Management

Is Your Business Prepared for BYOD?

With the holiday season approaching, workers might be tempted to bring new tech toys to the office.

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Ryan has been a magazine and newspaper editor for 21 years, with the last 15 covering a variety of bases for CDW’s family of tech magazines. As Editor in Chief, he works on developing editorial strategy and is always on the lookout for new writing talent and sharing great stories with the IT world. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys spending time with his family, biking and obsessively following Iowa Hawkeye sports and Cubs baseball.

The holidays are approaching, so IT managers beware. It’s inevitable that some employees will get cool new tech toys and want to try them out in the office.

But are you ready to support those tablet devices and smartphones that aren’t company-issued? If you’re not, the network and security ramifications could have an adverse effect on your business.

Hawaii Human Resources, a company that provides HR support, has found a way to let employees bring in just about any personal device without causing much strain on the IT staff. The company relies on a Citrix server for a cloud solution that employees use to log on to their work environment from any device that suits them.

“I think most of the people just like the fact that they can live off our Wi-Fi while they’re in the office, with all of their various devices,” says Fred B. Li, the company’s chief systems officer. “And, of course, they can connect to our corporate e-mail, full Exchange, [with] support anywhere they want.”

Green N Brown, a Florida company that sells environmentally friendly lifestyle products, also taps a virtual environment to support employees’ own devices. To ensure security, a firewall and network intrusion prevention system protect the company’s infrastructure and information.

“In today’s world, IT consumerism has reached a stage where it may be inappropriate to limit or ban usage of smartphones or iPads at work,” says Green N Brown CEO Naina Vaish.

For more information about how companies are building IT infrastructures that support employees bringing their own devices to work, turn to “Your Network, Their Devices.”

Tool Tips

Nearly two years ago, Apple introduced the iPad, and the personal computing world hasn’t been the same since. But as businesses start to introduce tablet devices to their employees for use in the workplace, how can IT staff ensure successful implementation?

Andrew Ungureanu, system manager at intaBORO, a New York City car service, says that although the devices are fairly new, it’s important to rely on traditional IT practices during implementation planning. The company uses a custom-built dispatch application and relies on mobile-device management to push out virus updates and security patches. For more best practices on tablet deployments, turn to “Tablet Teachings.”

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