We've been pretty busy over the last couple of months, helping our clients move away from proprietary campus and classroom management systems, enabling wireless, consolidating LAN infrastructure and looking at ways to squeeze more value from shrinking budgets across the board.
Many of the themes of our blogs are speared towards how we can help our academic clients save money, whilst still enabling world class IT systems to support all.
One of the big concepts you are no doubt hearing about in the IT news and probably amongst your peers is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). BYOD is a model which allows any business, be that a multinational corporation, SMB or a university, college or school, the opportunity for staff/ students to bring in devices that they own personally and use them to access resource which allows them to work freely throughout the day.
Of course, there are many considerations when investigating BYOD as a option for your own institutions. A lot of the information on the Internet tends to be very conceptualised and this often leaves readers confused since the nuts and bolts are not clearly defined. If you find yourself agreeing, our advice is to reach out to our staff.
Much of the BYOD data is littered with security concerns which can appear alarming to IT technicians whom have previously considered the idea of unknown devices on the network as a serious hazard.
Take the recent survey by ISACA. The 2011 ISACA IT Risk/Reward Barometer which found, more than half of information technology leaders in the U.S. believe that any employee-owned mobile device poses a greater risk to the enterprise than mobile devices supplied by the company.
“Device mobility, wireless access, personal applications and the high risk of lost or stolen hand-held devices creates a need for added defense against data loss, unauthorized access and malware,” said Paul McClanahan, research analyst and partner at the Boston Research Group.
On top of all the concerns about security, IT technicians also fear an increased overhead from users struggling to connect their many and varied devices to systems and applications.
Given all of the above, how on earth is BYOD going to help academics?
For us, one of the leading benefits of moving towards BYOD is that it lets staff/ students and organizations take advantage of technology innovations at limited cost to the organization. I will explain this statement as again I am aware this is one of those conceptual moments.
Not having to continually keep up with device improvements via desktop/ laptop refresh cycles can free up the necessary funds to actively pursue more strategic IT spend targets.
In the past, hundreds of thousands of pounds have gone in to PC refresh programs across the UK academic vertical and the constant march and improvement of these devices means this process could go and on forever. Constantly having to improve the fixed PC's etc in our computer labs and classrooms has left us all with less money to spend on the foundation infrastructure, primarily the network.
Overtime, as more and more devices have been added to the network, the foundations of many are beginning to creak and slow under the demand.
Despite the warning of slow network access, drop off, app fails and classroom disruption, most of the investment in schools is still spent on ever newer user devices and not improvements in the network foundation. For us, having a solid network which has been well designed is a 1st base requirement and key to successful deployment of technology to support all business cases.
Mobility and Video are big drivers in terms of network traffic today and this will only increase the loads on our often outdated, under gunned, or poorly designed networks as we integrate this traffic in to day to day teaching and learning.
The SWOT team think its vitally important for schools to be preparing themselves for the demand today. BYOD can help with network performance since we can refocus the spending, enabling improvements to the foundation infrastructure.
The impacts of a well designed and future proofed network will be felt campus wide and so in terms of bang for bucks, network spends can be rarely matched for ROI.
Allowing students to bring their own devices in to schools, that they are confident and comfortable with, removes a small but annoying technology barrier. Students often have newer and faster devices at home than their own schools/ colleges can supply and this can cause some contention and disruption. Having students bringing in their own kit relieves this barrier, and pressures on any existing school owned hardware and devices. Most people have an interest to care for their own technology and so instances of accidental damage will fall less firmly on the shoulders of academic budgets.
BYOD installs a sense of ownership that can help secure a culture of learning ownership too.
Of course, allowing student devices can create its own problems and so the SWOT team suggests organizations should educate staff and students on their security requirements and implement a comprehensive BYOD policy aligned with risk profile and acceptable use.
We have a series of helpful guidelines which we will gladly share. These have been developed with other schools and advocates of BYOD as a way to help frame discussions and assist with the construction of usage policies etc in your own institutions.
If you are thinking seriously about BYOD, do reach out via our contact us option on the SWOTNET web page. Our team will help you make sense of the model and any hardware, software which can help the move.
I am sure we will have plenty to add to BYOD and we look forwards to keeping you up to date with any changes in the technology that we see as benefiting the academic sector.
For a peek at the stuff we think is great today, please see links below.
Team SWOT
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