BYO - Bring your own computer

I had a chat with an Apple employee today about the concept "Bring Your Own computer" or "Employees choice".

Siemens has done some work in this area: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO_sGDeTAOQ and http://www.siemens.com/user-owned-devices. Interestingly enough is the headline in todays paper based Computer Sweden was "Boom för PC som tjänst" (Boom for PC as a service) (Can't find any link at their webpage). Which is the total opposite to BYO. I guess any CIO easily can muster a thousand consultants all claiming the future is in standardization and consolidation - in the IT workplace as a service. But in general the device is getting less and less important and less interesting. It is also harder and harder to see the difference between a PC and a telephone. And what is an iPad? A telephone without the telephone-part?

In the BYO example the employee will buy their own computer and get some sort of funding for that. In my perspective the biggest problem here is software licenses which often stipulate that the device where the license is installed on must be owned by the license holder. So in order to implement BYO that means all applications must be delivered using a virtual platform. And that feels a bit cumbersome today, it might work in the future though.

At a large university where flexibility is one of the keywords there is a need for some sort of golden middle way between the total anarchy and the total standardization. I have over the last couple of years proposed that any organization should select some reference IT workplaces. I suggest these three:

• A Microsoft (Windows) based IT workplace using the strategy "All in Microsoft"
• An Apple (MacOS) based IT workplace using the strategy "All in Apple"
• A Linux based IT workplace using the strategy "All in Linux"

Then the employee can select any computer that matches the hardware requirements of the reference platform they want to belong to, i.e. following the concept of "Employees choice". A key idea being self-service, the employee should be able to get any application when they need to (all the time, anywhere) installed on their computer. This should be complemented by a strong virtual platform where users can access or install applications they don't want on their own computer for some reason, being resource, security or other reasons.

Now you can naturally argue that given all this the BYO perspective means that all applications should be delivered in a virtual platform or via the web thus nullifying the aspect of the IT workplace (both from hardware and an OS perspective). Yes, in the long run this is a plausible development, in the short run it seems any organization need to deliver an IT workplace, one reason being the reliability of the virtual platform or the accessibility (when on the train or airplane for instance) another being security.

In conclusion the short term future seems to be the golden middle way.