Mahesh Gupta,
Geo-Lead, Borderless Network (Sales),
Cisco India and SAARC
Mobile devices continue to outgrow PCs as preferred primary computing devices. According to Gartner, by 2016, at least 50% of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client, instead of a desktop client.
This new mobile environment means higher security risks, as inherently unsecured mobile devices carry increasingly more business-critical information. Applications are playing a key role, offering more capabilities.
While the opportunities mobile presents are significant and mobile has become an enterprise requirement, there are a number of challenges clients face like compliance with corporate policy, development and deployment of mobile applications with secure connectivity to corporate infrastructure.
 | Sanjay Deshmukh, Area Vice-President, India subcontinent, Citrix | |
 | Bala Variyam, Vice-President, Collabera Labs | |
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| Jagannath Patnaik, Director – Channel Sales, Kaspersky Lab – South Asia |
As businesses are in the process of allowing employees to bring their personally owned computers, smartphones and tablets into the workplace and access corporate applications, the popularity of BYOD is increasing fast. This will allow application availability at anytime, from anywhere, and will help business slash procurement costs.
“Indian working professionals today are more ‘mobile’ than ever as they own multiple devices like smartphones and tablets across platforms like Androids and Apple Ios. Hence, the purview and definition of mobility will undergo a change as organizations will now need to consider how they will deliver all apps and content in a secured manner to their user at any time regardless of the device,” says Sanjay Deshmukh, Area Vice-President, India subcontinent, Citrix.
However, the increasing popularity of these devices will create several problems for IT departments as they attempt to mitigate risk, and this signals a tough future for PC and laptop manufacturers. When it comes to BYOD, one of the most overriding threats is the loss and theft of these devices.
Jagannath Patnaik, Director – Channel Sales, Kaspersky Lab – South Asia, says, “With the BYOD concept picking up, companies and individuals have to be more careful in terms of IT security.”
Vishak Raman, Senior Regional Director, Fortinet India & SAARC, Fortinet, says, "BYOD provides a variety of advantages to organizations, ranging from improved productivity to increased RoI for IT departments. However, a BYOD environment also lacks many of the traditional security controls that organizations have relied on to secure their data, leaving gaps in their data and device protection strategy."
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Vishak Raman,
Senior Regional Director,
Fortinet India & SAARC, Fortinet
The move by IT to allow BYOD by employees hits the mainstream; the corporate-issued laptop begins to become a bygone piece of equipment. IT realizes that it is able to control devices remotely through virtualization while simultaneously allowing individuals to use the devices that make them happiest and most productive.
A Cisco IBSG’s Horizons study, which surveyed over 600 IT leaders from India, revealed that BYOD is no longer an emerging trend but a reality in India. The study found most Indian organizations are now enabling BYOD in the enterprise, with a staggering 94% of respondents from India acknowledging that it is a growing trend within their organizations. “Mobility is here to stay and organizations have realized that increased productivity and enhanced job satisfaction can be derived from the BYOD revolution,” says Mahesh Gupta, Geo-Lead, Borderless Network (Sales) at Cisco India and SAARC.
“Mobility continues to drive innovation and is becoming all-pervasive when it comes to usage across industry verticals,” says Bala Variyam, Vice-President, Collabera Labs.
The role of the CIO in the changing landscape
The need or desire to be always “connected” means that the proliferation of mobile devices is pervasive, and IT needs to change the way it allows users to connect, access applications and data, troubleshoot and support multiple devices. This trend has changed the way IT maintains security, visibility and control in an enterprise. “CIOs/CSOs are also under constant pressure to secure their companies from risking corporate data, affecting the IT–business relationship. End devices are also evolving rapidly, and it is becoming difficult for companies to keep pace and support all devices being used to access corporate assets,” says Mahesh Gupta of Cisco. “At the same time, the employees are increasingly demanding the flexibility to access corporate resources anywhere, anytime, from any device of their choice. Hence, organizations are rethinking their IT architectures; areas of focus being Application availability, Network readiness, Security, and Policy frameworks,” adds Cisco.
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Syed Asim,
COO - India South Asia, Middle East & Africa,
Dion Global Solutions
Today's CIO needs to bring inventive business solutions, while at the same time giving employees more liberty to work the way they want, with BYOD becoming a reality in most organizations. The most important thing from an organizational and employee standpoint is the balance between the security and privacy.
Therefore, CIOs need to look at deploying solutions that offer a “holistic security policy”, where the controls can be applied securely to a device and location-agnostic network. This can be addressed with the adoption of an integrated, adaptive, and collaborative security approach. Such adaptive policies, which are built into the concept of a self-defending network, should remain active at all times as they can reduce the vulnerability of networks, minimize the impact of attacks, and improve overall infrastructure availability and reliability.
From a policy point of view, companies will have to revisit their BYOD policies, and communicate to their employees, what they can and cannot access on their personal devices. Most of the prevalent issues in existing BYOD solutions which are available today are centred at addressing individual aspects of the BYOD framework, and are more short-term based. “Cisco believes that the biggest challenge that enterprises face in implementing a BYOD framework is security, since they are required to provide access to internal networks on personal devices,” says Cisco.
BYOD is changing the rules of the game and needs to be tackled with a unified approach. “We have, therefore, adopted, and are propagating comprehensive solutions, which focus not only on one aspect of mobile device management, but however deal with an array of access and security measures which guarantees simplicity and ease of use,” says Cisco.
Mobilizing the enterprise is about more than mobile devices. It is about people, productivity and the protection of intellectual property. Today’s workforce requires secure and seamless access to apps and data from any mobile device. Employees need mobile, Windows, web and SaaS apps from an easy-to-use unified corporate app store. They need the ability to view, edit, sync and share data on the go. They also need live mobile support from any device they choose. With its breadth of secure mobile technologies spanning device, app and data management, mobile productivity apps and live support, Citrix XenMobile Enterprise is the solution that delivers everything required to mobilize the enterprise. “Our new enterprise mobility offering is extremely relevant to Indian organizations as it provides a complete solution that can manage and secure all devices, apps and data while giving users the ability to experience work and life their way. Citrix XenMobile will enable customers to launch transformation initiatives like Executive Mobility and BYOD and help them improve employee’s productivity,” says Sanjay Deshmukh, Area Vice-President, India subcontinent, Citrix.
Finally...
Mobile technology is a huge area that is still highly under-utilized in India. Mobile phones have reached nearly every household in India, which opens a huge new market for mobile applications.
Syed Asim, COO – India South Asia, Middle East & Africa, Dion Global Solutions, says, "With smart phones and androids being a huge success in the Indian market, we see a rapid increase in intelligent applications that will give consumers the real power of mobility."
"The purview and definition of mobility will undergo a change as organizations will now need to consider how they will deliver all these apps to any user at any time regardless of the device,” says Sanjay of Citrix. Mobility will not be just about user mobility but app mobility and moving apps around from datacenter to datacenter to cloud. An application may be delivered from two different locations to a user that could be anywhere. In the context of these newer realities, mobility won’t really be about the device that enables it but being able to do what we want, where we want and when we want.
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