IBM acquisition of Fiberlink fuelled its own BYOD strategy

100,000 users are now enrolled onto MaaS360, says Fiberlink co-founder Jim Sheward

IBM's acquisition of Fiberlink Communications in December 2013 fuelled its own bring your own device (BYOD) strategy at the firm, according to the CEO and co-founder of Fiberlink Jim Sheward.

Speaking on Computing's web seminar on "Managing the BYOD matrix", Sheward explained that IBM did have in place a BYOD policy before the acquisition but that it was only for a select group of employees. Post-acquisition, the technology giant decided to use Fiberlink's MaaS360 mobile device management solution to allow all its employees to use their own devices for work purposes.

According to Sheward, the transition for IBM was completed swiftly.

"They acquired us in December and we rolled out [the platform] in January, which was very fast. Currently there are 100,000 users and at one point there were 5,000 users rolling into the system an hour. It typically takes two to three minutes for a user to enrol their device," he said.

Less than 10 per cent of those users had to call the helpdesk to ask for assistance in setting up their device, he added.

When asked what held a company like IBM back from launching a BYOD policy for all its employees, Sheward explained that the element of security was the main obstacle.

"Security is critical at IBM, they serve a lot of the banks and many of the governments around the world, so security leads a lot of the decisions," he said.

"Larger companies take their time to analyse these things," he added.

To watch the full web seminar click here.