Bring your own

Smart phones, tablets and the increasing use of employees’ own IT in the office will have a profound effect on the shape of the future worplace.

The number of employees using their own personal devices in the workplace is set to double between now and 2014, according to a report from Juniper Research. If that figure turns out to be true, it can’t fail to bring into question the way IT is managed in such a scenario. How will the use of personal and company mobile devices change the landscape of the office?

Today’s handheld devices can be used for phone calls, video calls, application sharing, social networking, web access and email.

They do most things a desktop computer can do and from the perspective of those more mobile office workers, even more. Every new model can do more than the last and there still seems to be great deal of development headroom.

“The number of tablets being sold in today’s market has outstripped the number of laptops being sold,” says Andrew Mawson of Advanced Workplace Associates. “They are big enough now to be really useful and large enough to work on properly. The HTC One and Samsung Galaxy Note for example are brilliant devices. They’re no longer phones, they’re small personal computers.”

“PCs will continue to exist in large companies for a long time yet. It’ll be perhaps another decade before the PC dies out as companies need to make sure that they are maximising their investment in current hardware for as long as possible. But soon, connectivity within offices will be wireless, and outside of the office we will have reliable 3G — soon to be 4G — connectivity.”

For the facilities manager, this connectivity will in fact simplify the task of managing IT, believes Mawson, although he concedes that for FMs, this should be an interesting and challenging time as FMs become responsible for the way these devices connect in the office.

Issues of dedicated communication space will become more important. “When people begin to participate in a lot of video calls in the office, they will need small booths for employees to work from, which will need to be secure and private,” says Mawson.

The question then turns to the use of mobile devices represent a security issue for IT network administrators and FMs — what can FMs do to mitigate the risks?

“BYOD is a current concern to many employers and managers,” ays Dr Marie Puybaraud, director Global WorkPlace Innovation, Johnson Controls. “It is a security and privacy issue, as well as an IT issue, and brings up problems with compatibility and access.”

Puybaraud argues that the full impact of BYOD on the workplace has yet to be felt because most brought-in devices are staying under the radar, hidden in employees’ pockets or briefcases. “The majority [of these devices] are being used for personal communication only, although this is changing rapidly. Tablets are becoming an efficient and reliable collaboration tool, with applications such as Facetime, Skype and iCloud often used in preference to standard corporate tools like WebEx, eRoom or Webtop,” explains Puybaraud.

Business Bedouins?

As the workplace evolves to accommodate wireless mobile devices, what does this mean for networking infrastructure?

“The presence of the desktop computer in offices is still common, despite a significant shift towards mobile technologies,” says Puybaraud. “We should not ignore the large pool of employees who continue to commute to an office everyday and work at a desk in front of a desktop computer.”

Although mobile working and flexible working are increasingly common, having in certain organisations been adopted by more than 50 per cent of employees (as much as 75 per cent in organisations like BT or IBM), it’s not necessarily the fact that this means work away from the office. Personal mobile devices used for work does not automatically mean their use away from the office.

“Young organisations like Google, Facebook or Skype all advocate the presence of employees in the office, going against the current trend towards more nomadic working,” confirms Puybaraud.

And despite the excitement about the idea of BYOD being the next big thing, or indeed the current way of working (be it formally sanctioned or not), Monica Parker, head of workplace consultancy for Morgan Lovell, takes a more pragmatic view of the idea of offices going without PCs. “If the employee is office-based, everything will be running across the same infrastructure; you’re going to have some fairly decent pipes installed into office premises and should your internet connection fail you will be limited as to what you can do.”

Parker points out that because business applications are installed on PCs, users can work ‘locally’, in other words, from the office. From a business continuity point of view, however, a combination of devices is more practical. “There is also a limit to the functionality of non-PC devices to operate PC-based software in a robust enough manner to be a true substitute.”

That said, Parker believes that it will be difficult to stop employees bringing their own technology into the workplace. “I’m seeing a capitulation of IT departments in allowing staff to use their own devices, bought with their own funds and then integrating them into the security infrastructure of the firm.”

This will have its consequences. Problems can quickly arise related to the compatibility of devices and their secure operation on the corporate network. The challenge for the FM and IT departments is managing so many devices, each wanting to connect into a single network infrastructure. “There are some very good tools out there,” says Parker.

“The best ones, such as AirWatch, can help with both corporate-owned devices and BYOD, and cater for all types of devices — Apple, Windows Mobile and Android. It can have different policies set to cater for both environments,” suggests Parker.

Losing control

“But if it is a personal device, company policies may be applied, and in the end, you may lose control of your device. This is often enough of a barrier to keep people from integrating their devices with the corporate network.” Parker sees a difficulty in where to draw the line in terms of those devices not connected (and therefore managed).

“There is a security risk in terms of what can be moved from the professional to the personal realm. But again, this is more of a cultural issue than an IT issue. If someone wants to flout security rules, they can. We need to be make better strides towards creating a relationship of responsible adults as opposed to adopting a hierarchical, parental relationship with our IT policies.”

What does all this mean for networking infrastructure? “PCs, tablets and smart-phones have to peacefully coexist and information must flow seamlessly and securely between them,” says Steve Dance, managing partner of RiskCentric and chair of the BIFM’s risk and business continuity special interest group.

“Applications, regardless of their platform, need to be able to access the same data and devices will need to have the capability to share the same files and update them. The IT infrastructure will need to support scenarios where a file is created using a lap-top or desktop PC, which is subsequently reviewed and commented on by individuals using smart-phones or tablet devices.”

Dance believes that if BYOD and traditional IT are to co-exist, organisations need to be more committed to catering for BYOD. Naturally, they can’t be expected to replace all of their existing hardware in order to facilitate BYOD overnight, and certainly there will be many businesses and employees that do not want to migrate to a mobile system.

Keeping pace

For some, both their home IT and the mobile devices they use outside of the office will be more sophisticated than those they use at work. Companies are often obliged to keep up. “The larger companies are a little bit slower off the mark,” says Mawson. It’s easier to encourage individuals to change from one form of IT to another. Consumers always want something better and for individuals it’s a fairly small outlay to buy into the use of tablets.”

For Matthew Wailling, consultancy director at Cordless Consultants, BYOD doesn’t mean the end of the PC — in fact, far from it. “If BYOD is simply about letting staff connect their tablet or smartphone, these are additional tools and don’t offer the full functionality and power of a full PC — today at least.”

Charging ahead

Wailling goes on to suggest that there are two key infrastructure considerations for BYOD: power and data. “Yes, batteries are getting better, but we still need to charge these devices occasionally; will charging points need to be provided, not just at meeting-room tables and at desks, but at breakout areas as well?”

Perhaps more fundamental to this, however, is connectivity. As Wailling puts it: “A fully charged mobile device in a well-designed flexible work-space isn’t much use if it can’t access any data.”

Companies therefore need to consider providing high-speed wireless network access across the entire floor plate so staff can work from anywhere in the building. He draws the distinction between the corporate network (with access to all systems) and a guest network. “This is a ‘middle network’ that is used to connect ‘trusted staff devices’ only,” he says.

However, BYOD is not universally accepted as a good thing. Indeed, there’s a fairly long list of issues that come with it: system incompatibilities between corporate and private technologies, lack of bandwidth power and the capability to allow multi-channel connections, and the possibility for hackers to bypass firewalls. All of these potential problems will have to be overcome before large-scale adoption of BYOD.

Puybaraud puts the onus on organisations to open their protocols, carefully, and allow employees to connect to the corporate network using their own technologies. “Cyber-security is the biggest problem. After talking to a cyber-security specialist recently, I became extremely scared by the prospect of a cyber-attack. According to the specialist, this can only become more frequent. BYOD adds a layer of uncertainty regarding the robustness of our existing corporate IT networks.”

Dance suggests that since most of the devices that fall into the BYOD category are wireless, “existing IT infrastructures will need to provide increased wireless connectivity. There will also be a challenge with actually knowing the number and type of devices to be supported.”

According to Dance, IT and FM managers will have to work out management and security processes that support multiple platforms. Flexibility will be at a premium. Knowing which platforms to integrate will be problematic.

A non-PC future

Smartphones have been around for less than a decade, but for many people, it’s already hard to imagine not having instant access to email, Twitter, or the internet, from a device that sits in the palm of the hand. Ultimately, there will be no place for bulky desktop PCs in user’s personal lives, but that doesn’t mean the desktop PC is defunct. We are in a transitional phase between being hard-wired and becoming totally WiFi. The challenge will be to make that transition as easy and painless as possible.