An extremely popular program in the modern office is “bring your own device” (BYOD), where companies allow their employees to bring their personal devices to work and use them to do their job. A survey by Fiberlink revealed that 64 percent of businesses polled allow employees to use their personal smartphones and/or tablet devices for work purposes. And with good reason. “The benefits of BYOD include creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs,” says David Willis, vice president and analyst at Gartner.
But while BYOD may be benefiting your staff, it can also be harming the performance of your corporate wireless network. It’s important to understand all the ways BYOD can affect your IT strategy before integrating it into your business.
Many people bring more than one device to the office with them: a smartphone and a tablet or notebook. According to Forrester Research, 66 percent of employees use two or more devices at work. These devices can tax a network, putting a strain on it and seriously disrupting its performance. The more devices accessing a network, the greater the possibility of bottlenecks that slow your network to a crawl. In order to prevent severe burdens on your bandwidth, it is important to control the number and types of mobile devices accessing your network.
Managing your bandwidth can be accomplished through a combination of technology and policy – protect the performance of your network through network access control and traffic shaping, as well as policies dictating things such as where they can access your network, at what times, and which applications can be run. It is essential that your employees understand how their devices can impact the performance of your network. According to a survey by research firm Ipsos MORI, only 23 percent of office workers are aware of their organization’s BYOD policy.
Your IT and network provider should be equipped to provide you with flexible and effective products to handle increases to your demand for bandwidth. Contact us today to learn more about taking control of your company’s bandwidth consumption.