Posted Date: 1/7/2013
Quick Tips to Manage BYOD Connectivity Costs
By Doug Louie, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Enterprise, Smith Micro Software
Corporate road warriors can be expensive to employ, given all the network-enabled devices they use on the go. These traveling emissaries often carry a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet along with a mobile hotspot (MiFi) device. The tremendous cost of equipping and supporting a mobile workforce has fueled many companies to adopt a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, which can enable savings on hardware, software and support costs.
However, even with employees bringing the devices, they don’t always come with their own connection, and connectivity can quickly drive up expenses for enterprises. As unlimited data plans are phased out in favor of tiered data plans, companies are now challenged to control connectivity costs without undermining the benefits of BYOD in the workplace.
For example, employees who are traveling think nothing of streaming movies on their tablet. How many Netflix does it take to go into overage? Do they understand what downloading one movie or a bunch of emails really costs in terms of data usage?
Cost Control
To control connectivity costs, enterprises should consider the following:
- Develop an enterprise mobility policy. This policy should spell out the terms of the employee device and data usage while at work and off work. Policies may include the whitelisting and blacklisting of networks and access points.
- Implement software solutions that will allow for management and monitoring of the data addressed in the mobility policy.
- Leverage the enterprise’s ability to negotiate better pricing on corporate data plans and allow employees to opt in and migrate away from their more expensive personal data plans.
- Audit instances where employees might be subject to dual or multiple data plan charges unnecessarily as the use of personal phones as mobile hotspots and as the adoption of MiFi devices increase.
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