We've been covering the BYOD phenomenon for quite a while. BYOD is an industry term that describes a corporate decision to stop providing computing devices for employees, and instead, require employees to eat the costs of the hardware and software in exchange for allowing their personal devices to connect to the corporate network. We've outlined the many, many drawbacks to accepting this trend, and even covered an alternative to BYOD: COPE. COPE is another term that simply modifies, slightly, how things currently work to ensure that corporate owns the devices, but relaxes enough to allow employees to use the business-owned devices for personal use.
To help you catch up, I've wrapped a bunch relevant links together at the end of this post.
To keep up on industry trends, including BYOD and COPE, I use a bunch of methods. RSS feeds, email alerts, Twitter, Facebook, manual research, etc., all sit at my peripheral reach. Today, I was alerted to a good article on one of Penton's sister sites, FleetOwner.com. The article goes into detail about why COPE is a better option than BYOD for the trucking industry. In the article, Brian McLaughlin, president of technology provider PeopleNet, provides some insight into why COPE is a better solution for the trucking industry.
In the article, he states:
“COPE allows fleets to standardize on a solution to ensure consistent performance, but allows flexibility to implement -- or turn off -- additional capabilities,” he explained. “Since a standard solution is implemented, the fleet has much better knowledge of how to use/disable certain features/apps.”
…
“Although COPE has higher costs initially, it has the lowest total cost of ownership,” he argued. “The typical fleet technology implementation is 5 to 7 years. Fleets have found that changing onboard equipment more frequently is simply too costly.”
You can read the full article here: Mobile Communications: Debating BYOD vs. COPE in trucking
It's great to see another industry catching onto the BYOD alternative, and it really reminds me how many industries there are and how many are constantly bombarded with confusing messaging from industry-created spectacles.
Check out our recent coverage if you missed it:
BYOD versus COPE: The results so far
Acronym Soup: BYOD, COPE, and now SYOD
Think Your Personal Device is Safe from Corporate Litigation? Think Again.
