Access to networks (and everything that an employee gets from remote access to an enterprise network) was through the then ubiquitous blackberry mobile devices. While blackberry flutters with its sustainability model, there’s been a surge in the number of better options available to both consumers and enterprises off late that includes iPhone, thousands of devices with Android, tablets, and then the new wave of Windows powered mobiles.
Employees now seek tools using which they can access information, corporate data, files, and possibly access other applications that can allow them to get their work done remotely. BYOD, as such, was the first sign of consumerism driving the enterprise.
According to IDC, up to 70% of businesses in the U.S already have a fair degree of BYOD action in place. Yet, most of these businesses realize that BYOD almost looks like “back door” or “Stealth” use – the last thing that an enterprise wants. All these devices can connect to the network but none of this can be controlled or tracked. Developing fair use BYOD policies could help, but really, does that help?
While remote work and remote network access is not new, the lack of clear direction on how to offer access to company files, folders, company data, and other important documents over mobile phones is not something that most businesses actually give much thought. The end result is that if company-controlled collaboration, storage, and sharing aren’t provided, users will use consumer-grade cloud tools for their use. You do know that’s a dreaded corporate data chaos and IT nightmare, when that happens.
The BYOD trend now pushes the locus of control on IT to allow, monitor, secure, and control access to corporate data through consumer phones (as compared to enterprise controlled blackberry phones earlier) – that trend, slowly, is turning into reality. Today, employees turned to cloud services (available to everyone for peanuts) to store, access, share, and collaborate documents (even if these documents are proprietary and have restricted access).
That’s not a pretty picture for enterprises that seek security and strict data control protocols. The requirements for employees and other users in the companies don’t change. For enterprises, however, the choice is simple: either choose applications and tools that allow more control over data or let users pick their choices from plenty of cloud-based document sharing and collaboration tools.
From years of experience and after working with numerous clients on network management, data control, cloud-backup, network monitoring, and many other services, we know this for sure: if you are in business, you’d need to control your data and not let users take over.
Thankfully, there are a plethora of enterprise grade tools and services that businesses can use to allow for conditioned sharing, collaboration, and remote work without ever letting go of control or jeopardizing the security.
The week after next, we’ll share 7 such enterprise level online document collaboration and document access tools for your consideration.
Meanwhile, what do you think of your present situation now? How do you manage your content, data, and applications? How much control do you have?
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