Doubts about BYOD promotion schemes

[The proposal of a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) communications campaign] strikes me as a bit too “happy/clappy” about promoting BYOD adoption. Explaining the process won’t address deep-seated privacy concerns like Peter Nolan’s. If done the wrong way, such promotions smack of the old IT “if we explain it to you lunkheads one more time it will sink in” mentality.

I started as a BYOD advocate and I’m OK with it for myself, at least for certain devices (e.g.,work email on a personal tablet). However, if we in IT want to control devices, we should expect that some won’t want to hand over their personal property. Therefore, if we want to control them, we should be prepared to provision them.

Also, I’m just not sure that BYOD is a great lever for preventing shadow IT. My suggestion would be to start with a more open IT portfolio process, which would ensure that everyone buys into what’s proposed, being executed, and how approvals and controls work.

Adapted from a LinkedIn comment on this post re: shadow IT and trust as a strategy to prevent it.

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IT Cost Levers

Caught this post on Apptio’s blog re: optimizing IT budgets. It summarizes a Gartner report — I’ve seen earlier versions — which is interesting and Apptio will provide the report if you provide them your contact info. The analysis:

…breaks down IT spending and identifies four best practices for strategic IT budget management. Of these, the recommendation to “follow the money,” is of key importance to IT leaders. Knowing where the IT budget currently gets spent is the most important part of your budget strategy.

The post then highlights the top four areas of spend, which typically make up around two-thirds of an IT budget: Data Center, Application Development, Application Support, and End-User Computing.

One point: the separation of mobile topics into the categories of “End-User Computing”, “Data Networking”, and “Voice Networking” is both useful and potentially confusing. It’s useful because it reminds us that just because we get billed for mobile in one package, we should decompose the costs like we would for other capabilities. It’s worth the time to break bundled costs down: you may need to differentiate service levels among your customers or find that mobile is providing capability that makes other options redundant (e.g., mobile hotspot vs. reimbursing WiFi/home cable subscriptions).

It could be confusing because the costs aren’t as easily severable as other capabilities. In other words, trying to economize on a data plan may mean we lose credit on voice or device costs. In fact, the model itself is very PC-centric in that way: each of these cost drivers is typically provided in separate invoices or line items. Even worse, if you do try to account for it in a model, I’ve found my telecom staff can get deep into the weeds trying to model those last few mobile dollars.

A quick note on mobile BYOD vs. CYOD

As a practical matter, one needs to have different policies given the expectations in different part of the world. A mobile device isn’t always expected to come as a perk of the job in the US; however, it’s part of the package many other places. You’ll need to go CYOD in the latter, even if you go BYOD in North America.

From a comment on Sam Somashekar’s LinkedIn post on mobile BYOD (bring your own device) vs. CYOD (choose your own device) strategies.

Texting, Talking, Twitter, and I’m getting old

I felt my age when saw this post on Texting vs. Talking (post here) by Kathleen Moriarty at relentlessPR.  It isn’t that I don’t prefer texting to talking — I am a weakish, but definitite “I” on my MBTI.   Texting gives a bit of distance that is attractive to this introvert.

Perhaps it’s because I related so heavily to my future as a parent when I read this passage:

Luckily for parents, texting is a great way for them to communicate with their kids. 68% of American parents communicate with their kids by text message, and 53% of texting kids say that their relationship with their parents has improved because of texting. It’s an easy way for parents to touch base with their kids without intruding too much – it’s much easier for kids to send a discreet text message to their parents rather than to actually call them when out with friends.

Of course, perhaps it was because Kathleen’s post reminded me of a recent episode where I also felt my age. I was asked by two correspondents — within a day of each other — to point them to my Twitter feed.  I had to sheepishly explain that I don’t tweet and likely won’t for a while. Twitter would just kill my day job.   Also, the “always-on” connectivity would eat into my personal life (though I could give round-the-clock Jon updates).

But most of all, the idea that people would care enough to follow me on Twitter 24/7/365 would be too much encouragement for my already overly-developed ego.  If my colleagues and family think I’m insufferable now…  :-)