Braving BYOD

There was a time when IT was centralised, with terminals running against a mainframe, or later, a minicomputer or Unix server. It was easy to control, as all the logic and central controls resided on the central CPU.

Cut forward to client/server, and IT management started to lose a little control of IT policies, procedures and governance. Each user had a PC now, and instead of two layers, there were three, with lots of logic on the presentation layer and all the risk that introduced.

Then there was the move to the Internet, which introduced all kinds of threats, many of which have materialised.

Finally, there is the phenomenon of bring your own device, or BYOD, where staff use a variety of their own devices to connect to the corporate network. These include devices such as the Samsung Galaxy, the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry, iPad and notebooks to connect to the network, either in-office or on the road, using the corporate VPN or coffee shop WiFi.

There are few corporate scenarios where this is not being played out, few meetings where tablets are absent, and it introduces major issues of control. Management may understand that the company must be seen as a 'cool' place to work, and the BYOD trend is unstoppable, so it doesn't fight it too hard. In Russia and Brazil, 75% of employees use BYOD, and 44% in developed markets. In the Middle East, adoption is a staggering 80%.

BYOD has been around since 2009, as Intel became aware of the trend and responded, and it became part of the IT lexicon in 2011, when other vendors such as Unisys, VMware and Citrix began promoting it in line with their business strategies.

But security is an issue, such as the introduction of malware. And who owns the data on the device, if the employee leaves? Only 22% of employees worldwide sign a BYOD policy. In this scenario, policies, processes and architecture become an issue, as users connect, typically through the cloud. For a CIO and IT manager who really understand what is happening, infinitely distributed computing like this is a nightmare, but one which needs to be managed.

Another is the issue of printing, along with scanning, copying and faxing.

Workers on the road need to connect to submit orders and reports, no matter where they are, using smartphones. Workers in the office need to print off their tablets.

The solution is software that connects multifunction printers to the way work gets done.

Workers need a solution that lets them do much more than just print, scan, fax and copy. They need to print from just about anywhere through mobile print capabilities. That is what they expect. If they are in Los Angeles, and they need to print in Johannesburg, they should be able to do so.

This is the new world.

They expect to scan documents directly to cloud services such as Google Drive, so they are available at any time, anywhere.

And they want to be able to use facilities such as Evernote and Microsoft Office 365 for storage and collaboration. This is the new world.

IT management can develop simple applications and embed them on the multifunction printer with easy-to-use tools. For example, a health insurance company should be able to add a feature to its device that allows scanning of reimbursement claims directly into its payment system, with just one touch.

With this kind of feature, IT professionals can manage multifunction printers easily, and make applications more accessible to the workforce - right from the device's touch-screen. And there should be a common user interface across multiple devices - making the multifunction printer easy to use.

Data coming into the multifunction printer should be secured and protected from malware with security, such as that from McAfee.

Users need multifunction printers that adapt to the way they work - on the go, virtually and through the cloud - allowing them to focus on what matters: their real business.

But they need to do so in a way that IT management can at least understand and control, from an architectural and security point of view.

And management needs to know that, no matter how widely distributed the IT architecture becomes, control and governance are always front of mind.