http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/radio/personal-tech/240000962
Why IBM Turned Off Siri (and Dropbox and Lots Of Other Things)
Make a Comment | Serdar Yegulalp, BYTE | May 23, 2012 08:35 PM
If there's one company I didn't expect to have massive growing pains with BYOD, it's IBM. Then again, maybe they're more of a poster child for the promise and peril of BYOD than we might have expected.
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Their problems with Consumerization of IT are, in the abstract, no different from the same issue any other company has faced when they start a BYOD policy: access to potentially disruptive services; a proliferation of unwanted and unauthorized software within the organization; unclear consequences for many actions.
But everything I've heard about IBM's corporate culture tells me it's a place where IBM comes first--their tools, their software, their processes, their systems, their everything. Small wonder they get antsy when people bring in third-party solutions like Dropbox, even if those products and services provide valuable benefits to the business.
This might have worked in decades past, but it's becoming increasingly untenable for companies of its size -- or, for that matter, any size. Heterogeneity's the way IT works now, with BYOD only being one part of that picture. IBM may never have gotten fired for buying IBM -- along with plenty of other people, once upon a time, but what about now?
So what's behind IBM's sudden reassessment of BYOD?
They're worried about leaks. And rightfully so. One of the major challenges of any BYOD arrangement is how to keep insiders from walking out with the company's intellectual property -- which is the single biggest way corporate espionage continues to be committed. (It isn't hackers, Anonymous notwithstanding.) Shutting off access to Siri was apparently part of this, as they didn't know what happened to the queries once they were made.
But the newest trend in COIT, and a rising one, is professional versions of the same services with management policies built in. Box.com, for instance, has all this and more. I suspect just about every "personal" service launched from now on will come with a "professional" tier--and if it does, it better have disclaimers about what's done with data gathered from both regular and corporate customers.
Their BYOD policy wasn't as well-thought-out as they hoped. Based on what the above-linked article says, it sounds like IBM's BYOD initiative was rolled out with the expectations that end users would know how to deal with their own devices; but they didn't, for the most part, have that knowledge. (Says the article: "'We found a tremendous lack of awareness as to what constitutes a risk,' says Horan. So now, she says, 'we're trying to make people aware.'")
Their expectations were wrong. What you expect to get from BYOD is as important as how you go about implementing it. One telling quote from the piece: "The trend toward employee-owned devices isn't saving IBM any money" (according to IBM's CIO, Jeanette Horan). The problem, as I've seen elsewhere, is how you define savings. Perhaps for them the projected costs of supporting BYOD -- and especially, the cost of setting up retroactive protection measures -- exceed any imagined gains in productivity.
But until they produce some hard numbers to back that up, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the gains provided through BYOD (and everything that goes with it) are more than worth the hassle, if only in terms of employee satisfaction and comfort. Some of those things cannot be quantified easily or conventionally, especially if you're only looking at the current quarter or a season or two ahead.
I'm sure even IBM recognizes it can't keep its finger in the dyke forever. COIT is something you either make happen, or which happens to you -- and there's only so far they can turn their own clock back before it breaks. But if IBM gets it right, they could serve as one of the better models for others to follow, instead of a classic example of what not to do.
| 報導：IBM內部禁用Siri、Dropbox | |||||
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| 此外，BYOD並沒有替IBM省下任何金錢，打破BOYD可降低企業成本的說法，因為企業可能要耗費更多的成本來支援BYOD或維持其安全性，IBM的例子恰巧展示了現今擁抱BOYD的企業所面臨的挑戰。 | |||||
| MIT Technology Review引述 IBM資訊長Jeanette Horan表示，許多受歡迎的行動應用程式可能造成內部的安全風險，因此已列出禁用的行動程式，諸如Dropbox，以及蘋果的iCloud與Siri等。 IBM禁用網路硬碟空間Dropbox或iCloud可能很合理，Horan說，該公司擔心員工以行動裝置使用公開的檔案分享服務可能會導致機密資料外洩。至於禁用Siri，則是擔心使用者的查詢可能被存在某處而不自知。Horan坦承，IBM可能太過保守，但保守是IBM的本質。 雖然IBM也是自帶裝置上班（Bring Your Own Device，BYOD）政策的擁護者，但對於BYOD亦進行了一定的規範。例如在員工裝置連網之前，IT部門會先設定該裝置，啟動遠端移除功能，以在裝置遺失或失竊時能移除裝置上的機密資訊；而且對不同品牌的裝置或是不同職位的員工設有不同的規範，例如某些員工只能透過自己的裝置存取IBM的電子郵件、行事曆與聯絡人名單，而有些人則能存取內部的應用程式與檔案，但後者的裝置上必須加上安全軟體以防資訊外洩。 BYOD符合了消費化IT的趨勢， 思科最近的調查顯示，有95%的企業允許員工在職場上使用自己的裝置，以改善員工的生產力並提高工作滿意度。市場研究機構Gartner則預測該趨勢將使企業IT的預算脫離IT部門的掌控，而且IT部門必須具備更好的協調性。 有媒體評論指出，IBM除了擔心資訊外洩之外，也發現員工並不如原先所預期地知道如何進行裝置的安全管理，此外，Horan甚至還說，BYOD並沒有替IBM省下任何金錢，打破BOYD可降低企業成本的說法，因為企業可能要耗費更多的成本來支援BYOD或維持其安全性，IBM的例子恰巧展示了現今擁抱BOYD的企業所面臨的挑戰。（編譯/陳曉莉） |
