How To Benefit From Consumer Tech In The Enterprise
The next wave of enterprise productivity products may well come from the consumer world. This article preaches an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach towards employees who bring new devices to the office. MP3 players like iPods serve as convenient receivers of corporate messages (delivered as podcasts) or digitized recordings of meetings some people may have missed. Smartphones can become direct links to CRM or ERP systems. The key issues with consumer devices: security, and policy enforcement.
Don’t look now, but they’re invading your office. iPods, smartphones, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, and nearly every form of consumer technology have begun to infiltrate the enterprise, sometimes with profound effects. And don’t expect it to stop. “As long as we live in a democracy,” says Carmi Levy, senior analyst with the Info-Tech Research Group, “employees will feel that they have the right to bring their latest gadgets to the office.” (Disclaimer: Info-Tech analysts write a regular column for Processor.) Even worse, they’ll try to attach those tools to your network—the one you protect with blood, sweat, tears, and every dime you can spare from the corporate coffers. If you think any amount of “threats and crackdowns” will stop them, says Levi, you’re “rather profoundly detached from reality.” Having A Party? But you don’t have to fight the trend. In fact, you can profit from it, co-opting consumer tech for bona fide business ends.
Nauman Haque, Levy’s colleague and fellow Info-Tech analyst, likens the attitude—which he believes is the only proper one for enterprise IT experts—to parents with party-happy teens. “Many parents would rather have their kids bring friends over to their house,” says Haque. That way, they can “monitor the partying, and adults are there in case anything goes wrong.” Haque’s point is simple: If you’re smart enough to embrace the influx of consumer tech, you can at the very least keep your eye on it, and with luck you can even control it. Policies, Policies & More Policies How? Start with policies—rock-solid, airtight, exhaustive policies that govern how iPods, blogs, or any other type of consumer tech should be used inside the office walls. What’s more, you need to enforce those policies “with rules that have teeth,” says Levy. If you don’t enforce the rules and punish offenders, you’ll invite gadget lovers and power users to see your network as their own digital playground. Just don’t go overboard. “Defining what makes an individual productive is not something the enterprise can mandate,” says Haque, who notes that while policies must be exhaustive, they have to be supple enough to let users adapt their technology to their working patterns. Comfort, after all, is a key to efficiency.
What About Security?
When it comes to consumer toys, keeping your network safe is “the biggest issue,” Haque adds. “The rapid proliferation of personal tech and changing standards makes crafting an effective security strategy a nightmare.” A nightmare, but not an impossibility. Haque notes that certain tools, such as software that blocks or monitors USB ports, will keep private data from leaving your network and malware from sneaking in. (Windows Vista, set for release early next year, has built-in, policy-based port-blocking features. Symantec [www.symantec.com] and McAfee [www.mcafee.com] also make tools for this purpose, as do lesser-known firms such as Safend [www.safend.com].) And while third-party software in this field is still “immature,” says Haque, it does let admins “create enforceable rules that align with existing corporate security policies.” You can also take commonsense steps to guard your networks from consumer gadgets. For instance, Levy notes that “many firms quarantine external devices—laptops, smartphones, any type of external device—upon their return” to the office. This gives data center staff and IT teams the chance to scan them, giving an imprimatur before they’re released into the office at large.
iPods: Not Just For Music
Some gadgets, such as the iPod, lend themselves well to business use. You can podcast weekly announcements, updates, or training, posting MP3s to your intranet and letting iPod users (or owners of any MP3 player, for that matter) download them at their convenience. Even a run-of-the-mill meeting can be recorded, digitized, and distributed so that employees who missed it can stay in the loop. If you equip your end users’ machines with RSS readers such as Tristana (www.tristana.org) or podcast players such as PodSpider (www.podspider.com), they can download podcasts and rich-text corporate newsfeeds automatically, giving you a first-rate—and cheap—distribution system. And don’t forget about smartphones. Whether they’re Palm- or Windows-based, they can vastly enhance a user’s ability to keep in touch and organize corporate data on the road. More and more companies are turning to handhelds for high-end business apps, too, putting ERP, CRM, and even help desk systems onto Treos and other gadgets that users clamor for. In fact, a quick glance at Handango (www.handango.com), a leading site for handheld software, shows business tools from project planning to content management to expense tracking and billing, a far cry from the simple PIMs (personal information managers) that handhelds cut their teeth on. If you’re looking to slash your phone bills, turn to instant messaging platforms or even Skype (www.skype.com), a consumer VoIP tool. Just be sure to archive any instant message the same way you do for email or spreadsheets, all the more if Sarbox, HIPAA, or other regulations apply. Business-grade IM systems, such as those from WebEx (www.webex.com), Akonix (www.akonix.com), and Jabber (www.jabber.com), can help. And before you go ballistic on blogging, remember that many firms—including marquee names in the Fortune 500—embrace corporate blogs for brand-building. You can even use a blog for internal use, as a way to share news, key documents, or plain old opinions with employees. The bottom line? Consumer tech is not the evil it’s made out to be. And giving end users access to it will not only muzzle their complaints, but combine those two things we so rarely find in today’s enterprise: work and fun.
- David Garrett
mondomedeusah
ipodyourmondo.com
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