CIOs can learn from Consumerization 2.0 issues akin to restless employees, shadow IT, and BYOD.
According to Gartner, in 2012-2013, 64% of enterprises said mobility projects forged ahead without the total involvement of IT, with employees acquiring connected mobile devices, personal DropBox accounts, or even developing personal applications through Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.
“We do not need IT anymore” became the tagline for the consumerization of IT 1.0 movement during the last few years where employees moved to independence through programs like bring-your-own-device (BYOD).
By the tip of 2013, even cautious companies in heavily regulated industries started to embrace this consumerization. Just 18 months ago, Wells Fargo stated that BYOD wasn’t within the cards, but today the bank is testing its use/rollout. There has been a time when CIOs thought that tablets had no need in a business environment. Now tablets are changing the manner employees communicate, especially those within the field. The CIO of Verizon Wireless indicated that its field technicians have reinvented themselves as sales consultants resulting from tablets, being able to demo new products and track service calls.
[ How will the appearance of social transform the role of the CIO? Read Picturing Your Social Business In 2020. ]
But freedom has its price. With the hot news that 4.6 million Snapchat accounts were hacked and Skype and other social sites being taken over by the Syrian Electronic Army, questions about security for consumer platforms keep surfacing.
Security and other new challenges arising from the consumerization movement mean that CIOs want to make sure that services are secured, tested, reliable, and integrated into the enterprise application stack. The first step is accepting that these consumer paradigms are here to remain.
Consumerization 2.0 can be concerning the re-emergence of the CIO because the person accountable for integrating, securing, and accelerating consumer technology and the appliance development process. The payoff for CIOs: They’ll establish themselves as a powerful business partners, avoid shadow IT, and, main, remain relevant.
So how do they do it? Listed here are some best practices:
Design for mobile first
Don’t design applications for the desktop/web and treat mobile as an afterthought. Designing for mobile first and ensuring the perfect layouts are in place for controls and functions will result in a more engaging experience for users. It also permits you to make the most devices’ native features consisting of location-based services to present a more personalize experience.
Flipboard was ready to disrupt the publishing industry by specializing in making a new reading aggregation service specifically designed for tablets. It was only after the applying gained popularity that it was considered an internet interface.
Learn and leverage the cloud
The cloud can solve one of the most enterprise’s most challenging storage, computational, and infrastructure issues, but many aren’t taking full benefit of cloud benefits along with quick acquisition of infrastructure allowing faster application deployment, flexible capacity for scaling to simply service peak business needs or new lines of economic, and prepaid models to minimize up-front capital expenses. Before implementing, decide where the cloud will give you probably the most value. When you are considering the safety of popular cloud storage services equivalent to DropBox and Google Drive, consider providing users with internal equivalents.
Also, consider switching email and office productivity suites to the cloud. Cloud productivity tools let users collaborate and access files remotely from various devices. IT organizations make the most of reduced licensing costs besides freed up time.
Protect and secure your mobile devices
BYOD programs are great — they let employees use the devices they’re acquainted with. But, in addition they include countless problems equivalent to data security and managed control. Many companies have already implemented mobile device management (MDM) software equivalent to Airwatch, MobileIron, and Good for managed control of devices and applications. While that’s good for easily wiping the device if the worker leaves or loses the device, it doesn’t address each of the concerns. There remains to be the danger of information leakage. Although VPNs create a safe tunnel for approved applications, rogue apps installed at the device make it prone to security breaches as those apps will not be included within the VPN tunnel.
Be social
Sure, employees surfing Facebook on company time is a drain on funds and resources, but if used correctly, social channels will help employees collaborate by creating chat groups on topics of interest that invite all levels of the organization, without hierarchy, to interchange ideas or voice concerns. Yammer’s “YamJam” sessions, for instance, collect a gaggle to talk about a distinctive issue. It is a good way for IT leaders to get real-time input on their service levels and function.
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Frank Palermo is the top of the worldwide Technical Solutions Group for IT consulting and services company Virtusa. The gang is chargeable for creating an overall go-to-market strategy for clients in technology areas comparable to business process management (BPM), enterprise … View Full Bio
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