One of the more surprising results of the mobile revolution is the way
that IT departments have lost their role as the providers of the technology. It’s
now just as likely that people will be doing business with personally owned
devices, as they are to use devices issued by their employers.
As recently as five years ago, it was still expected that if an
employee needed a mobile phone, the employer would provide it. If there was any
integration with corporate systems, one would probably have had a BlackBerry
and the IT department would have run one or more instances of its supporting
platform, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The only exceptions to this model were
those shops that had embraced other platforms, such as devices running Symbian
or Windows Mobile. But in all these cases, the device was a phone with some e-mail
and calendar features. Although third-party applications existed, they were at
best cumbersome to install.
Today, that’s no longer the case. It’s increasingly common for people to
bring their own devices into the business, and then expect IT to make them work
with back-end systems. The credit — or blame — for this sea change in attitudes and
expectations rests with Apple, thanks to the resounding success of the iPhone,
and more recently, the iPad.
Chip Pearson, managing partner of JAMF Software, believes that iOS
devices “are one of the most disruptive technologies that’s come on, quicker
than anything. We’re seeing, really for the first time, the business driving
the conversation, versus IT driving the conversation.”
For more, read the eWeek article: iPad, iPhone Challenge Management Orthodoxy .