Many people believe that managing smartphones and managing laptops are completely different exercises.
I think that is very short sighted.
The biggest difference between a laptop, tablet, netbook and smartphone will soon be the screen size.
They can do word processing, email, web browsing, spreadsheets and PowerPoint they’re stuffed with data, they’re as critical to many employees as their laptop, and are a lot more ubiquitous.
So why is it that many organisations apply complex heavyweight management regimes to their laptops involving patching, control, security, automatic software updates and so on, when the same organisation will happily let employees wander around with relatively uncontrolled iPhones?
If it’s OK to allow relatively uncontrolled smartphones why isn’t it OK to allow equally uncontrolled PCs – after all they’re pretty much the same in computational terms.
Now I’m not advocating uncontrolled and insecure IT, far from it. What I am advocating is consistency. If PCs are a risk that needs to be managed, then so are smartphones. Conversely, if lightly managed smartphones are an acceptable risk why do you need heavily managed laptops?
There are two points here. Firstly, there can be no difference in the management principles applied to laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones. In a few years the distinctions between them will be so blurred it may not even make sense to give them different names. Secondly, the simple control-oriented view of laptop management that emerged when dinosaurs roamed the earth is no longer tenable. Organisations will need to permit employee choice, and find new styles of management for all types of personal computing device, not just smartphones.
Location:Camelford,United Kingdom