BYOD: Bring Your Own Device.
One of the many great new buzzwords in the past year or so.
Will it fly? Will it fail? It all depends on how it is treated:
“Hold on loosely, but don’t let go; if you cling too tightly, you’re going to lose control” — .38 Special
By Fred Donovan in FierceMobileIT.
Emphasis in red added by me.
Brian Wood, VP Marketing
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IT’s heavy hand will cause one-fifth of BYOD projects to fail, predicts Gartner
Employees will demand mobility solutions that isolate personal content from business content
A disturbing 20 percent of BYOD projects will fail by 2016, predicts Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.
The primary reason, says Dulaney, is that many IT departments will try to implement mobile device management solutions that are too restrictive. “Given the control that IT has exercised over personal computers by developing and deploying images to company-managed PCs, many IT organizations will implement strong controls for mobile devices,” predicts Dulaney, who is vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.
This will lead employees to reject IT’s efforts to gain more control over their personal devices and more access to personal data. Employees will demand mobility solutions that “isolate personal content from business content and restrict the ability of the IT organization to access or change personal content and applications,” he says.
At the same time, mobile browsers are evolving into sophisticated app delivery platforms by running JavaScript apps. “At least three platforms (Android, iOS and Windows) will gain significant market share in the smartphone, tablet and PC space, requiring many organizations to support multiple platforms for both consumer- and employee-facing applications,” says Dulaney.
“Although more than 100 ‘platform independent’ development tools exist, most involve technical or commercial compromises, such as lock-in to relatively niche technologies and small vendors. This will drive increasing interest in HTML5 as a somewhat-standardized, widely available, platform-neutral delivery technology,” he adds.
In addition, Dulaney predicts that less than 1 percent of consumer mobile apps will be considered a financial success by their developers through 2018.
“Our analysis shows that most mobile applications are not generating profits and that many mobile apps are not designed to generate revenue, but rather are used to build brand recognition and product awareness or are just for fun. Application designers who do not recognize this may find profits elusive,” he notes.
