BYOD Spells Doom For Enterprise Solutions


stoweboyd:

Cisco’s has recently shut down a short list of strangely named products — Eos (social blogging platform), Umi (video conferencing), and Cius (tablet) — and while the first two might be interpreted as Cisco backing away from consumer products, the third is the opposite: companies embracing consumer products. Apparently, companies aren’t provisioning their employees with tablets: they are letting employees bring their own.

Quentin Hardy, Why Cisco Stopped Making Tablets via NYTimes.com

It blames what the industry calls B.Y.O.D., or bring your own devices.

Cisco said it realized that 95 percent of organizations now “allow employee-owned devices in some way, shape or form in the office, and 36 percent of surveyed enterprises provide full support for employee-owned devices.” Cisco said the trend toward universally deployed devices “will continue to gain momentum.”

Cisco’s Cius was a nice piece of technology if you were looking for a corporate device that would hook into a Cisco IP phone, which was connected to (probably Cisco-run) Internet technology. It was a good product, designed for a company with an enterprise sales force that liked selling comprehensive systems. As Cisco itself noted, however, those big, comprehensive sales are less and less common. And, away from a Cisco-dominated environment, it lacked the functionality and fun of an Apple iPad or even a Google Android tablet.

Both iPad and Android products have picked up most of the market, but others will continue to find a place inside the enterprise.

The ill-fated Cisco Cius

A sort-of knee-bone-connected-to-the-leg-bone logic might follow from this, and spread into other areas of the enterprise. If businesses allow workers to use and provision their own mobile devices, won’t the mobile device users start deciding the software they want to use on them, too? Won’t they choose to use Yammer as a work media tool instead of Cisco’s Quad? And really: do corporations need a centralized telephony system nowadays, when most people would rather use their own cell, and they are away from their desks for most of the day?

Considering the maturity of today’s mobile devices, the sophistication of SAAS solutions, and the level of innovation in the open marketplace for software, the allure that enterprise solution providers like Cisco had for enterprise clients is waning. Companies don’t need someone to come in and roll out all that communication infrastructure, when people have an alternative in their pockets already. Yes, the company still has to provide internet connectivity but (leaving aside requirements for regulated industries) not much else.

I bet 75% of the products on Cisco’s website will quickly share the same fate as Cius.