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BYOD unplugged

By Brian Bakker, Contributor
Johannesburg, 03 Feb 2015
Brendan Mc Aravey, country manager at Citrix South Africa.
Brendan Mc Aravey, country manager at Citrix South Africa.

A recent survey of over 700 IT professionals found that security - or the lack thereof - is the single biggest inhibitor of BYOD adoption. Conducted on behalf of Check Point, the survey highlights the ongoing concern of the ease of transporting sensitive corporate information outside of managed environments. It also details potential mobile security threats due to lack of employees' security awareness or training. Although partitioning solutions have been mooted, it seems CIOs are not convinced by their effectiveness.

Michael Fletcher, sales director, sub-Saharan Africa at Ruckus Wireless, suggests an element of fear-mongering is keeping adoption rates low - particularly in the local market. He describes BYOD as comprising two fundamental parts: a reliable network connection and effective mobile device management (MDM).

BYOD is not an option, it's a necessity.

Thuthuka Mhlongo, strategic business development, T-Systems SA

By contrast, Tielman Botha, mobility services lead for Accenture SA, insists that people are an important element to consider, with particular reference to ease of use and privacy. "I'm seeing more and more of my colleagues opting out of bringing their own devices," he says, suggesting the loss of privacy on those devices is a fundamental cause.

Jaco Greyling, solution strategist at CA Southern Africa, agrees on the privacy issue. "The problem is that if you look at Generation Y, the up-and-coming workforce, for them it's all about the user experience. They don't want to be prescribed how they should operate their own mobile devices," he says.

At the same time, he offers a possible solution: containerisation. Greyling says the ability to secure the contents of a device without overstepping the privacy boundaries will encourage BYOD adoption.

However, Manoj Bhoola, head of D&T at SAP Africa, believes the adoption of BYOD is different at different levels of the organisation. "(At) a lot of our large (customers), BYOD is actually adopted at CXO level," he says. "The resistance is mainly at the lower levels, so perhaps it's Generation Y that is resistant to the idea."

Perception is key

Brendan Mc Aravey, country manager at Citrix South Africa, says BYOD means different things to different people. He believes senior decision-makers at large customers are loathe to commit, because the market segment is in a state of flux.

"A year ago, MDM was the answer. If you can authenticate your device and make sure it's not jail-broken, you're fine. Now, it's moved on to secure container, mobile app management and then you wonder what can happen with the data. That's why I think adoption hasn't actually taken place," says Mc Aravey.

If you want to be productive as an organisation, you're going to have mobile devices in your organisation.

Tielman Botha, mobility services lead, Accenture SA

While Thuthuka Mhlongo, strategic business development for T-Systems SA, acknowledges that MDM is important, he points to a more critical aspect of BYOD: application engagement with corporate or business applications. He also agrees with Mc Aravey on the issue of data, asking: "How do I then contain the documents, making sure they remain secure?" Mhlongo raises the idea of mobile content management, which he describes as another secure environment enabling a separation between business and private data on mobile devices. "This allows your enterprise mobility management systems to be able to wipe out just the business component on devices," he says.

Doros Hadjizenonos, sales manager at Check Point SA.
Doros Hadjizenonos, sales manager at Check Point SA.

This, he adds, is necessary because there have been a number of costly lawsuits against companies that wiped entire devices of all data, personal and business. The only solution is to segregate the two and create two separate environments, he says.

Doros Hadjizenonos, sales manager at Check Point SA, agrees with most of what has been said and is pleased by the focus on users and their experiences. He asks: "How do we make it highly secure and very convenient? With containerisation."

Big brother

Mc Aravey says it's not that simple and is far from a clear-cut technical challenge. "We're dealing with people, we're dealing with legal - what's legal is your data, your IP, but it's also their data and IP. We're pushing very hard to containerise the phone and wipe it if it's lost, but it's still their device.

"Your defined policy has to be something that the user finds acceptable," he adds.

Jaco Greyling, solution strategist at CA Southern Africa.
Jaco Greyling, solution strategist at CA Southern Africa.

Asks Steven Ambrose, CEO of Strategy Worx: "Is BYOD a key factor in productivity for corporates right now in South Africa? How would you see that growing and changing, going forward in the next few years?"

Greyling immediately identifies productivity as a key enabler for the business. "It's much more about the applications that CIOs now have to bring to market, both from a productivity point of view...(and in pursuit of) new revenue streams," he says.

Botha doesn't agree, saying the problem is bigger than just BYOD. Given the diversity of devices on the market, he believes security measures need to be device-independent.

"If you want to be productive as an organisation, you're going to have mobile devices in your organisation, regardless of what you do. It's about how you secure those. And about how you bring them into your organisation," he says.

A virtual solution

Getting back to the original question about productivity, Bhoola suggests the presence of these mobile devices in the enterprise has transformed social media from a productivity drain into a useful business tool. He refers specifically to Facebook, Linkedln and Twitter, which, he says, have now been deployed for the company's benefit.

Manoj Bhoola, head of D&T at SAP Africa.
Manoj Bhoola, head of D&T at SAP Africa.

Fletcher also weighs in on productivity, stating: "If you want a MacBook, you have a MacBook, but you pay for it and you pay for the software licences. It's something that's nice to have, but I don't believe it's making people necessarily more productive."

Hadjizenonos disagrees: "My IT department is in Israel. I have (my mobile) and I have my laptop... and 90% of the time I'm on (my mobile). I can do my e-mail, my calendar, commuting. I'm not arguing about what device to use, but I'm saying having mobile access (is critical)."

Greyling agrees: "We need to move away from looking at the device and focus on how we can secure the enterprise applications we use, the ones that enable us to do our day-to-day jobs more effectively. And we need to secure those applications in isolation, with security so transparent that the end-user is not even aware of it, and that improves the user experience."

Michael Fletcher, sales director sub-Saharan Africa at Ruckus Wireless.
Michael Fletcher, sales director sub-Saharan Africa at Ruckus Wireless.

But, how advanced are corporates in SA with regard to BYOD?

Hadjizenonos reckons larger local corporates have been crying out for a solution that's simple, that doesn't demand a huge management overhead and can work with a multitude of devices.

It's not about the device; it's about the application running on it, he says. But, it's also about the data associated with that application. It needs to be shareable but in a secure manner, says Hadjizenonos.

Mhlongo says BYOD is becoming more of a reality. "There's ongoing work to provide a full mobility capability, making sure the entire business is mobile, not just certain components of the business," he says.

We need to move away from looking at the device and focus on how we can secure the enterprise applications we use.

Jaco Greyling, solution strategist, CA Southern Africa

Bhoola says BYOD is not an option, it's a necessity. "If you don't embrace it, you won't attract the right level of people to work for you," he says. "Is corporate SA ready for BYOD? I think it is, especially the large enterprises. We're seeing it, but if you're not, then all I can suggest is you go down a route of creating a framework for your devices. Once you have a framework in place, it's quite easy to then fill in the gaps and the solutions are available."

Work is not a place

Mc Avery sums up with a quote from his CEO, Mark Templeton: "Work is not a place. It's something we do," adding that BYOD is key to enabling that, and to allowing people to be productive, wherever they are, on whatever device they choose.

Steven Ambrose, CEO of Strategy Worx.
Steven Ambrose, CEO of Strategy Worx.

On the subject of local BYOD implementation, he says there's still a lot of confusion in the market. "We're in the early stages. What is encouraging obviously for us as vendors is that we're seeing a lot more interest, a lot more RFPs coming out, a lot more questions being asked, but do I think we're there? No, I don't."

Says Botha on the issue of local BYOD: "We're a bit late to the game, but I think we're catching up very fast. I'm starting to see certain clients and industries leapfrog some of our global counterparts," he says.

By contrast, Fletcher says it depends very much on the type of company. "Organisations like financial services companies tend to be a little bit more circumspect with BYOD," he says.

If you go to publishing businesses, advertising agencies and the like, they're all over it, he says. "So it depends. It's coming, but I do think we're lagging."

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