Business Time for Personal Smartphones

With smartphones as apt to be running personal productivity apps as business productivity ones, the divide between enterprise devices and their consumer counterparts appears to have finally been bridged. To wit, these comments from Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers who, while talking up the Flip video camera during an earnings call this week, said that the days of the so-called corporate device are ending.

While you might think of the Flip as a consumer device it is just as useful in our business line. The number of applications enabled by this network web 2.0 device in the business world is exploding.

Again using myself as an example I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip. Another key take away is to understand in my opinion the argument about consumer devices and business devices as well as the two architectures completely blurring is over. The real question is how do the CIO’s in the enterprise business facilitate this change and that is from a number [of] recent meetings with some of the top CIO’s in the world. They get it. They understand the change and it is how they facilitate it rather than slow it down.

An interesting point. That said, I imagine it will take a while for enterprise to overcome its security concerns over such uses. And for their employees to feel comfortable conducting personal business on company-issued handsets governed by those annoying corporate communications policies….