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Mobile security specialist Good Technology launched a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) solution with a corporate data plan, based on the company’s recently announced Good secure mobile collaboration app. The offering is aimed at reducing the need for corporate data stipends and protecting user personal privacy.
The service targets small and midsize businesses (SMBs) that do not have the IT, HR and legal staff to address the complexities of stipends, liability for user content and auditing of employee expense reports.
“One of the biggest challenges in BYOD deployments is employees using their own person data plans for work-related applications. If employees fail to provide stipends or expense back their data usage, this can lead to HR and legal issues around liability,” Lynn Lucas, chief marketing officer at Good Technology, told eWEEK. “Furthermore, implementation of these kinds of programs often comes with additional administrative and/or tax and benefit management complexities.”
According to a recent report from IT research firm Gartner, approximately half of today’s BYOD programs provide a partial reimbursement, but full reimbursement for all costs appears to be much more rare.
Due to the growing prevalence of organizations supporting multiple carriers and devices in their BYOD program, the company also announced it is integrating split billing across the Good Dynamics Secure Mobility Platform.
Under this platform, IT organizations will be able to aggregate billing for all Good apps, including Good-secured ISV apps and customer-built apps, which to date number more than 1,200 in the Good ecosystem.
Instead of incurring related data charges against personal monthly plans, access to corporate-provisioned apps can be directly billed to employers and partners, with the aim of streamlining back-end reimbursement as well as HR and legal issues around liability for user content.
The first step in delivering this new split billing capability includes working with DataMi, a new telecom startup specializing in solutions that help consumers and enterprises get more out of their data.
“The integration will also provide enterprises with valuable insights into how much apps are being used and how much data they are consuming–ultimately helping enterprises understand their ROI and even optimize where it makes sense to make apps more efficient from a data consumption perspective,” Lucas said.
Both the BYOD solution and the Good Dynamics split billing option will be available in the fall across multiple U.S. wireless carriers.
Lucas also noted another way businesses can streamline their BYOD programs is by tapping into complete end-to-end data security solutions that will be key to streamlining BYOD programs.
“Doing so from behind firewalls, across networks, out to the device and between apps will give IT departments the tools they need to protect and manage against data loss and theft, while enforcing policy compliance,” she said.