Technologies to Watch 2013: The Cloud Will Make BYOD a Non-Issue - Eventually

Network World — Coolness, according to technology experts, is at the heart of one of the biggest problems facing business IT today - the rapid influx of consumer mobile devices into the enterprise.

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To hear Accenture Mobile executive Joel Osman tell it, consumerization has been the most visible sign of a seismic change in how the business world views technology.

"I like to categorize [consumerization] as 'somehow, tech became cool,'" Osman says. "If you can imagine, not that many years ago, it was almost a badge of honor in the business world - 'I'm not very technical' - and business users really avoided technology as something to be shunned or that IT would thrust upon them."

That was fine with IT departments, he says, because it more or less gave them free rein - after all, technology wasn't cool, so nobody else wanted to get involved.

"Somehow, we flipped that. Tech has become cool. And consumerization is a big part of that, in that you've got business executives with their tablets, with their smartphones now espousing how technically savvy they are," Osman says.

The result in the ranks of IT? Panic and devastation, combined with a rapid search for a product - any product - to help address the issue.

"All the clients I talk to seem to think everyone else is doing it, and that somehow they're behind. In actuality, no one's really doing it, and the ones who are are doing it [to] varying degrees," Osman says.

Siemens mobility portfolio vice president Randy Roberts concurs.

"IT folks are scared to death because they're realizing now that BYOD is happening on their networks, there are devices hitting their networks they're not aware of. And they don't know what kind of devices they are, they don't know who these people are, what applications they have or what content they're getting access to," he says.

Cloud's impact

A big part of the response to consumerization in 2013 will be shaped by cloud technology and user frustration, according to Forrester Research senior vice president and distinguished analyst Ted Schadler.

"The big thing that's going to be a problem that I think we'll start to really see in 2013, and it's related to [mobile device management] and control, is usability. So when you put in a [mobile device management] solution that forces your employees to use a clunky, slow mailbox, or log in every time, or have a poor user experience, they'll just ignore it," he says.

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