BYOD - Why Control and not Cooperation?

On Friday I attended an informative session at the Cisco offices talking about their network products, but I could not help but notice the constant use of the word control.  This same word is often raised in conversations in IT departments and yet it is not something in my 20 years of computing I have truly seen achieved.  Worse I believe that the modern world is developing such that control is less achievable all the time.

A very earnest man sat and told me how I had to buy a lot of products that would allow me full control of my users in a BYOD environment.  When I asked how they were going to do that when the users were connecting to a new 4G network and never used the corporate network he got a bit less confident.  He then resorted to my need to assert management "control" to ensure that they did!

The problem is that people have settled into a pattern where they expect the technology to provide the control when in truth it can only do so much.  If they can make something happen then it must be okay, mustn't it?

I would argue there are two problems with all the strategies that I have seen to date.

1. They are protecting the wrong thing.
2. They are ignoring the human factor.

Cisco as a networking company is protecting at the network level;  Microsoft as an OS operating system company is protecting at a file level and many other companies protect at the level of their particular historic solution.  All of these are the "Answer" to BYOD.   None of these solutions consider the information, the value of the data stored that is understood only by those that are working with it.

They ignore the human factor because they assume that the humans will be compliant, but we are not.  Worse we generally do not like to be controlled and it takes a lot of effort to do so.  As one mechanism for control is put in place a work around will be found to allow us to work in a way that is convenient to us.  The more innovative and dynamic the working environment the more quickly the work arounds will appear.  So far my experience has shown engineers and students alike are great at this!   

So if control will not work, what will?  

I believe that we need to work with users of our systems to help them understand the value of the information they are publishing so that they can protect it accordingly.  I think we need to encourage them to stop giving responsibility for this to us because we store their data and ensure they know it is actually up to them.  Above all they need to understand that we cannot provide a silver bullet to protect them from this.  Part of this means that responsibility for data leakage should fall to them not some lowly technologist that failed to encrypt the PC on which they stored it.  They should be aware their information should be protected and not store it anywhere that the protection cannot be ensured, wherever that may be.    

We for our part need to provide them with the tools they will need to achieve this.  In this way we can avoid the stupidity of essential data stored on an encrypted laptop with the password to the laptop written on the lid!  

The future of Tablet

Today I went to Microsoft's Reading office for a technology update part of which was about Windows 8.  Sadly the 10 year old that they surfaced to talk about Windows 8 had no reasoning ability and little patience for anyone that did not see it as the best thing ever......

This really worried me, it smacks of the old "it must be good because it is Microsoft" attitude.  In fact they put up a slide that showed there were 500 million PCs out there running Windows 7, 250 million running Android of some form and 130 million running IOS.  The conclusion from this is that Windows would have to be a success because there would be more people writing applications because it is such a big platform.  I'm not sure of this logic.  I was also interested to note that he kept referring to windows programs that run on the desktop as legacy programs, implying that they expect them to go away.  Again I am not sure the Metro interface provides the kind of functionality that supports a workhorse as yet.

What I also saw was the thing I had problems with.  He was holding the tablet in a strange way so that he could write with the pen, because otherwise it goes haywire when your palm hits the screen.  This indicates to me they have not yet solved this problem and that this will make use of a pen difficult.  

On the plus side they finally have proper drivers for my tablet so I think it may be worth giving it another try. I will wait a little while though as I believe there will be a CTP version delivered in June (internet rumour not anything they said today).  I keep my fingers crossed that this works out, but I still have some doubts and nothing the Microsoft fanboy did today helped.

Why it's not bad to be like King Canute

Today I attended an interesting session about HP Storage but in one of the positioning presentations the presenter said we should not be like King Canute trying to stop the tide of consumerisation.  As someone that has been championing the BYOD concept since before it was called that way back in 2004 I have actually been exactly like King Canute.

Why is that you may ask?  You have been telling us about this for years and not been trying to resist it!!

The reason I say this is that the legend of King Canute has been slightly turned around.  He did not have his throne placed in front of the sea to prove he could prevent the tide coming in as many think.  He actually had his throne put there so he could prove that he could NOT stop the tide coming in.  In the last 8 or 9 years I too have stood in front of that tide and it is gratifying that final people are starting to recognise that it cannot be stopped.  Even if you build walls in front of it the tide will eventually beat them down and come in anyway.

It is now the consumer that is dictating the tools they wish to use to do their work.  At the beginning of the era of the PC few of us owned them or were exposed to these devices.  Nowadays everyone has a number of computing devices to their fingertips ranging from the Digital TV recorder to the mobile phone.  Few people retain their fear of technology and most just want to use it without the complexity, a wish Apple masterfully played to.  If you think about it this is only natural, a craftsman should pick his own tools and make it his own, because every craftsman uses his own method to achieve his best work.

We are really starting to see the end of the era of IT control of computing diminishing.  Those IT departments that stand in front of this will be swept away, if you want to survive you must embrace it and learn to work with it. Much as small IT groups took the power of choice from the mainframe driven computer departments of old by buying PCs, the end user is now doing the same to us.  Much as the mainframes were driven into the background our role will be to provide the business specific cloud services these end users want to consume.

Once you have admitted this to yourself you can begin to plan how you provide your business with the correct level of service and security within an environment where you don't control.  That is the really interesting challenge we find ourselves pitted against now.