Your Own Device

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is all the rage these days with the onslaught of truly portable and useful devices combined with relatively free spending personal technology budgets.  But what an employee wants when trying to bring their productivity into their workspace depends on how their company’s infrastructure has adapted, or not, over the last decade as the non-portable versions of their technology, for example a home PC, has been permitted, or not, to access company email and applications.  

If UYOD (Use Your Own Device) has gained traction, then BYOD is a simple matter of providing Internet-facing Wi-Fi access while at work.  Using, not Bringing, is the key point here and UYOD should be the focus of this effort, after all, these new devices are meant to be used anywhere, and the office is just one place an employee would find using their smart-phone or tablet useful.  And UYOD speaks to the much larger effort required to securely deliver and support IT services on these devices.  BYOD typically means that a personal device would be connected to the company’s internal network.  UYOD only requires the same Internet access that the device has when it’s not in the office.  

UYOD is easily enabled by creating a separate Wi-Fi network that only provides Internet access, just like I have defined on my home wireless network to allow my friends Internet access without accessing my home’s internal network.  If there were internal services on my home network that I wanted a friend to use, I would find a secure way of providing that, while still keeping them on my guest wireless network.  

If the Internet and its hundreds of millions of web sites are built on a UYOD basis, maybe it’s time to see the light.