NAB rolls out BYOD to 450 staff

National Australia Bank has successfully piloted bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and plans to roll out the program to more of its employees, says NAB general manager of infrastructure, Kari Schabel.

The pilot has concluded and the technology is now in production for more than 450 employees, with more to come soon, Schabel told CIO Australia.

“Results of the current BYOD trial have so far been encouraging,” Schabel said. “Team members have mobile access on a device of their choice to workplace applications, as well as documents through a secure cloud-based document repository.”

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“NAB’s BYOD program is one component of an innovative workplace technology strategy designed to improve mobility, productivity and collaboration amongst team members,” Schabel said.

“The next stage of NAB’s workplace strategy will be introducing greater choice for team members, with a select-your-own-device strategy soon to come delivering support for iOS, Android and Windows 8 smart phone devices.”

NAB first revealed a BYOD trial for its top 200 executives at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) event in February this year. The bank’s executive manager of enterprise transformation, Adam Bennett, said that the capability to do BYOD was included in NAB contracts with Telstra and IBM.

At the time, Bennett said he believed most companies will embrace BYOD in the future.

“The issue is not in my mind a technical issue, because the reality is we can make pretty much anything work on our networks and from a security perspective.”

What companies around the world “are grappling with is not so much the technology but it’s all the organisational conventions and protocols around [BYOD].”

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