Survey Exposes Concerns About Employee Privacy for BYOD
One of the reasons that users are so enamored with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon is that for years IT organizations foisted systems on them that from an IT perspective were ideal, but always compromised on features that the average end user tends to crave.
Most of those machines were relatively easy to service, but what IT failed to recognize is that not all end users across the organization have the same requirements. In addition, most IT organizations tended to ignore the simple fact that users want to use these machines to run something other than the business applications upon which the business had standardized.
PC vendors have finally gotten around to understanding that this is not only a problem for end users, it’s a problem for them, too. With the rise of BYOD, users are voting with their feet for other platforms, most notably PCs and mobile computing devices from Apple.
To address this specific issue, Lenovo recently launched a new line of high end notebooks and workstations based on the Intel Quad Core i7 processors along with new entry-level systems. According to Brooks Flynn, worldwide segment manager for Lenovo, being able to find a way to incorporate an i7 processor inside a notebook or workstation in a way that is energy efficient is integral, but the aesthetics of these systems is just as important. We’ve moved into an age where end users have as much say about what systems will be adopted as IT.
The ultimate goal, says Flynn, is to present end users with a spectrum of systems that are highly manageable from an IT perspective, without compromising on any of the functionality users value. That approach, increasingly being known as Pick Your Own Device (PYOD), allows IT to maintain some level of control without making the end user feel like the IT department is deliberately trying to compromise their computing experience.
Given the recent success of Lenovo at the expense of Hewlett-Packard and Dell, in particular, it looks like that strategy is starting to resonate. The only issue now is whether IT organizations have the political skills required to strike a compromise with end users who now feel more empowered than ever.
