BYOD, an acronym we heard several times in the last year or so. Now it seems a bit obsolete because, as we very well know, technology runs faster than the blink of an eye (or maybe because marketing did a darn good job at the time!).
A “buzzword”, or a cool word, that has been used several times to apply something that was so obvious for a lot of people but somehow it was not really happening in the business world. Bringing your personal device, from home to the office, and connect it to the domain/active directory or whatever you have/had in the workplace. Why? Because it’s easy, fast, efficient, …. (fill in the blanks with any other powerful word you can think of!).
When I was working for Microsoft, it was even more obvious to me that we needed to bring our own device and configure it as a personal/business device (and I’m not talking about those nice-keyboard-but-very-hard-to-configure Blackberry devices). It didn’t happen a few years back and then Microsoft, and many other Innovators, realized that.
But why starting a blog post with something like this? Well, it’s not really about this buzzword I want to focus your attention on. The attention is on two main points: “You” and “Personal”.
These 2 concepts are part of the Evolution, or better Re-volution (Re-Evolution), that we are experiencing right now. Not of all us really understand what’s happening (lack of knowledge, or simply disinterest) and I’m definitely not calling myself an expert on this field. But there is this wind blowing, this fresh air you can smell, and that’s happening right now. You can feel it, at least heard about it, and, not only that, this will have an impact on us and our children for many years to come. There is no turning back.
But what is this Re-Evolution and why this is somehow related to the Personal Technology?
Everything is personal, even if it’s loaned or temporarily provided it to you by the Company that hired you. Think about iOS or Android: everything that it’s in there is personal (although the “Data” you digest, in and out, are not really yours but that is another story). You have all these services and tools that are tailored to your needs. And here the Cloud concept played a huge role affecting all of us, business or leisure-related data or service you can think of. There is no difference anymore; these 2 things are not completely separated anymore. And, whether you like it or not, that’s a key difference from the past.
People want to embrace the “personal” and the “business” because it’s easy, because it makes sense and, why not, because it’s even fun sometimes.
Personal Technology. The BYOD concept was about bringing your personal into the business, now you don’t have to do it anymore. Because YOU are the technology and there’s nothing more personal than you, right? 😊
Wearable glasses, virtual reality, more personal computing (and yet another buzzword): put all these things together and you got yourself what? You. We are experiencing all these revolutionary technologies that will change our lives forever and the best part is that they are all “You-Centric”.
Think about all the devices you have: your laptop, maybe a PC at home, a couple of smartphones, a GPS in your car. You won’t need all of this anymore because the technology is (and will be) all around you. Devices that are always on (like the Amazon Echo), lenses that communicate with you, holograms that come out from a display (HoloLens in-primis), watches that measure your pulse and who-knows-what in the near future. This is the big step forward I think human kind did since the Invention of fax machine (maybe bad comparison but gives the idea 😊).
Why do you need to type when you can use your most natural gestures? Why do you need to click when you can speak? And why do we need a computer when this fast-changing world will be able to “compute” itself?
This will be your Personal Technology: something which is always on, something which is always there whether you turn left or right. But it won’t be you that will have to learn how to use an application anymore: the application, or more in general, the technology will be around you.
So, prepare Not-To-Bring-Your-Own-Device anymore because you will be already in it 😉