August 22, 2009
I’m sitting on a plane right now. Center seat … jam packed. Guy on my left is asleep. Guy on my right wants to talk way more than I do. I don’t so much mind Left-Guy except when his head ends up on my shoulder. But Right-Guy is getting into my personal space and it’s bugging me.
Back in corporate-land, there is no personal space. Companies are very clear that all communication on company networks / devices is company property and the employee should have no expectation of privacy. For legal reasons that needs to extend to employee-owned devices being used for corporate work as well.
But as an employee, that grates me. It’s my phone and I really don’t want my employer to have access to my pictures, videos, ringtones, and [yahoo/g/hot/other]mail. I need a data boundary that I know will be respected in all but the most exceptional situations.
Companies are realizing this too. @hyounpark_AG at Aberdeen Group has early data that says 20% of companies allow all employees to use personal devices. That’s actually a staggering number. The implication is that the need to set enterprise data boundaries is a problem of the present, not just the future. Employers needs to protect corporate data and ensure compliance while respecting employee’s personal content.
But what boundary should my company set? Is this type of flexibility a boon to employees or a bane to legal?
True, it’s a question of both policy and technology, but I think most importantly it is a question of end-user satisfaction. If you have employee-owned phones, your users need a good answer. That answer might vary company to company but, like my Left-Guy / Right-Guy problem, it can’t be ignored.
August 1, 2009
(thanks to Art King for the idea)
Lots of people talk about the consumerization of IT. Most often they mean consumer-based services that replace enterprise-provided solutions as the preferred method for employees to do their job. I use Yahoo IM for real-time communication, Google search for research, YouTube for posting company videos, and Twitter for blogging about new product developments. Why? Because there is no enterprise-provided service that can do those things better, faster, or more enjoyably, at least for me. No big surprise there – many of you probably do the same.
What does this mean for IT? Anxiety. Bad dreams. Lots of aspirin. As Chad Dyer, VP Technology at Sequoia Capital, says, “the challenge is to maintain security, compliance, and service level within this end-user-focused world.”
That’s a tough challenge. Playing bad cop doesn’t work – if anything it encourages end users to more actively seek out other options behind IT’s back. But the reality is that it is really hard for any IT team to keep up with the innovation, scalability and feature velocity of the consumer space.
So I don’t expect IT to solve all my problems. But I would actually like some help to figure out what services I can use. I’m looking for IT collaboration, not IT solutions. Because otherwise I’ll follow my own “guerilla collaboration” path with Apple, Plaxo, Xobni, or [insert solution-of-your-choice] and leave IT behind. And in the process probably create all kinds of painful issues for my CIO.
What does this have to do with mobile? Well, smartphones are the first time an entire platform has been “consumerized.” It’s an opportunity for service-oriented IT organizations to own this issue from the start, and collaborate with their end users to help them get what they want from mobility. Flexibility now will mean better services and a lot fewer surprises later.
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