Bridging the Consumerisation Gap: Making "Bring Your Own Hardware" policies work in your organisation

As smartphones and tablets become more readily available on the high street - and more fashionable - there is a growing trend for employees to want to use their own mobile devices for business applications.

In a technology environment that is already evolving at an unprecedented rate, it is essential for CIOs to ensure their hardware strategy is robust, and makes sense alongside other innovations, such as the cloud.

There are clear benefits to implementing a bring-your-own (BYO) policy in terms of employee satisfaction and cost efficiencies, but many IT departments are still struggling to get to grips with the support and security implications.

Consumerisation of business technologies is happening whether CIOs like it or not, so it is essential to be prepared.

The latest IT Leaders Forum will address this highly topical issue in detail, covering key areas such as:

* Is your business ready for a BYO policy, and do you have a choice? How to quantify the management costs, assess the benefits and risks, and introduce more formal arrangements in place of "consensus usage".

* Help your staff to make it work: overcoming the desirability factor to ensure that devices are fit for their business purpose, not consumer devices shoehorned into an enterprise environment.

* Prepare your IT infrastructure for a multi-device mobility strategy: to what extent can your existing IT provisions be replicated in a mobile environment, and what more do you need to do to make this possible? Could desktop virtualisation provide a shortcut?

* Integrating new hardware products with your wider innovation programme and factoring the mobile workforce into your cloud migration strategy.

* Does increased mobility have to mean compromised security? How can you ensure your data is safe on employee-owned devices through encryption, data fading and educating non-IT staff on security best practice.