People are more savvy about their devices, and don't want to part with their personalized smartphones or tablets. As the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture is increasingly becoming an accepted practice for both small businesses and enterprises alike, businesses need to adapt to a variety of devices to keep their workers connected when they are in the office, at home, or on the road. However, this presents a serious problem for employers who need to protect company information and still give employees the convenience of their own devices.
According to Citrix's global IT consumerization survey, 25% of enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses worldwide support the use of personal devices for business purpose. But they also found that 62% of businesses surveyed have no controls in place to manage these devices, and 42% percent of IT managers are unaware about all the devices being used.
So the question is, how does the enterprise support the modern mobile worker with all of their technology expectations without losing control of the network, overstretching IT resources, or insecurely blending "work" and "play" inside the device ?
We believe the answer lies in the creation of two personalities inside of the device to enable employees and the workplace to share a single fully functional mobile device without compromising security, performance, or the user experience.
At Cellrox, we adopt this approach to provide a managed work persona alongside an independent private persona on employees' Android devices. (Android is one of the most open operating systems in the mobile world and fastest growing with 47% of all smartphones to be built on Android in the coming year). Our Corporate Android Enabler gives enterprises and businesses the security and remote management capabilities within the work persona. At the same time, employees enjoy a unique and intuitive user experience within their private persona and the freedom to use their mobile devices without employer imposed limitations.
In the coming weeks as we get ready for the news and trends coming out of Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, we will launch our new blog series on aspects of the mobile worker. We will explore new challenges and solutions for managing mobile workplace technology and the BYOD revolution. So stay tuned and follow us on Twitter @Cellrox.