BYOD has been around for several years and is often synonymous with MDM (mobile device management). There are many variants of BYOD, including BYOC, BYOA, etc. The common theme is the need for the company to put safeguards in place on personal devices and mitigate/eliminate risk associated with loss of company data, i.e., DLP (data loss prevention). The benefit for the employee is choice of device and therefore, a more enjoyable experience.
A subtle change we are seeing with enterprises is an acceptance that personal productivity plays an important role in the overall productivity picture for an employee. We often task shift between work and personal life since the devices we use empower us to do so.
This materializes in the form of the enterprise providing Wi-Fi access for your personal devices for purely personal use only. Basically a recognition that we bring personal devices into the work environment and this is accepted/encouraged by the enterprise.
And this is really just the beginning. Imagine a few years from now when wearables are truly mainstream and we bring several personal devices with us to work everyday.
The solution we find enterprises gravitating toward is to leverage their guest network coupled with self-service and self-management mechanisms enabling the employee to service their own access needs. This allows IT to employ access controls via their identity platform, often Active Directory, and focus on policy management.
This is the direction we see BYOD continuing to drive toward and it is central to Aerohive ID Manager. While guest management continues to be important, this notion of personal BYOD is becoming a critical pain point for enterprise. It is the reason we implemented SAML, released as a set of REST APIs, and enhanced self-service workflows over the past several months.