White and fluffy cloud - part 1

[ This is the first part of an article about how BYOD and BYOC trends are changing the lives of ordinary people, what difficulties they face and what decisions (sometimes, far from optimal) are made in a dynamically changing information environment - approx. transl.]

I rarely see Penelope, so I was surprised when she had several hours to meet me over a cup of coffee. She enters the room with a huge, puffy bag on her shoulder, overshadowing her tiny figure.
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I jokingly ask if she was going to move. She is laughing. “That's all - my gadgets, a working laptop, for example,” she says, pulling a black HP out of her bag. "And here's another," - pulling out the MacBook Air. "It has all the Mac software I use in my work." But the fun doesn't end there. Penelope pulls out a Surface tablet, followed by an iPad. “I use Surface at work, and the iPad for myself. At work, I use several iOS applications that are not available for Windows. Therefore, I carry both tablets with me. ”

Then the turn comes to the pockets of the jacket. “We must not forget the phones,” she says, laying an old BlackBerry and iPhone on the table. We look at the gadgets on the table and she laughs. "As if I am an electronics seller."

“Do you think this is normal?” I ask.

“I think so, although my osteopath says my shoulder is skewed,” she jokes. But then she explains that the school district in which she works promotes work policies on her own device (BYOD, bring your own device) among employees, which will allow her to use her own devices for work and not carry all the gadgets with her in a row. In the county, however, they are still developing security policies and a complex set of restrictions for implementing BYOD practices.

But the real problem, Penelope explains, is not the devices themselves. The problem is how to find a way to share files and information from different platforms. She turned to cloud solutions as a way out of this situation - but she soon realized that online work has its price.



Its huge heap of devices is the physical embodiment of the growing complexity of the technological landscape faced by modern companies. They seek to benefit from the simplicity, convenience and speed of mobile devices, as well as from the benefits that increase productivity in the process of using mobile devices, but the transition to the virtual space is not easy and not cheap. Therefore, in order to reduce costs and satisfy the needs of employees, companies allow employees to use phones, tablets and computers that they already have.

However, the BYOD trend carries with it inherent difficulties only. Issues of security and access to personal data may in this case become a problem, as employees oppose the idea of ​​monitoring and, to a certain extent, changing their personal data. In the meantime, companies face difficulties in creating private networks for teaching employees how to use applications for remote control of those components of gadgets that are directly related to work without violating privacy. They also have to deal with issues related to the exchange of documents on different devices and platforms.

In the past, business simply acquired a group license to work with software at all workplaces in the office. But this is not so easy to do in the case of mobile devices that run under different operating systems and use different applications. For example, Microsoft Office has only recently become available on iOS.

Therefore, the company turned to another modern solution: the cloud. We already store music and video online, so why not transfer to the cloud and work? Here is the reason for the emergence of a trend that has grown from the direction of BYOD: BYOC, bring your own cloud (“work in your own cloud”).

Cloud computing is the basis of the workplace of the XXI century, because even tasks that require the use of several devices appeal to the cloud for the opportunity to share, store and combine documents within the cloud infrastructure.

Dropbox and Box.net simplify the process of sharing and storing files between users and user groups, while Google Drive provides cloud-based software for preparing documents and spreadsheets, as well as for managing databases — and can be used on virtually any device.

Integration of the workplace with the cloud allows you to change the format of the work - it provides the implementation of remote work scenarios, increases the feeling of simplicity and ease of performing tasks. The department in which Penelope works is a vivid example. “My workgroup can work on Fridays from home, not to mention the fact that many of us easily share information using services like Dropbox,” she says. “We are much less likely to write letters or make calls to each other in order to ask for a file to be sent. Now we just check our shared folder on Dropbox and, lo and behold, everything is there. Our interaction has become less tied to logistics, it has become more strategically oriented, thoughtful and productive. It seems to have changed quite a bit, but it greatly affected our overall productivity. ”

The advantages of this approach go far beyond productivity. “You have no idea how many times Dropbox saved us when we needed a backup of the data,” she says. “Just backing up our documents and data in the cloud is already a big plus. I know that we need to create backup copies anyway, but the cloud automates this routine work - and this often comes to our aid. ”

Of course, the price and convenience of work do not always go hand in hand. “It was easy to connect everyone to my Dropbox group because the service is free and provides access from a large number of devices,” she says. “I can access the file from my iPad, while a colleague will use the documents from my PC. We were not forced to adapt to certain actions to increase productivity. We could work the way we wanted and sometimes where we wanted. Nevertheless, we continued to work together smoothly. ”