Minneapolis see slow adoption of BYOD plan

Incorporating tablets and smartphones into daily work flow is a growing practice across the corporate world. Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies bring a number of benefits but without a proper plan in place, even the best intentions can take awhile to get off the ground.

A new article from CIO Magazine profiles the city of Minneapolis and their BYOD plan that started back in January. For the piece, Tom Kaneshige interviewed city CIO Otto Doll. According to the executive, the buy in so far has been disappointing as only 170 of the 3,600 workers have been deployed an iPad.

Doll chalks up the slow deployment to a number of factors. While cost and security – two popular hurdles to BYOD solutions – are present, the CIO cited networking issues as another major holdup. While Minneapolis does have citywide WiFi, most of the government buildings do not, which include city hall until last week. Since tablets requiring a wireless signal – either through 3 or 4G or wireless internet – lack of WiFi in the building is more than enough to stop any worker from picking up an iPad.

Despite the slow adoption, Doll is convinced iPads and other tablets will be important tools in the future of business and CIOs that wait to integrate the new technology will be in trouble.

“Consumer-grade technology is going to play a role in the computing capabilities that we give to our workforce,” Doll said. “It’s going to get harder. There will be more and more folks vehemently tied to their specific selection of technology, like the die-hard Apple crowd.”

Businesses in Ohio that are interested in deploying a BYOD policy would be wise to partner with an IT consulting firm.

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