Mobile Device Management
Do you have an answer for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to work? BYOD is here. It’s not coming tomorrow, or a month from now. The famed bring-your-own-device movement is here today, and it’s here to stay – and whether business owners like it or not, today’s employees are leveraging personal devices to access corporate data and applications. Terms like “BYOD” and “IT consumerization” that were once considered mere buzzwords have become part of our daily tech vocabulary, and the influx of personally-owned mobile devices entering the workplace isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2017, half of employers will require workers to supply their own mobile devices for work purposes. The analyst firm also forecasts that by 2018, 70% of mobile professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices. For IT companies like Tier3MD, the message is clear: medical practices want BYOD, and understand its benefits – but in many cases simply aren’t sure how to actually draw up and implement an effective mobile device management (MDM) policy. The good news? We can help!
Why Do Businesses Have To “Manage” Mobile Devices?.
Why can’t practices simply let employees use their own devices as they wish? They’re more productive, more efficient, and more responsive (especially on weekends) – so why the need to actually “manage” these mobile devices? Employees want to maintain one device for both work and play – they want to access their work email, then check Facebook, play a game, and review an upcoming presentation during lunch. This need for “dual personas” is exactly what sparked the creation of modern MDM technology – because permissions, restrictions and access requirements for personal and corporate data are very different from one another (and need to be treated as such). Think of MDM as a container of sorts, one that allows businesses to completely separate work from play on employee-owned devices. Anything placed in the “work” container will stay there, and a user can continue accessing it as long as they have the appropriate permissions. In some cases, the end-user experience is identical whether an MDM policy is deployed or not – but from a management perspective, the ability to control that container (and the flow of information to and from it) is invaluable. Here’s an example: A waiter is hired at a popular restaurant with a high employee turnover rate. The restaurant uses a mobile application to take orders, and requires that the staff install the app on their personal devices. After 6 months, the waiter decides to leave; with MDM, the restaurant is able to selectively wipe the device he was using – removing only the restaurant app and related information, leaving all other data untouched. Here’s another good example: The doctor takes a weekend vacation, and brings an iPad containing all of the office’s patient records and information. What happens if the iPad is lost or stolen? With an MDM policy in place, the device can be completely wiped clean to eliminate the risk of a data breach. As long as there’s a desire for BYOD, there will be a need for MDM – the risks of letting unmanaged mobile devices run free throughout the practice (and beyond) are simply too great.