White and fluffy cloud - part 2

[ This is the second part of an article about how BYOD and BYOC trends are changing the lives of ordinary people, employers and employees, both for the better and for the worse. The first part of the article read here - approx. transl.]

Penelope says that members of her workgroup began using cloud services on their own, simply engaging them to work as the popularity of using such services for private needs grows. “Most of us have already used Docs, Dropbox and iCloud,” she adds. In the case of its organization, the BYOC solution came “from the bottom,” it was a practice introduced by employees, a practice that Penelope and her colleagues integrated into their workflow.
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But the management of companies sometimes turns to the cloud, looking for business benefits in it. They are attracted by the promise of cost reduction against the background that overburdened IT departments will not have to worry about building their own server and web infrastructure — they can simply use existing solutions, often as part of a corporate contract. The employees themselves probably already use such services, which means that they do not need to be trained in the details of working with such solutions. Cloud services also promise us increased productivity, simplifying the exchange of information at all organizational levels.

Facilitates the task and the fact that the proven IT giants also come to the cloud market, starting price wars for the right to reduce the cost of using services in groups of any size. Google, of course, was one of the pioneers of cloud computing, offering users a suite of applications, such as Drive and Docs. The e-Commerce giant, Amazon, also took a leading position by founding the Web Services division, which allows companies to store assets, files and other “tangible” assets in terms of network bandwidth on Amazon servers, as well as access to advanced business services. services, including planning and e-commerce services.

Microsoft recently got to the cloud too. He not only released a version of the Office applications for tablets - the company linked Office mobile applications with the cloud-based Office 365 file storage service in the hope of a noticeable growth of its business in this direction. According to Information Week , the company promises that its corporate cloud solutions will cost no more than competitors' services, hoping to attract businesses and corporate customers, thanks to which the Windows platform and Office products once became so profitable and gained market leadership.

However, the practice of moving business management to the cloud turns out to be painful and, again, the surface simplicity and convenience of cloud solutions hide the real level of costs from users. Many popular cloud services were not originally designed for use at the corporate level, and the costs of moving hundreds or thousands of employees to them with regard to entering into corporate contracts can be very high.

A heterogeneous cloud service cloud, excellent for private users, is difficult to manage at the group level if one part of the employees uses one solution and the other is the second, and their actions cannot be coordinated. “There were cases when we accidentally erased changes in someone’s file because someone was working with him at the time or trying to update an outdated version,” Penelope notes. “Sometimes due to the fact that everyone uses different tools, the workflow becomes too complicated. Someone worked in Word, someone used Open Office, and it was terribly hard to constantly convert one format to another. I had to agree that everyone would work on Google Drive on a number of documents, but this process had to be coordinated and discussed. ”

Experts call the situation faced by Penelope, " cloud growth ", noting that it can lead to inefficiency, which work in the cloud and had to fight in the first place. You can’t just “add a cloud and shake up, but don’t mix” when it comes to business and work - employees trying to find ways to integrate the cloud into their workflows should coordinate with colleagues and the requirements of existing systems.

Most cloud services are offered by external companies and organizations, so cloud tools often have a lack of control and customization when it comes to using them for teamwork. This can lead to confusing cases - things can go to “emergency” situations, for example. “Once we lost the file and tried to call the IT department to help us find it,” recalls Penelope. “And the IT guy answered something like,“ Sorry, but we can’t help, because we don’t have the ability to search the entire backend — we don’t have this service. ”

And, of course, the security of data and personal information also remains difficult questions when it comes to BYOC. Because many cloud services are managed externally by the companies that use them, sensitive data often becomes more difficult to protect — they are more vulnerable to attack. More than half of the companies surveyed in the SailPoint study reported that they had problems with laid-off employees who were trying to gain access to particularly important information, in 45% of companies even believe that employees will be ready to sell corporate information if they are offered a decent reward. . Nevertheless, the full responsibility for the fact of a hacker attack or data leakage remains with the company - and such situations are simply impossible for business, especially for companies from the medical and health field, where the information is regulated by federal authorities responsible for personal data security.

Industry experts point out that BYOC can serve as the creation of “shadow information technologies”, a set of computing powers and data systems, which, according to Information Week , imposes an additional burden of responsibility on business due to the need to monitor and coordinate work with it.

Some companies, in an attempt to avoid the emergence of shadow IT, are switching to services in the private cloud by creating their own versions of Dropbox, Google Drive and Docs, which can be completely controlled and customized. This solution can be costly and difficult to implement, it is often not available to small businesses, as well as to companies or groups of employees who cannot allocate enough resources to use such solutions. And the employees themselves, of course, may be against the private cloud, since they are already accustomed to working with public services and do not want anyone to direct and check their work.



Mobile technologies promise to make a modern workplace easier, more convenient, and workflows faster, and although BYOD and BYOC are designed to fulfill these promises, they pull a Pandora’s box full of questions and difficulties that need to be addressed. According to Dimension Data , only a third of organizations actually conduct an audit of the security of applications used on mobile devices - despite the fact that 70% of companies call data security the most important issue that needs to be addressed in connection with the use of mobile devices.

In addition to the complexity of logistics, the integration of mobile devices in the workplace also changed the dynamics of relationships between employees and the company, related to the rate of adoption of innovations. Large organizations, companies and universities once stimulated the process of adopting new technologies, because they had the means to acquire them and the ability to scale - employees of such organizations often gained experience in interacting with technological innovations at work and brought this experience, such as computer, Internet, electronic mail, in your privacy.

But now mobile innovations are born at the user level, as application developers, device makers and other market players everywhere offer a huge amount of low-cost software and solutions for mobile devices. Workers naturally begin to use such devices and software in the workplace, especially if these IT departments of the company do not yet have alternative solutions. Since mobile devices are compact and easy to use, custom or mobile solutions, such as cloud services, are slowly making their way among the already proven systems and tools. The result is a growing dissatisfaction of groups trying to keep up with technological innovations, but not flexible enough to quickly adapt these innovations to their work.

The Penelope Working Group is a prime example. In an attempt to find a way to share files with each other, she and her colleagues developed their own system for using Dropbox and Google Drive. They did not escape the pitfalls, but inside their team they were still able to restructure the workflow in order to respond to the challenges that cloud technologies threw to them.

However, according to Penelope, the authorities intervened on the part of her school district, concerned that third-party services are not safe enough. The bosses asked Penelope to refrain from using cloud services when working with certain types of documents and information. “I understand everything,” Penelope admits. “They want all of us, not just my team, to use the same approaches and systems. And yet, they have to spend a lot of time to find a truly working option - and as a result, our productivity suffers. ”

“It’s also hard for us because the pace of work has not changed,” continues Penelope. “We are still being asked to work faster and longer than ever, to work from home, on the road and on the way to work. But in our school district, technology is far from being widely represented to effectively meet these requirements. ”

Therefore, Penelope and her colleagues returned to outdated solutions. “Now we have to write letters to each other every now and then,” she sighs. “This, of course, works, but is far from being so effective. It is very old fashioned. But what can you do? ”She collects all her laptops, phones and tablets in a big bag and tosses it on her shoulder, ready to return to work, on which a mountain of letters is already waiting for her.