BYOD: A Comprehensive Guide

Dozens of security and IT management vendors on the market claim to offer BYOD management capabilities, and more products are being released every day. It's no wonder IT buyers have a difficult time making sense of the market. And things are getting tougher as technology decision makers sort through a variety of product categories that address different sets of challenges, such as device management, application control and network access. When everything is tagged as a BYOD solution, the label ceases to have much meaning.

"We understand IT's reticence to cut a purchase order," wrote Denise Culver, author of the report 40 BYOD Vendors, One Confusing Market. "These suites tend to lack clarity in terms of what they're called, how they're distinguished, and what they do and don't do."

At present, the BYOD market can be divided into three categories: mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM) and WLAN access control. Products in all three categories can generally be used on both employee-owned and corporate-owned devices, but the similarities end there.

Generally speaking, an MDM product manages devices. It can discover and provision devices, back up data and remotely wipe a device's hard drive, among other capabilities. A MAM manages what applications users can download and what data those applications can access based on predefined rules. A MAM product can also provide an organization-wide inventory of installed software and push out software updates when they're available. WLAN management or NAC products can enforce access controls on mobile devices that connect to the corporate wireless network, including both employee and guest access for laptops, smartphones and tablets.

While each of these categories are useful to help distinguish a product's features, the confusion lies in the frequent bleed-over of functionality from one category into the next--for instance, some MDM products have limited MAM features and vice versa.

In the report, Culver and the InformationWeek Reports team queried 40 vendors about their mobility management products, and found that even the vendors themselves were unclear as to what differentiated the three categories of MAM and MDM, and whether BYOD is itself a category.

This is one reason why Lisa Phifer, president of consultancy Core Competence, told Culver that BYOD is such a deceptive descriptor for mobility security and management products. "'BYOD product' is an intentionally vague blanket term used by just about everybody, with any kind of product, to generate buyer interest," Phifer said in the report.

The takeaway? First, figure out exactly what problems you're trying to solve around mobile devices. When you're ready, investigate your options, ignore labels and compare the capabilities and functionality of the products, regardless of how they're marketed, the report recommended.

The report includes responses from 40 vendors on 23 capabilities.

Next: The Need Is RealAccording to the InformationWeek 2013 Mobile Device Management and Security Survey associated with Culver's report, just 26% of the 307 business technology professionals queried had actually deployed some sort of MDM product. Another 17% reported being in the process of deployment, while an additional 39% of organizations were still evaluating these products. Additionally, 12% said they had no plans to deploy and 6% didn't know what their deployment plans were.

And yet, the need for policy management and mobile management functionality continues to grow. The survey showed that compared to a similar survey in 2011, the number of decision-makers who predict an increase in employee-owned devices in their environments jumped by 7%, to a total of 72%.

Additionally, those surveyed noted an increased dependence on mobile technology in the role of employee productivity. The number of organizations that predicted smartphones playing a part in increased productivity within the next two years edged up 5%age points to 87%. Meanwhile, those who predicted the same for tablets shot up significantly--by about 12 points--to 91%.

Clearly, with further increases in use of mobile devices imminent, IT can only afford a wait-and-see mentality for so long. According to the survey, the vast majority of organizations--72 percent--named security as the primary reason for deploying MDM. Not even close in second was the 12% of organizations that named greater efficiency of mobile spend as a primary reason, followed by 8% who named inventory and audit and 7% who named cost savings.

"IT worries about infected end user devices attaching to internal networks, proprietary or sensitive information leaving the corporate network, too many different configurations to support, and having no way of enforcing antivirus or malware protection or patch levels," Culver wrote.

Culver's analysis shows is that once buyers get down to brass tacks and examine a product's functionality, they'll find a surfeit of vendors. The real trick is in stitching together the right capabilities to fill a particular enterprise's unique requirements.