Bring your own device

The typical policy for corporate networks is simple: corporation-supplied equipment is allowed, and everything else is forbidden. Do not attach your own computers or cell phones, do not connect your own tablet computers, do not plug in your own thumb drives. Only corporate-approved (and corporate-supplied) equipment is allowed, because that enables security.

The typical policy for corporate networks is changing.

This change has been brought about by reality. Corporations cannot keep up with the plethora of devices available (iPods, iPads, Android phones, tablets, ... what have you...) but must improve efficiency of their employees. New devices improve that efficiency.

In the struggle between security and efficiency... the winner is efficiency.

IBM is allowing employees to attach their own equipment to the corporate network. This makes sense for IBM, since they advise other companies in the effective use of resources. IBM *has* to make this work, in order for them to retain credibility. After all, if IBM cannot make this work, they cannot counsel other companies and advise that those companies open their networks to employee-owned equipment.

Non-consulting corporations (that is, most corporations) don't have the pressure to make this change. They can choose to keep their networks "pure" and free from non-approved equipment.

For a while.

Instead of marketing pressure, companies will face pressure from within. It will come from new hires, who expect to use their smartphones and tablets. It will come from "average" employees, who want to use readily-available equipment to get the job done.

More and more, people within the company will question the rules put in place by the IT group, rules that limit their choices of hardware.

And once "alien" hardware is approved, software will follow. At first, the software will be the operating systems and closely-bound utilities (Mac OSX and iTunes, for example). Eventually, the demand for other utilities (Google Docs, Google App Engine, Python) will overwhelm the IT forces holding back the tide.

IT can approach this change with grace, or with resistance. But face it they will, and adjust to it they must.