"Consumerization" of IT is here."

This morning, I heard that from Laurent Philonenko of Cisco at this AM's WES session.

Employees are being given the choice of what device they want to use for mobile access. In most cases, businesses no longer pay for the bill or at best, reimburse some of the cost. For example, we know of a business that reimburses $30 towards an employee's data plan if they use their own Blackberry. They started off by providing employees with a corporate liable device which only had DATA service, no voice. Employees didn't want to carry 2 devices so the personally-liable devices were introduced to the enterprise and are now supported on the BES.

To support "Consumerization", I am researching apps that will track business vs personal use of a device based upon tags on address book entries, i.e. all email, sms or calls to and from jsmith@clientx.com will be tagged as business related and can be reported on. This will allow businesses to see exactly what percentage of usage they are actually reimbursing employees for. It sounds labor intensive but firms that currently bill-back time to their clients (lawyers, engineers) will love this approach.
Also, any company that is mandated to look at saving costs in the corporate liable model will be able to see if they are getting their "money's worth". They can also make an quantitative decision regarding the rate of payout for corporate liable devices. For example, if the reports show that you are using your device on a 60/40 business/personal rate, then the company will continue to pay for your device. However, if the rate is 40/60, you may be converted to the personal liable plan with a 40% reimbursement or no reimbursement at all.

If these types of "usage tracking" apps interest you, let me know. We are looking for pilot groups that will allow us to deploy the tracking tools for 3 months so we can analyze the reports and share them in our white-paper on personal vs. corporate devices that we are developing. We will pay for the apps along with the services to load and train your users.

Let me know your thoughts!!

Lon