Device Control Suspended

An interesting article came up this week from ZDNet relating to device anarchy and corporate sanctioned computers in the business environment.

The article written by Darren Pauli refered to a decision by financial services firm Suncorp allowing users to work from personal devices. Amazing right? Interestingly Suncorp is one of the first firms to do this in the major corporate world, citing a friendlier workplace, among other reasons for the move.

I believe this is the beginning of a huge cultural shift in the IT market place. Suncorp will be using a combination of Citrix and open-source tools to allow their users to use their own devices in the workplace, without any productivity or security issues. How you ask? Well, from an IT perspective within Suncorp it'd be super hard to manage all the various devices connecting into the network - let along taking time to test them and secure each device. Let's imagine that Suncorp wanted a full notebook fleet refresh arcoss their 20,000 workforce - the IT team would be responsible for testing and deciding on the most suitable notebook, organising and releasing a tender for the pricing from suppliers, whilst that's happening decide on the most suitable corporate image for the notebooks and organize the financing for it. This kind of project would typically take months, if not a full year - with staged deliveries and all sorts of IT problems that come along with any form of change management.

Instead, imagine a world where each user brings to work their own devices. That might include a Mac, a PC, your iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry or other mobile device all of which come into the network and can work immediately. The IT team only needs to set security policies and rely on the users in controlling their own devices and individual settings. Any support on the users device would be handled directly between the user and their supplier / manufacturer through a normal warranty procedure - effectively removing the IT team from level 1 support, freeing up time for application support and development, which means productivity gains and cost decreases for Suncorp.

As you'd know from your own workplace, users becoming more savvy will connect mobile devices or home devices into the network regardless of security policy. Suncorp's come to the realization of not fighting this, but embracing this market change - whilst ensuring their network is set up for these changes in device usage.

This is the beginning of a major cultural shift in large organisations. Not only is it going to be a long time removal of large overheads (companies won't be responsible for mass device purchases), it's also going to mean a more device friendly workplace.

With this change I'm sure we'll see a large growth of open-source applications and remote PC / cloud solutions from various vendors, both in the market and in development at the moment. My advice? Watch this space....
http://www.zdnet.com.au/tight-security-needed-in-device-anarchy-339312308.htm?ocid=nl_TNB_31032011_fea_5