It sound simple, give your employees the opportunity to bring their own devices to work. The company can perhaps be less aggressive in their cyclical replacements of hardware and your employee is happy because they don't have to lug around two devices, theirs and yours. I absolutely like the concept of Bring Your Own Device. But implementing BYOD and benefiting from BYOD isn't so easy. As an IT manager, it scares me that the employee's device may have control over the company's software and device. As an employee, it scares me even more that company's software could control my device and have access to my personal data. At the end of the day, this only goes well if you have established a good BYOD policy for your business.

It’s likely clear to most companies by now that any realistic view of the future of the business world involves cloud computing in some way. It’s difficult to ignore the variety of benefits that come from adopting the cloud, including more productivity from employees, more business agility, and, of course, significant cost savings. Even with these advantages in mind, many companies still feel a reluctance to make the cloud part of their operations. A move to the cloud is certainly a significant change, one which should not be considered lightly.

The year is still young, but it is already a busy one for software startup, Altocloud. The Mountain View, California company just announced $2 million seed funding and the commercial availability of its predictive communications platform for customer sales and engagement. The funding, led by Delta Partners, Digicel Group and ACT Venture Capital, brings Altocloud’s total funding to $3 million. Altocloud's new platform intelligently identifies the optimal online visitors and delivers tailored chat, voice, video and content so customers get the information and help they need at exactly the right moment.  

Big Data is changing the world. The ability to store, manage and extract actionable insights from vast and deep lakes of disparate data pouring in from multiple sources has transformed businesses, industries, and our lives.

And for this we can thank the cloud.

Zylpha (www.zylpha.com), the UK’s leading legal systems innovator, has signed a partnership agreement with international eDisclosure group LDM Global (www.ldmglobal.com). The resultant fusion of eDisclosure services and court bundling solutions will provide legal practices with an innovative end-to-end solution when preparing documentation for court.

After over 20 years of key influence over content management industry’s transformation, Piyush joins visionary vendor to drive accelerated growth

Jahia, a leading open source User Experience Platform (UXP) vendor, announced today that Piyush Patel, joins Jahia CEO Elie Auvray and COO Emmanuel Garcin in the Executive Leadership team of the company as Executive Vice President of Strategic Alliances & General Manager Americas.

Scott Liewehr emailed me today announcing that Digital Clarity Group and Constellation Research, Inc. are forming a strategic alliance to better serve their clients. Scott is CEO of Digital Clarity Group and it's no secret CMS Report is an admirer of both him and his company. Yet Scott's email still surprised me. Why would DCG, rising among the ranks among analyst firms, strike an alliance with Constellation?

There are many pro’s and con’s when actioning a Bring Your Own Device to work policy and these effect both employee and employer. When counting the cost of BYOD it is important to recognize both financial and psychological factors:

Productivity vs Stress

When BYOD systems are put in place it has been clearly demonstrated that productivity is increased. According to Cisco, the simple implementation of using a smartphone or tablet that is familiar to the employee leads to better productivity, saving on average 81 minutes of time performing tasks each week.