of platform-as-a-service offerings for developers and higher value services for businesses” will force traditional IT suppliers to “urgently reconfigure themselves.” Google, IDC predicts, will join in the fight, as it realizes “it is at risk of being boxed out of a market where it should be vying for leadership.” (Forbes)

I agree with this one to an extent.  Amazon has certainly captured a good share of the market in two categories, developers and large scale-out applications and I see them continuing to have dominance in these 2 spaces.  However, anyone who thinks that customers are forklift moving traditional production business applications from the datacenter to the public cloud/Amazon should really get out in the field and talk to CIOs and IT admins as this simply isn’t happening.  I’ve had numerous conversations with our own customers around this topic, and when you do the math it just doesn’t make sense in most cases – assuming the customer has an existing investment in hardware/software and some form of datacenter to house it.  That said, where I have seen an uptake of Amazon and other public cloud providers is from startups or companies that are being spun out of a larger parent. Bottom line, Amazon and others will absolutely compete with traditional IT suppliers, just not in a ubiquitous manner. (Chris Ward)

 

The digitization of all industries

By 2018, 1/3 of share leaders in virtually all industries will be “Amazoned” by new and incumbent players. “A key to competing in these disrupted and reinvented industries,” IDC says, “will be to create industry-focused innovation platforms (like GE’s Predix) that attract and enable large communities of innovators – dozens to hundreds will emerge in the next several years.” Concomitant with this digitization of everything trend, “the IT buyer profile continues to shift to business executives. In 2014, and through 2017, IT spending by groups outside of IT departments will grow at more than 6% per year.” (Forbes)

I would have to agree with this one as well.  The underlying message here is that IT spending decisions continue to shift away from IT and into the hands of the business.  I have seen this happening more and more over the past couple of years and can’t help but believe it will continue in that direction at a rapid pace. (Chris Ward)

What do you think about these predictions? What about Chris and Randy’s take on them?

Download this free eBook about the evolution of the corporate IT department.

 

 

business continuity, BYOD, Cloud computing, CMaaS, Disaster Recovery, End-User Computing, Featured, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Miscellaneous IT, Storage and Information Management

Cloud Management, Business Continuity & Other 2013 Accomplishments

By Matt Mock, IT Director

It was a very busy year at GreenPages for our internal IT department. With 2013 coming to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the major projects we worked on over the course of the year. The four biggest projects we tackled were using a cloud management solution, improving our business continuity plan, moving our datacenter, and creating and implementing a BYOD policy.

Cloud Management as a Service

GreenPages now offers a Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS) solution to our clients. We implemented the solution internally late last year, but really started utilizing it as a customer would this year by increasing what was being monitored and managed. We decided to put Exchange under the “Fully Managed” package of CMaaS. Exchange requires a lot of attention and effort. Instead of hiring a full time Exchange admin, we were able to offload that piece with CMaaS as our Managed Services team does all the health checks to make sure any new configuration changes are correct. This resulted in considerable cost savings. Having access to the team 24/7 is a colossal luxury. Before using CMaaS, if an issue popped up at 3 in the morning we would find out about it the next morning. This would require us to try and fix the problem during business hours. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone the hassle of trying to fix an issue with frustrated coworkers who are unable to do their jobs. If an issue arises now in the middle of the night, the problem has already been fixed before anyone shows up to start working. The Managed Services team does research and remediates bugs that come up. This happened to us when we ran into some issues with Apple iOS calendaring. The Managed Services team did the research to determine the cause and went in and fixed the problem. If my team tried to do this it would have taken us 2-3 days of wasted time. Instead, we could be focusing on some of our other strategic projects. In fact, we are holding a webinar on December 19th that will cover strategies and benefits to being the ‘first-to-know,’ and we will also provide a demo of the CMaaS Enterprise Command Center. We also went live with fully automated patching, which requires zero intervention from my team. Furthermore, we leveraged CMaaS to allow us to spin up a fully managed Linux environment. It’s safe to say that if we didn’t implement CMaaS we would not have been able to accomplish all of our strategic goals for this year.

{Download this free whitepaper to learn more about how organizations can revolutionize the way they manage hybrid cloud environments}

Business Plan

We also determined that we needed to update our disaster recovery plan to a true robust business continuity plan. A main driver of this was because of our more diverse office model. Not only were more people working remotely as our workforce expanded, but we now have office locations up and down the east coast in Kittery, Boston, Attleboro, New York City, Atlanta, and Tampa. We needed to ensure that we could continue to provide top quality service to our customers if an event were to occur. My team took a careful look at our then current infrastructure set up. After examining our policies and plans, we generated new ones around the optimal outcome we wanted and then adjusted the infrastructure to match. A large part of this included changing providers for our data and voice, which included moving our datacenter.

Datacenter Move

In 2013 we wanted to have more robust datacenter facilities. Ultimately, we were able to get into an extremely redundant and secure datacenter at the Markley Group in Boston that provided us with cost savings. Furthermore, Markley is also a large carrier hotel which gives us additional savings on circuit costs. With this move we’re able to further our capabilities of delivering to our customers 24/7. Another benefit our new datacenter offered was excess office space. That way, if there ever was an event at one of our GreenPages locations we could have a place to send people to work. I recently wrote a post which describes the datacenter move in more details.

BYOD Policy

As 2013 ends, we are finishing our first full year with our BYOD policy. We are taking this time to look back and see where there were any issues with the policies or procedures and adjusting for the next year. Our plan is to ensure that year two is even more streamlined. I answered questions in a recent Q & A explaining our BYOD initiative in more detail.

I’m pretty happy looking back at the work we accomplished in 2013. As with any year, there were bumps along the way and things we didn’t get to that we wanted to. All in all though, we accomplished some very strategic projects that have set us up for success in the future. I think that we will start out 2014 with increased employee satisfaction, increased productivity of our IT department, and of course noticeable cost savings. Here’s to a successful 2014!

Is your IT team the first-to-know when an IT outage happens? Or, do you find out about it from your end users? Is your expert IT staff stretched thin doing first-level incident support? Could they be working on strategic IT projects that generate revenue? Register for our upcoming webinar to learn more!

 

BYOD, End-User Computing, Featured, Unified Communications, VDI

Breaking Down a BYOD Initiative

An Interview with Matt Mock, IT Director at GreenPages Technology Solutions

Ben: What encouraged GreenPages to adopt a BYOD policy?

Matt: The biggest reason we implemented a BYOD policy was that it offered the ability to give users the flexibility to use the technology that they are most comfortable with. Our IT department was getting frequent requests for non-standard equipment. This forced us to do one-offs all the time and made support very difficult.

Ben: How was the policy made? Who was involved in creating it?

Matt: The policy was created after many months of research. We looked into what other companies were doing, researched the costs for hardware and internal support, and interviewed different departments to see what was needed. We involved people from the top down, getting buy in from senior management to start. In addition, we also worked closely with the accounting department to make sure BYOD wouldn’t cost more than traditional hardware refreshes would. Our department did a proof of concept, then a pilot group, and then a gradual rollout. This allowed us to tweak the policy as needed.

Ben: Who has access to the BYOD program?

Matt: Not all departments. The program is for those where it makes the most sense from both a financial and support perspective. We didn’t want to grant BYOD to someone who couldn’t handle the issues on their own that would in turn create more technical support. We rolled it out to groups with specific requirements that weren’t going to cause us to spend more time on internal support.

Ben: Can you describe some of the highlights of the policy?

Matt: Within the policy we specify eligibility for the program, provide exact cost and reimbursement methods, and outline user responsibilities and requirements such as how to get hardware support. We also provide more specifics around what is and isn’t covered in the policy.

Ben: How do employees go about getting hardware support?

Matt: The user assumes responsibility of hardware support and is required to get a warranty. IT will help facilitate support but will not be responsible for the device. This goes back to making sure IT doesn’t spend more time supporting BYOD than they would have previously.

Ben: Makes sense.

Matt: I should also mention that GreenPages’ VDI environment allows us to offer the flexibility of BYOD with multiple devices because everyone can get the same experience regardless of the device used. Utilizing VDI also alleviates concerns around corporate data loss. If a device is lost or stolen, a person doesn’t have access to corporate resources just because they have the corporate device.

Ben: What have some of the main benefits been of the program?

Matt: The main benefits have been employee satisfaction and a decrease in hardware support for internal IT.

Ben: Some people think there are immediate cost savings from BYOD, but Chris Reily (GreenPages’ Director of Solutions Architecture) recently wrote a blog post cautioning people not to expect ROI in the first couple of years. Is this true?

Matt: Correct. You end up spending the same amount on hardware but support costs go down and employee satisfaction goes up. Direct ROI is difficult to measure when offering reimbursements. A company can avoid offering reimbursements but then you are greatly effecting employee satisfaction. If you give reimbursements, you probably end up spending the same over all amount.

Ben: What is your overall opinion of BYOD?

Matt: BYOD is not for every company nor is it necessarily for every employee within a company. A key thing to remember is that your infrastructure has to be ready for BYOD. If it is, then it’s a great perk and a great way to reduce time spent on internal support. It’s also a great way to allow new technologies into the organization and not have to give strict guidelines on what is and is not allowed.  Our BYOD initiative has also helped save my team time so that we can focus on more strategic projects that will help the business.

If you have questions for Matt around his experience implementing a BYOD policy, leave a comment or email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

 

applications, BYOD, End-User Computing, Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Network Infrastructure, Unified Communications

Top Ten Considerations When Investing in BYOD

By Chris Reily, Director of Solutions Architecture

Every year has its own special IT acronym and 2013 has been no different. During client meetings, in the pages of IT trade publications and on the minds of vendor partners – the term BYOD pops up more frequently than Psy’s “Gangham Style” does on pop radio. For the record, Psy is the smartly dressed Korean pop music sensation sporting Risky Business-style Ray Bans as opposed to the (also trending) bearded Uncle Si of Duck Dynasty (reality-TV) fame. If this is all meaningless to you, you’ve been working too hard. Ask your family, they miss you.

Consumerization of IT is finding its way into the enterprise rapidly. Choice, personalization and mobility are no longer simply appreciated but are ultimately demanded. BYOD in theory sounds like a terrific plan and if executed properly can be an outstanding component of an end user computing (EUC) solution in many environments. Success however goes far beyond an employee stipend and flexibility in choice. BYOD is not for every organization and even in those organizations where it makes sense, it’s not for every employee. Here is a list of the top ten considerations when investigating a BYOD solution for your organization:

  1. What are the core applications you need to deliver to end users? Are these applications supported by recommended or allowed devices? What are the corporate use cases?
  2. Will your infrastructure support connectivity and desktop/application delivery to new devices on your network? Storage, compute and network – it all matters.
  3. Do you have the budget to support this initiative? Hint: it will be more than you expect. Hint #2: don’t expect to “save money” (at least in the first year). The ROI (return on investment) may come but expectations inside 36 months are unrealistic.
  4. Who needs what? Organizations are diverse and dynamic. Not every employee will need to be part of a BYOD initiative. Different categories of associates will have varying device needs. The road warrior sales guy, administrative assistant and mechanical engineer will all have different needs.
  5. A well-executed plan will drive employee job satisfaction. Figure out how your team will deal with happy IT-using employees; it may be a new experience for all involved.
  6. Are you ready to set policy and stick to it? There will be challenges that make you question what you were thinking in the first place. Get managerial support and be confident.
  7. Be flexible. Sure, this may seem somewhat contrary to comment #6. Of course you’ll encounter situations where the intelligent response is to modify and improve.
  8. Get “buy in” from the board room and the corner office(s). The support of senior management and investors is critical; don’t even go there without serious majority support.
  9. Seek advice and approval from legal, accounting and human resources. Ask the art department and maintenance team too if you think it can help.
  10. Talk to others. I know this is hard for many of us who have spent careers in IT, but give it a shot and see what happens. Speak to partners who have delivered BYOD solutions. Reach out to similar organizations who have implemented their strategy. Heck, speak with companies who tried it and failed. Arm yourself with information, do your research.

This is a lot to digest. A poorly executed implementation has the surety of employees abandoning the program. Small steps and a detailed approach work best – don’t be afraid of running test groups and proof of concept (POC) trials. The risk of not exploring your options may leave your IT environment seeming as outdated as last decade’s pop dance craze. Is your organization considering BYOD? Have you already implemented a policy? If so, how has your experience been?