From: Stewart Davison, Product launch manager, Capita Software Services
Sir – I read with interest the article on bring your own devices (Housing Technology, March 2012). It seems inevitable that BYOD will become increasingly popular among both employees and employers, especially considering that the development and take-up of consumer mobile technology has, arguably, outpaced that of business technology.
Consumers adopt new ways of using mobile technology quite effortlessly when freed from a restrictive ‘work only’ environment where functions such as cameras, location-aware devices and social networks are often disabled.
BYOD is about taking advantage of the power and functionality of these consumer devices which are gaining new features and higher processors at an exponential rate compared to their business counterparts.
BYOD will only ever be accepted in the corporate environment if security concerns are addressed. Software already exists which successfully partitions a mobile device, effectively firewalling its corporate function and enabling the user to keep their images, music or social networks on their device.
For companies concerned about the implications of BYOD, particularly the inevitable mix of business and social applications, a ‘lock down’ approach may not be the best. At first, perhaps introduce controlled elements such as using tablets for note taking, document creation and presentations. Housing providers then need to consider the flexibility and security of their software and processes so they can move to the next level of BYOD on a corporate-wide basis.
