My name is Tom Patton, and I am a student at the University of Oregon and a Cisco intern. Presently, I support Cisco’s Education Marketing Team. In this position, I have had the unique opportunity to observe a number of emerging trends in education, including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
This blog describes my thoughts on the technological transformation made by the Katy Independent School District. Recently, the district implemented a BYOD program, an initiative that encourages vs. limits, technology in the classroom. The results have been jaw-dropping.
On June 19th, Cisco released WebEx Social which encapsulates Cisco’s ability to “Work Your Way” by letting the user have mobility, security, and flexibility which coincides with Cisco’s philosophy of work-life balance. -- WebEx Social
With the ability to be anywhere, anytime; our productivity could be limitless and it brings our technology into our modern World of “Go, Go, Go!” At the same time, how great would it be to be able to have that great cup of Joe served by our favorite Barista while hosting a WebEx about our Quarters projections! Or let’s take this another step into the realm of Government; how great would it be to have the mobility, security, and flexibility at the fingertips of those gathering necessary sensative information in order for the decision makers to make the best decision possible. This aspect of “Work your Way” is what the Military along with many other Government Agency’s are wanting to achieve.
You need to provide safe network access before allowing employees to bring their own devices to work
Almost every small company is experiencing the phenomenon referred to as “the consumerization of IT.” If you were the first in your office to log into your company’s network with your smartphone, you may even have been leading the charge. As more and more employees follow the “bring your own devices” trend (BYOD, for short) to work, you need to figure out how to give them remote access to the company network while keeping corporate data and personal information separate and secure.
In general, the BYOD movement is good for employers, even though people are using devices that aren’t necessarily provided by the company. Employers want to find ways to accommodate their employees’ desire to access their work email and other applications whenever and from whatever device they’re using, such as tablets and smartphones. That usually means that employers need to make some changes to the access policies. As an employer, you need to have network access policies with visibility and control over every device and application; and the user has to follow some rules to protect critical company data when accessing the network remotely.
In the past few years a number of paradigm shifts have made policy-based networking essential to effective enterprise IT management. Some of these shifts include an increased reliance on virtualization and the cloud; the “consumerization” of business networks that has occurred with the popularity of devices such as tablets and smartphones; and the rapid adoption of video in business communications. By applying appropriate policies within the network, IT managers can do a better job of meeting users’ expectations and become business enablers.
Foundational to Cisco’s One Policy strategy is the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), which enables organizations to create and deploy unified policy to address the need for BYOD compliance. ISE enables one consistent policy across the entire enterprise, as well as enforcement by correlating a unique combination of contextual information including user, device, location and time.
The explosive growth of mobility has had a transformative impact in recent years. Increasingly, it is viewed not just as an industry force but as an overall economic lever, driving expansion on a GDP level.
This was a core theme of the 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit, which I attended last week in Toronto. Certainly, Canada itself is a prime example, and there was much discussion about the vital role mobile video and data have played as key enablers in Canada’s economy as a whole.
My presentation and panel at the Summit focused on the opportunities afforded to service providers by this unbridled appetite for mobility, especially from a business-to-business perspective. In particular, I discussed the intersection between cloud and the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement. This evolution, I believe, will be a critical catalyst, ensuring the continuation of mobility-driven productivity and economic growth.
The fact is, service-provider-delivered business-to-business cloud services have not Read More »
