Means of production and BYOD

In agrarian societies, the means of production is the farm: land of some size, crops, livestock, tools, seeds, workers, and capital.

In industrial societies, the means of production is the factory: land of some size, a building, tools, raw materials, power sources, access to transportation, and capital.

In the industrial age, capitalists owned the means of production. These things, the means of production, cost money. To be successful, capitalists had to be wealthy.

But the capitalists of yore missed something: You don't need to own all of the means of production. You need only a few key parts.

This should be obvious. No company is completely stand-alone. Companies outsource many activities, from payroll to the generation of electricity.


Apple has learned this lesson. Apple designs the products and hires other companies to build them.

The "Bring Your Own Device" idea (BYOD) is an extension of outsourcing. It pushes the ownership of some equipment onto workers. Instead of a company purchasing the PC, operating system, word processor, and spreadsheet for an employee, the employee acquires their own.

Shifting to BYOD means giving some measure of control (and responsibility) to employees. Workers can select their own device, their own operating system, and their own applications. Some businesses want to maintain control over these choices, and they miss the point of BYOD. They want to dictate the specific software that employees must use.

But, as a business owner who is outsourcing tasks to employees, do you care about the operating system they use? Do you care about the specific type of PC? Or the application (as long as you can read the file)?

BYOD is possible because the composition of documents and spreadsheets (and e-mails, and calendars) is not a key aspect of business. It's the ideas within those documents and spreadsheets that make the business run. It's the information that is the vital means of production.

For decades we have focussed on the hardware of computing: processor speed, memory capacity, storage size. I suppose that it started with tabulating machines, and the ability of one machine to process cards faster than another vendor's machine. It continued with mainframes, with minicomputers, and with PCs.

BYOD shows us that hardware is not a strategic advantage. Nor is commodity software -- anyone can have word processors and spreadsheets. Any company can have a web site.

The advantage is in data, in algorithms, and in ideas.

After BYOD comes BYOO

Folks are concentrating on the "bring your own device" (BYOD) change in the workplace. I'm looking ahead, to a possible next change: "bring your own office" or BYOO.

The idea of BYOD is simple: Instead of companies supplying computing equipment to employees, employees purchase equipment. Instead of supplying employees with iPads, for example, let employees purchase their own tablets (iPads, Android, or Windows) and provide them access to the needed data and apps.

BYOD is one of a number of changes that shift responsibility from employer to employee. Other changes include company-funded pensions (replaced with employee-funded 401-k plans), company-funded medical insurance (replaced with employee-funded insurance), and company-supplied training (replaced with employee-selected and employee-funded training).

I see BYOO (bring your own office) as another step in that sequence. With BYOO, the company does not provide the office to the employee. Instead, the employee makes arrangements for his own workspace. This may mean a home office, or it may mean a co-working space, or it may mean s shared hotelling space in which workers rent a cubicle, desk, and office equipment.

BYOO is possible for people who can work without being in a specific physical place. Some jobs require physical presence: waitstaff, assembly workers, plumbers, etc. Many jobs, especially IT jobs, can be done remotely. Analysis, design, programming, and testing can all be completed without physical presence.

To implement BYOO, one needs the types of jobs that are "remotable", coupled with the equipment to make it possible. That could be as simple as a cell phone, a laptop computer, and an internet connection. (And possibly a quite place to work.) We have the technology today.

We may not have the psychological ability to implement BYOO. If managers need to see people sitting at their desks to believe that they are working, BYOO is not possible. Remote work is possible only when managers trust individuals to complete their work without immediate supervision.

One other prediction: the acronym BYOO will *not* be the one people use. I don't know what it will be, but it won't be BYOO.

PC as status item

Today, the common PC is just that -- common. A typical office will have many PCs, all like. (Some offices will have variation. From my observations, the consistency of the PC set will be proportional to the size of the organization. The largest organizations have the most homogenous set of PCs.)

With the introduction of BYOD, we may see a resurgence in "the PC as status symbol".

What's that, you say? You've never seen a PC used as a status symbol?

Well, it has happened. Just after the release of the IBM PC, and when companies were experimenting with word processors and spreadsheets, PCs were *quite* the status symbol. A PC was a better typewriter, an expensive investment, and a thing to be admired. Some PCs had monochrome monitors and some had color monitors.

When the IBM PC AT was released, some people had the newer, faster PC and some had the older, slower PCs.

Even as late as 1995, PCs varied within organizations and were used as status symbols. After 1995, that changed. The price of PCs dropped to a level that made frequent replacements feasible. Large organizations (the ones with tech support groups) found it easier and cheaper to "refresh" PCs every few years. It meant they had the latest operating system, fewer hardware failures, and a consistent set of PCs with easier support.

When the PCs become consistent, the status from different PCs disappeared.

BYOD may introduce the status again. When individuals select and purchase their own equipment, the consistency of equipment will vanish. Some will purchase iPads, some Android devices, and some Microsoft Surface tablets. Some people will "refresh" their devices frequently, and some will hold on to them for years. (We may see a "reverse status" with reverence for an old-school device.)

The return of status may cause some friction and competition among team members. A good manager will look for the signs and focus the team on the objectives.

BYOD can be easy with tablets

The "bring your own device" movement has caused quite a bit of heartburn among the corporate IT and security folks. More than is necessary, I think.

For those unfamiliar with the term "bring your own devices" (BYOD), it means this: employees select their own devices, bring them to the office, and use them for work. Such a notion causes panic for IT. It upsets the well-balanced apple cart of company-supplied PCs and laptops. Corporations have invested in large efforts to minimize the costs (purchase costs and support costs) of PCs and laptops. If employees were allowed to bring their own hardware, the following would happen (in the thinking of the corporate cost-minimizers):

• Lots of employees would have problems connecting to the company network, therefore they would call the help desk and drive up support costs
• Employee-selected hardware would vary from the corporate standard, increase the number of hardware and software combinations, and drive up support costs

And in the minds of IT security:

• Employee-selected hardware would be vulnerable to viruses and other malware, allowing such things behind the corporate firewall

But these ideas are caused by misconceptions. The first is that employees want to bring their own PCs (or laptops). But employees don't. (Or at least not the folks with whom I have spoken.) Employees want to bring cell phones and tablets, not laptops and certainly not desktop PCs.

The second misconception is that smartphones and tablets are the same as PCs, except smaller. This is also false. Yes, smartphones and tablets have processors and memory and operating systems, just like PCs (and mainframes, if you want to get technical). But we use tablets and smartphones differently than we use PCs and laptops.

We use laptops and PCs as members of a network with shared resources. These laptops and PCs are granted access to various network resources (printers, NAS units, databases, etc.) based on the membership of the PC (or laptop) within a domain and the membership of the logged-in user of domain-controlled groups. The membership of the PC within a domain gives it certain privileges, and these privileges can create vectors for malware.

Smartphones and tablets are different. We don't make them members of a domain. They are much closer to a browser on a home PC, used for shopping or online banking. My bank allows me to sign on, view balances, pay bills, and request information, all without being part of their domain or their security network.

How is this possible? I'm sure that banks (and other companies) have security policies that specify that only corporate-owned equipment can be connected to the corporate-owned network. I'm also sure that they have lots of customers, some of whom have infected PCs. Yet I can connect to their computers with my non-approved, non-certified, non-domained laptop and perform work.

The arrangement works because my PC is never directly connected to their network, and my work is limited to the capabilities of the banking web pages. Once I sign in, I have a limited set of possibilities, not the entire member-of-a-network smorgasbord.

We should think of smartphones and tablets as devices that can run apps, not as small PCs that are members of a domain. Let the devices run apps that connect to back-end servers; let those servers offer a limited set of functions. In other words, convert all business applications to smartphone apps.

I recognize that changing the current (large) suite of business applications to smartphone apps is a daunting task. Lots of applications have been architected for large, multi-window screens. Many business processes assume that uses can store files on their own PCs. Moving these applications and processes to smartphone apps (or tablet apps) requires thought, planning, and expertise. It is a large job, larger than installing "mobile device management" packages and added new layers of security bureaucracy for mobile devices.

A large job, yet a necessary one. Going the route of "device management" locks us into the existing architecture of domain-controlled devices. In the current scheme, all new devices and innovations must be added to the model of centralized security.

Better to keep security through user authentication and isolate corporate hardware from the user hardware. Moving applications and business processes to tablet apps, separating the business task from the underlying hardware, gives us flexibility and freedom to move to other devices in the future.

And that is how we can get to "bring your own device".

No easy choice for BYOD

The advent of "bring your own device" (BYOD) poses a problem for companies and their system administrators and support teams. What hardware/software combination shall we choose as the company standard?

In the "old world" of desktop PCs, the choice was easy: Microsoft. Microsoft was the dominant player with the largest market share and the largest set of technologies. Microsoft was also the familiar choice; companies had a lot of Microsoft technology and companies knew that new offerings from Microsoft would work with the existing tech.

The brave new world of tablet/cloud technologies offers us choices, but there is no easy choice. The dominant vendors are not the familiar ones. Microsoft, the familiar choice, has some offerings in cloud technologies but they are not the dominant player. (That role is held by Amazon.com.) With tablets, the leader is Apple. With cell phones, the leader is Apple (or Google with Android, depending on how you look at the numbers). In any of the new tech of phones, tablets, and cloud, Microsoft is not the leader.

If one cannot choose Microsoft, can one at least choose a new single vendor for all the tech? Yes, with some complications. First, the new tech will coordinate poorly -- if at all -- with the existing (probably Microsoft) equipment. Second, the technology lead is split among vendors. Apple may lead in the cell phone and tablet market, but its iCloud offering is significantly less than Amazon.com's AWS offerings. Amazon.com offers the most popular cloud environment, but their tablets are designed for e-books and they have no cell phones. Google has a strong contender with Android for cell phones and tablets, but its cloud offerings are limited compared to AWS and Microsoft's Azure.

The situation is similar to the game of "rock-paper-scissors": no one vendor wins in all categories. If the game depends on cloud tech, then Amazon.com is the safest bet. If instead the game depends on tablets, you may want to use Apple technology. But who can tell the win conditions for the game?

My position is that the choice of a new standard for BYOD is a false one. Or at least the choice of a single set of technology across the company is the wrong choice.

The idea of a single standard, a single set of hardware (and limited software) is a hold-over from the desktop PC model of hardware. In that model, companies purchased, supplied, and supported the hardware and software. When you purchase and supply the equipment, you have to support it. Support costs money (you have to train people) and more configurations means higher costs. Fewer configurations means lower support costs, which is why Southwest Airline operates only Boeing 737 aircraft.

But with BYOD, the support is shifted from the company to the employee. The employee purchases the equipment. They purchase the software. They maintain the device. Forcing a single configuration (or a limited number) is possible, but it saves you nothing. If anything, it will irritate the employees who will see no reason for the restrictions. (It is similar to insisting that your employees all drive cars made by Ford. Unless you are the Ford Motor Company, you have no moral standing for such an edict.)

I recognize that the different tablets and phones run on different platforms. Apps written for iOS must be re-written to run on Android. There are some tools to assist with multi-platform apps. Some apps are best converted to HTML5 and Javascript with style sheets for the different platforms. But this question of platforms is applicable to only your custom, in-house applications. The "big" apps, the popular, general-business apps will move to all of the platforms, just as Facebook and Twitter run on the major platforms. You care about platforms only for your custom applications.

Transitioning from the "we supply everything" model to the "bring your own device" model requires changes for the company and for the employees. It is more complex than a simple "go get your own device" memo. Employees have to take ownership of their devices. Employers must let go of certain decisions and some control. Don't make it harder than it needs to be.