As people become more and more tied to
their own smartphones, companies have to take their employees’ desires
into account when they decide how they want to handle their own
communications. There are three main schools of thought when it comes to
this decision that range a spectrum of freedom for employees: BYOD,
CYOD, COPE and MDM.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD):
employees get full responsibility for choosing and supporting the
device they use at work because they’re bringing in their personal one.
This method is popular with smaller companies or those with a temporary
staff model.
Choose Your Own Device (CYOD):
employees are offered a suite of choices that the company has approved
for security, reliability, and durability. Devices work within the
company IT environment, but the employees own their phone — either they
paid for it themselves and can keep it forever, or the company provided a
stipend and they can keep it for the duration of their employment.
Company-issued, Personally-Enabled (COPE): employees are supplied a phone chosen and paid for by the company, but they can also use it for personal activities. The company can decide how much choice and freedom employees get. This is the closest model to the traditional method of device supply, Corporate-Owned Business Only (COBO).
Mobile device management (MDM) is an
industry term for the administration of mobile devices, such as
smartphones, tablet computers, laptops and desktop computers. MDM
is usually implemented with the use of a third party product that has
management features for particular vendors of mobile devices.Company-issued, Personally-Enabled (COPE): employees are supplied a phone chosen and paid for by the company, but they can also use it for personal activities. The company can decide how much choice and freedom employees get. This is the closest model to the traditional method of device supply, Corporate-Owned Business Only (COBO).
BYOD has been heralded in the past few
years as a way of making your employees happier because they feel
trusted and of lowering hardware costs, but it’s also been called “bring your own disaster.”
This is because there’s no corporate control with BYOD: security,
reliability, and compatibility all go down. What’s a company to do when
their employees span not only Windows, Android, and Apple, but also
different versions of these different platforms?
While business traditionalists may respond with COPE, this method faces other criticisms. While security and compatibility are no issue if devices are all chosen by IT, the fact that IT has visibility into and ownership of employee’s “personally-enabled” devices raises some concerns about privacy.
CYOD solves many of these issues. Companies retain control over a pre-approved list of devices, IT doesn’t have to deal with so much variability, and employees have more flexibility and privacy. CYOD only works, however, if IT dedicates resources to keeping the list up-to-date, and analysts agree that most companies will struggle with this.
While business traditionalists may respond with COPE, this method faces other criticisms. While security and compatibility are no issue if devices are all chosen by IT, the fact that IT has visibility into and ownership of employee’s “personally-enabled” devices raises some concerns about privacy.
CYOD solves many of these issues. Companies retain control over a pre-approved list of devices, IT doesn’t have to deal with so much variability, and employees have more flexibility and privacy. CYOD only works, however, if IT dedicates resources to keeping the list up-to-date, and analysts agree that most companies will struggle with this.
The definitions for each of these acronyms
differ slightly across sources, so the important thing is not
pigeonholing your strategy. Instead, take this opportunity to reflect on
what’s most important to your company in terms of your employees’
mobility – security or flexibility? lower upfront costs or
compatibility? – and go from there.
