BYOD Without Compromise - Cisco Solutions Help Set the Pace

Today’s workforce is different than your parents’ generation. Employees today are more mobile, whether they choose to be or their job requires it. Along with that change, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend continues to proliferate as technology and mobility meet.

A recent Cisco (News - Alert) video series offers market insight into the mobility marketplace and putting context around Cisco solutions. BYOD gives IT, in the global marketplace, a real opportunity to be able to leverage mobility and add value to IT as a whole. That’s never been seen before, says Rohit Mehra, director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC (News - Alert).

This is all being done largely on the shoulders of what companies are seeing as the BYOD phenomenon. In his personal interactions, as well as IDC’s, Mehra sees end users, vendors and industry pundits in terms on market dynamics and what IT is doing to really get hold of this thing we’re starting to call BYOD.

When asked what’s happening in IT infrastructure and the intelligence around it, Mehra noted, “As far as the economy as a whole, yes we’ve gone thru ups and downs.” He thinks the big piece of the economy is having transitioned to a new phase in what is called the “intelligent economy.”

Various industries are going through these transformations right now, including retail, healthcare, energy and financial, for example. “There’s a lot happening from an industry standpoint,” Mehra said.

IT profits are going up and becoming an equal business partner in many industries. In some instances where IT used to run the back offices, it’s now the front office. In some online offices, IT is the business.

As we enter this new phase of the intelligent economy, Mehra feels that there’s a lot that’s going to be riding on the broadband internet, cloud services and social businesses. But equally important is the fact that mobile devices and apps are going to play a significant role in how this economy moves forward.

How are these various businesses and enterprises really interacting with their users, customers and partners? From that aspect, mobility is really one of the key pillars of IT infrastructure moving forward. The ability of IT to embrace social aspects of business, mobility and video as well is also crucial.

As far as mobility, in the United States, typical devices per person averages 6.6 – a significant increase over two years ago. Globally, it’s a little bit lower with only 4.8 devices. Users are accessing a lot more information out there based on these numbers, according to research by the IDC Medial Tablet study.

“The concept is only going to proliferate,” said Mehra, who expects employee-liable devices to be close to 54 percent by the year 2015.

“We need to understand the smartphone phenomenon and the way smartphone users consume data,” added Mehra. “It’s all going to change the way mobile devices are going to be used.”

To that end, Cisco offers a full range of solutions to enable the organization to embrace the challenges and opportunities afforded in this BYOD phenomenon.

To learn more, check out this video series in full with the link provided above.

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