Organisations must rip up the ‘single standard’ for managing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and create a multi-tiered approach which states what services are offered to each device. 

As previously reported by ServiceDesk360, BYOD policies are causing headaches for IT staff.  Describing the cultural change which much take place to manage this problem as ‘managed diversity’, analyst Gartner says that a flexible approach is needed to respond to the growing importance of smartphone and tablet use in the workplace.  Failure to adapt will see a fall in user productivity and the growing perception that IT is no longer relevant to the working realities faced by business users.

The analyst also calls for service desks to collaborate with other parts of IT to ensure that BYOD doesn’t cause infrastructure problems.  “Because of the complexity of the mobile device landscape, there must be a person or group responsible for monitoring this landscape, and for understanding users’ demands for new types of device and the impact that new platforms have on applications.  This person or group must work with the security team regularly to address the impact that platform changes and demands for mobile services have on the organisation’s security,” says Terrence Cosgrove, research director.