By: Taj
ElKhayat
(The author is Regional Vice President, Middle East,
Turkey, North, West, and Central Africa at Riverbed Technology)
This Friday is the 5th
anniversary of the launch of the iPad. This launch marked the dawn of BYOD and
the true consumerisation of IT – the IT department has never been the same
since! Pre-iPad, company-issued devices were the norm, selected not for
usability or design, but purely based on what was deemed to be most secure and
most able to integrate best with corporate IT. The availability of a
‘larger-than-smartphone’, portable device that gave the C-suite access to a
wealth of apps to improve business productivity became almost a status symbol
in the boardroom overnight. The iPad’s success spurred on other device
manufacturers to create consumer IT fit for business and the resulting booming
smartphone and tablet market transformed the IT culture of organisations
forever. We now have a culture of technologically empowered employees
self-selecting the applications they believe are best to get the job done, and
driving the adoption of SaaS (software as a service) apps.
But while the iPad and
its successors from other device manufacturers brought many positives to
end-users, they also opened up a new wave of issues for the IT department. With
employees finding and downloading their own apps to use in business, rather
than being given company-approved apps, CIOs had to contend with a raft of new
visibility, control and network application issues. It is therefore amazing to
look back and see just how far business IT has come since 2010. Terms such as
the hybrid enterprise, BYOD and shadow IT were relatively unknown phrases – now
they are at the centre of IT strategy.
The issues caused by
the consumerisation of IT and the resulting BYOD (bring your own device) and
BYOA (bring your own application) culture are never going to go away. It can be
difficult to keep track of what we call data and application sprawl – where
this new raft of data and information is located – not to mention standardise
processes for information sharing.
As we move forward into
the next five years, the IT department needs to continue to innovate in how it
avoids bandwidth issues and security/compliance threats. CIOs will need to
identify where employees are increasingly adopting apps on their personal
devices and build more collaborative relationships with the application
providers (approved and unapproved). By standardising new technology based on
what employees are using, the IT department can gain more control over the
information that is being shared by optimising the network to deliver it. This
also improves overall visibility in terms of where data is sitting on a
network.
Since the adoption of
the iPad as a business tool, other traditionally consumer focused vendors have
been trying to replicate its success and break into the business productivity
market. Facebook and Google are creating platforms that augment email, or
replace it all together and it seems that within the next five years it is
entirely plausible that new advances in these areas will mean there will be
even more devices and vendors making a play in the business IT market. CIOs
need to keep track of what their employees are adopting and work with these
vendors now to implement the services and gain a competitive advantage.
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