If your company is still unsure whether to adapt its mainframe access procedures to web browsers, consider other factors that are shaping the BYOD movement. While permitting the use of individual devices is already important for many businesses to strengthen performance, InfoWorld recently reported on a new policy from AT&T that could lead to more offices embracing a BYOD model for work.
According to this source, the AT&T Work Platform allows businesses to more easily manage employee data and voice used for work purposes. Under this plan, employers can set up a separate billing account solely for work-related activity, instead of forcing workers to pay for everything themselves. The platform could include some of the most popular apps for messaging and accessing content online which have potential business purposes.
Analyzing the possible impacts of this new option, InfoWorld's Galen Gruman said that this announcement could help businesses create employee-friendly plans but that it doesn't solve everything quite yet. He said that keeping work-related voice and text apart from personal is a good change to traditional approaches and that there is a good chance it will be compatible with most 3G or 4G phones.
"That's more valuable than splitting the billing because it creates a real separation for compliance purposes between work and personal communications," he writes. "But companies will still have to deal with the issue of dividing the data access costs. Those expense reports won't go away for most employees."
Whether this new platform ends up being a major factor in encouraging more businesses to adopt BYOD plans remains to be seen. With data access in offices becoming easier to set up, a portal integration option that makes mainframes available through common web browsers could be useful and sustainable.