I use my own smart phone for work, and so do a lot of my friends and colleagues. BYOD (bring your own device), or the Consumerization of IT, is commonly referred to as a trend, but by now it’s pretty much a reality of business. And it’s top of mind for IT managers. How does an IT department manage this rapidly growing population of smart, cloud-connected devices? The solution might seem obvious: the cloud.
“I believe that management, and the management of smart devices, will be one of the next workloads to make that move to the cloud – and, when the time comes, that move will happen fast,” says Microsoft Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson in a blog post today.
Anderson suggests that organizations planning their move to the cloud should consider management of smart devices a top priority. And, Anderson adds, they should expect a consistent management experience across PCs and devices. That’s where Microsoft’s 2012 R2 releases come in.
Microsoft last week announced new capabilities coming in the 2012 R2 releases that will enable IT pros to both embrace the Consumerization of IT and support the needs of their users to securely access their apps and data from any device, anywhere. It’s the work of extensive cross-company collaboration that resulted in what is called “People Centric IT” (PCIT).
In his post, Anderson outlines three end-to-end scenario solutions that will help organizations achieve People Centric IT.
- Providing users with secure access to their files on their personal devices.
- Enabling users to provision their iOS devices for work while allowing IT pros to restrict access to corporate resources.
- Enabling IT pros to deliver VPN functionality to corporate and personal devices.
Dive deeper into the details in this post on In the Cloud.
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Deborah Pisano
Microsoft News Center