Partner Article

Need to know more about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement?

As more and more of us own smartphones and tablet devices, the movement towards bringing your own device to work (BYOD) grows in popularity. This isn’t just reserved to large companies, but small and medium sized businesses too.

Companies of all sizes are able to save massive amounts on hardware spend, increasing margins all around as employees maintain and replace their own devices.

This sounds great, but there are plenty of things to consider before implementing this policy and canceling your IT department’s budget.

Boost to productivity

Take a look at the potential benefits. Supporters of the BYOD movement say that it boosts productivity whilst cutting costs meaning you receive higher revenues.

There are, however, potential pitfalls you must avoid. Complications such as maintaining security of sensitive information, customer date, network integrity.

What about keeping feeling connected in a virtual collaborative environment?

Cisco Certified Partner

It’s in this kind of situation that you might want to consider getting in a Cisco Certified Partner. Cisco have helpfully gathered together a bunch of examples where BYOD has benefitted a company, with the aid of a Cisco Certified Partner.

1. Higher Productivity, Lower Expenses. A 30-employee business in a US city wanted to trim its operational expenditure (OpEx) budget by getting staff to work remotely in locations of their choosing on their own devices. However, they didn’t want to lose the feeling of collaboration or data security.

A Cisco Certified Partner designed a solution for these challenges, including ‘collaboration and security products, hosted communications services for mobile device apps and Cisco SMARTnet technical support service.’

The results were:

• More than 75% of employees moved out of the head office in the city centre
• Productivity increased by 10-15%, due to better working hours and an end to commuting
• The OpEx budget shrank $125,000 per-annum
• Full ROI was realised within one year after completing this transition

2. Business continuity in the face of disaster. When Hurricane Sandy smashed into America’s Eastern seaboard in October 2012, it caused billions of dollars worth of damage. One business that was affected was a 200-employee medical records services company in New York.

Their Cisco equipment had included a Unified Communications Manager platform and IP phones, and Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX) for client devices.

Their Cisco Certified Partner turned up the morning after the hurricane to find thirty feet of water in the basement of the building, which had disabled most of the communications.

To fix the problem, setting up their network as it had previously existed, It would take days, weeks, maybe even months.

Remote network solution

Instead, they decided to set up a remote network, enabling employees to work anywhere, on any device.

A BYOD solution was put together using Cisco systems and the employees’ own devices. All customer records were still accessible and secure.

Work quickly resumed across the city only a day after disaster struck.

In the end it took two months to restore the office building, which used to house the company. A delay that would have cost $5 million and put them out of business.

With innovative solutions like these, it’s not difficult to see how a Cisco Certified Partner could benefit your company. But what about the costs? Cisco engineers are expensive, so this may not be an accessible solution for everyone.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Alastair Yong .