As I write this the world is anxiously awaiting Apple CEO Tim Cook’s keynote at Apple’s annual developer’s conference. Consumers and industry experts alike seem to get manic about the newest OS advances for the iPhone, latest Mac computers, and any hints about what’s next– will we see a new iPhone before the end of the year? Very few companies today garner this much attention for a developers conference but Apple has main street appeal as your average consumer is now using the iPad and even the iPhone as business devices.

Whether you are an Apple lover, a die-hard Android user or prefer traditional Windows devices and computers isn’t the point. What matters is that as a society we are not only attached to our personal and mobile devices practically 24×7, but are becoming less flexible in which OS we’ll use, for both personal use and work. Unfortunately, corporate IT departments are taking the brunt of it often trying to find work-arounds to ensure corporate data is secure on these non-corporate devices.

New Forrester research, highlighted in a June 7 article on Gigaom, essentially confirms the employee rebellion of using whatever device they want no matter the consequence.  Forrester found that employees were laying out on average $1,253 of their own money on computers/devices of their preference and risking some type of penalty for using them  for corporate purposes. Bring your own device (BYOD) has been a hot topic for the last couple of years but with more and more devices flooding the market and consumers clambering for them, IT can no longer expect locked down environments and corporate policies to be enough to protect enterprise data. In fact, corporations may want to consider loosening some of the restrictions on what and how personal devices can be used by introducing virtual desktops.

Virtual desktop interface (VDI’s) and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) may be the solution for IT to stop fighting “rogue devices” in the enterprise and actually embrace them by providing a secure, manageable, and scalable desktop solution while letting the employee chose how and where they want to access corporate information. VDI/DaaS solutions allow employees to have the control they want over their choice of how they want to work while still allowing IT to retain control over corporate data, information, and applications. Employees satisfaction and morale goes up and data stays secure…not a bad compromise and a solution definitely worth considering.

Read more in our white paper, How BYOD Impacts IT.