A Special Thanks To 10 Years Of ReadWriteWeb

All around us, we see the building blocks of a new era. We are in the midst of a new Age of Innovation where, all of a sudden, being a geek is cool. Entrepreneurship is considered a legitimate career option and the evolution of technology makes almost anything possible. Technology that was commonplace in 2003 is, at times, barely recognizable in 2012. But that same technology created the base of what we have today; we build on what came before. It is with this in mind that we announce the next chapter of ReadWriteWeb.

We are now ReadWrite. In many ways, that is both extremely exciting and kind of sad. We have a beautiful, newly designed website, a core group of highly intelligent writers and a dynamic new leader in Dan Lyons. On the other hand, the ReadWriteWeb of old is gone, along with many people that made it what it was. 

The founder of ReadWriteWeb, Richard MacManus, started the site as his own personal technology blog from his home in New Zealand on April 20, 2003. Richard quickly became known for his deep insight and passion about all things innovation, from the rise of Web 2.0 to the future of publishing, the Internet of Things and the new Mobile Revolution.

Bringing on new talent

In a couple of years, Richard was able to hire some brilliant writers who took up the torch of championing and enlightening people on new innovations. The most prominent was Marshall Kirkpatrick, the first son of tech blogging and one of the first employees at both RWW and TechCrunch. Other great writers have crossed through ReadWriteWeb at some point or another, such as Jolie O'Dell, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Mike Melanson, Audrey Watters and countless others.

Some people behind the scenes did not achieve the same type of public recognition, but were no less influential: Webmaster Jared Smith, engineer Tyler Gillies, managing editor Abraham Hyatt and former COO Sean Ammirati. We call these folks ReadWriteAlum and they were a huge part of the dynamic publication that Richard created and grew for almost 10 years. 

The original Read/Write Web started by Richard in 2003

All of these people have come and gone from ReadWriteWeb, and each left an indelible mark on what the publication became. As we transition to ReadWrite, some people might think that the site is diminished without those people. Simply, this is not true. Just as the BlackBerry was a stepping stone to the iPhone, and the iPhone was a stepping stone to a booming mobile industry, the writers who came before us at ReadWriteWeb lend us their legacy. Today, at ReadWrite, we stand on their shoulders. 

RWW went red around November 2005

Some things are going to change around ReadWrite. Some things are not. We will remain a core group of technology enthusiasts who champion innovation and creativity with passion, insight and analysis. We will continue to be thought leaders, helping both technology professionals and consumers make decisions. 

Today, we thank those who have come before us, the ones who made this great publication what it is. Special thanks to Richard and his vision. We will do our best to honor your legacy. 

We might have a new name, new faces and a new website, but the core passion that started with Richard in 2003 will remain. Welcome to the new ReadWrite.

Warning: Mom-And-Pop Shops Not Safe From Cybercriminals

Sure, cybercrime headlines go to multinational conglomerates that are breached by determined, sophisticated criminals. But small firms get hit more often, a fact that no doubt surprises their owners and customers.

Mom-and-pops often take fewer precautions, and when their customers also let down their guard, they all become easy prey. It might be more time-consuming to string together access to a lot of small businesses, but the prize ' fat consumer financial accounts ' is just as valuable as any stolen from big firms.

Security Polices Are Lacking

A recent survey of more than 1,000 businesses with less than 250 employees shows that nine in 10 have no formal policies guiding employees on how to avoid malicious sites that download malware. Commissioned by the National Cyber Security Alliance and Symantec, the poll also found that more than seven in 10 respondents have no guidelines for using Facebook, Twitter and other social media where cybercriminals will hijack accounts to distribute malicious links.

Privacy polices were also lacking. The survey found that 60% of the businesses had no guidelines for employees to follow regarding customer or employee information.

The Security Risks Are Obvious

Oddly, small-business owners understand the importance of Internet security.

Fully 73% said using the Internet safely was critical to their business, and 46% acknowledged it was very critical. In fact, nearly nine in 10 had one or more employees using the Internet for daily operations, with seven in 10 saying they were either somewhat or very dependent on the Internet for running their company.

Nevertheless, nearly 60% of the businesses had no contingency for handling a loss of customer or employee data, credit or debit numbers or intellectual property. Yet, nearly seven in 10 manage their own sites in-house, meaning if there's trouble, the small business is liable.

Size Doesn't Matter

So why the disconnect? Michael Kaiser, executive director of security alliance, said small businesses believe hackers are more interested in breaking into large companies that would seem to have much more valuable information.

"They may think their size protects them," Kaiser said.

What many small businesses don't realize is that hackers value information no matter the size of the company. They want names and passwords of employees' email accounts in order to identify customers and send them malware or links to malicious sites.

Small businesses 'may not understand how the cybercriminal system works," he said. "A list of 200 customers may be incredibly valuable."

Of course, not all small businesses operate the same way. Those working with defense and financial firms are used to tighter security requirements, for example. More small businesses will have to upgrade to similar levels.

The Easy Pickings

Software powering electronic cash registers is a popular target. Last December, four Romanians were indicted in U.S. federal court for allegedly stealing credit-, debit- and gift-card numbers from the point-of-sale systems at 150 Subway restaurants and more than 50 other franchise and small retailers. The suspects were accused of charging millions of dollars to the accounts of 80,000 customers.

Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser for anti-virus software vendor Sophos, said small businesses tend to fall behind in software updates that patch security flaws.

"A small business is a target that doesn't necessarily have any better security than my mom and dad," Wisniewski said.

Weak security by small businesses accounts for 90% of the payment data breaches reported to Visa. A study by Verizon found that nearly three-quarters of data breaches in 2011 involved businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

Share As Little Data As Possible

Put all the facts together and a person would be wise to share as little personal information as possible with a small business.

All business owners should consider the case of hotelier Wyndham Worldwide. It was sued this year by the Federal Trade Commission for failing to have adequate security to prevent the theft of payment card information of hundreds of thousands of customers.

There's nothing to say a small firm can't be victimized and then sued.

"I wouldn't store my credit card with anyone," Wisniewski said.

Looking For The Next $1 Billion Open Source Company

It's been just under seven months since Red Hat became the world's first $1 billion open-source company. Now the question is who will follow suit and become the next open source company to hit this milestone?

Before sorting through the list of likely candidates, it's important to define what we're talking about when we say "$1  billion company." Primarily, we're talking actual annual revenue, not market valuation. That's a key difference, since under the valuation definition, Red Hat would not have been the first billion-dollar open source company; MySQL AB would have had that distinction, when Sun Microsystems bought it for $1 billion in 2008.

And, when we're talking open source, the idea is a company that bases its business on the sale and distribution of open-source software. Things get a bit tricky here, since many companies could be assigned the "open source" moniker - and some might argue against it. This is particularly true of companies that follow the so-called "open core model," which typically release a free version of the software as a "community" edition as well as a more feature-rich but closed edition that's available for a licensing fee or support subscription.

Red Hat is not open core, because even though it sells a "closed" enterprise version, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and helps distribute a free version of the product, Fedora, the truth is that the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is still freely available, so one can, if desired, use RHEL without support.

While it would be possible to reject open-core model companies, the fact is that this would sharply limit the field of potential candidates for the next $1 billion open source company, so I'm going to keep them in mind and note them as such.

Our three top candidates - all private companies - definitely vary in the kind of software they offer, but each one has an opportunity to be the next open-source company that crosses the billion-dollar line.

With all the hullaballoo about Big Data (see next candidate), it's important not to forget there are still a lot of fast and flexible offerings in database-land that still follow the old rules of managing data. Big data doesn't mean that relational databases are dead; in fact, such databases are more important then ever.

EnterpriseDB is in the business of distributing commercial products built on one such open source database, PostgreSQL, a direct competitor to the MySQL mentioned earlier that was snatched up by Sun and subsequently acquired by Oracle.

On its own, PostgreSQL (or Postgres as geeks call it), is hot right now. The open source Postgres is getting a lot of new features and the pace of development is perceived as faster than its MySQL counterpart. Plus, there is a definite interest in Postgres driven by a movement away from MySQL. While MySQL is still very powerful software, there is a lot of tension in the marketplace about Oracle's stewardship of that project, since Oracle dropped the ball on several of the open source projects it acquired from Sun and many feel that eventually MySQL will suffer from the same problem, with Oracle either not pursuing development as much as it could or (as some fear) closing MySQL altogether.

While MySQL's loss is PostgreSQL's gain, Postgres is getting attention on its own merits. EnterpriseDB, which offers an enterprise version known as Postgres Plus, is making big inroads with customers like Sony Entertainment.

Data on a smaller scale will always be more prevalent than Big Data, which means Postgres and the vendors that package it have a nice, wide market into which to play. That gives EnterpriseDB a clear path to becoming the first $1 billion open source database company.

Nevertheless, you can't ignore the hype... Big data is a big driver for commerce right now, and any big data vendor has to be considered for billion-dollar revenue status.

The technology that's leading the big data charge is the open source data framework known as Apache Hadoop. Hadoop is not a database, but rather a distributed storage tool that enables programmers devise jobs in Java code to search for desired information - without formal database structure.

Hadoop is not the only big data tech, but right now it's the top technology in the sector. And right now the biggest Hadoop company is Cloudera.

Though MapR and Hortonworks are strong Hadoop contenders, Cloudera has managed to establish an early lead in this sector. Cloudera has developed its own tools to make it easier to seek information from Hadoop stores and is building a rich partner ecosystem to enable different applications of Hadoop-stored data.

If Hadoop continues its rocket-ship rise, it's not hard to envision Cloudera becoming the first $1 billion open source Big Data company.

In the world of open source cloud computing, OpenStack is the name that gets the most attention, thanks to the combined marketing prowess of Rackspace, HP, Dell and Red Hat, just to name a few.

But OpenStack is not a company or even a product - it's a project. Eventually, one of the OpenStack vendors may come up with a commercial product and run with it, but if its someone like Red Hat or HP, they've already made their mark. Piston Cloud or SUSE may also succeed as billion-dollar candidates, but right now the OpenStack system is a free-for-all and no one seems to have a commanding lead.

So I'm betting on an open source cloud player that's not even in the OpenStack ecosystem: Eucalyptus.

Eucalyptus gets the nod because of OpenStack's lack of product and the fact the other open product in this space, CloudStack, has Citrix as its flagship commercial vendor and it's not really an open source company. Eucalyptus also gets marks for being very well connected to the Amazon Web Services ecosystem. While you may argue that sticking to AWS frameworks is really not all that open (in fact, I have made that very argument), there's no denying that AWS is killing in this space and a lot of customers interested in private or hybrid cloud computing are very content to keep swimming in Amazon's pond.

But there is more to Eucalyptus than being in the right place at the right time. It has got a whip-smart team, led by Marten Mickos, who - in one of those "small world" things - was the founder and CEO of MySQL AB, the same company Oracle now has in its portfolio and was valued at $1 billion upon acquisition.

With all of these stars aligned, Eucalyptus could soon be the first billion-dollar open source cloud computing company.

Sure, other candidates may be in the running for the next billion-dollar open source company. And there is always a chance that someone new, like Big Switch Networks and its virtual networking systems, could come out of nowhere and snatch the title.

But these three candidates, based on what I see right now in the open source world, are presently the most likely contenders for becoming the next $1 billion open source company.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Weekly Wrap-Up: How Evil Is Your Smartphone, When To Pivot Your Startup, And How To Watch The Presidential Debate Online

How Evil Is Your Smartphone, 8 Startups On When To Pivot, and How To Watch The Presidential Debates Online. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

How Evil Is Your Smartphone?

Okay, maybe there are no ethical smartphones. But some must be better than others, right?  How Evil Is Your Smartphone?

 

More Top Posts:

When Is It Time To Pivot? 8 Startups On How They Knew They Had To Change

There comes in a time the life of many startups when it becomes clear that everything is not going according to plan. But how do entrepreneurs tell if they need to keep going all in on the original plan, or pivot to something new? When Is It Time To Pivot? 8 Startups On How They Knew They Had To Change.

 

How To Watch The U.S. Presidential Debates Online - Updated

As Mitt Romney and Barack Obama prepare for their third and final debate on Monday night, your options for tuning in are greater than ever before, How To Watch The U.S. Presidential Debates Online.

 

Don't Make The Mistake Of Preordering A Windows Surface RT Tablet

The problem is Microsoft's 'long tease' - the slow, steady drip of information leading up to the launch of Windows 8, Don't Make The Mistake Of Preordering A Windows Surface RT Tablet.

 

Why Brands Should Build Their Own Social Communities

Meet SocialEngine, white-label software that helps businesses build their own branded, interest-driven social networks, control their message and turn participants into potential customers. The service has been around for a few years with some success, but the product has now been relaunched as SocialEngine Cloud, retooled for bigger clients, Why Brands Should Build Their Own Social Communities.

 

Color's Epic Collapse: Why Everybody Is Loving It

Reports say that the engineering talent from Color is going to be acquired by Apple and the app will be shut down. No one but its investors and employees not going to Apple will shed a single tear, Color's Epic Collapse: Why Everybody Is Loving It.

 

What The Hell Just Happened At Google?

There's only one thing worse than missing your numbers - and that is missing your numbers and not even being able to report that news correctly, What The Hell Just Happened At Google?

 

The FTC Wants YOU! - To Kill Robocalls

The FTC Robocall Challenge is offering a cash prize for anybody that can come up with the best way to eliminate robocalls from reaching consumers' cellphones and landlines. The submission window runs from October 25 to January 17, 2013. Winners, if there are any, will be announced in April 2013, The FTC Wants YOU! - To Kill Robocalls.

 

The Democrats Prank Romney With Clever Search Engine Fun

This is what national, presidential-election-year political campaigns do now: They make little prank websites to undermine their opponents. It's the tech-savvy, 21st Century equivalent of a TV attack ad, The Democrats Prank Romney With Clever Search Engine Fun.

 

The iPad Mini's Killer Feature = Price

The tablet market is different from that of other gadgets. While many people believe they need a mobile phone and a computer to meet their personal and business goals, a tablet is more of a 'not necessary, but nice to have' type of device, The iPad Mini's Killer Feature = Price.

 

ReadWriteWeb Channels

Enterprise

• Take My Facebook Password? Over My Dead Body
• Is Microsoft Challenging Google on HTTP 2.0 with WebSocket?
• [Infographic] Social Media Security Basics

Mobile

• Facebook Friends: How Many Is Too Many?
• Fuzebox, the iPad and the Reality of Simple Unified Communications
• Squashing Bugs: The Many Layered Approach to Mobile App Testing

Cloud

Follow ReadWriteCloud on Twitter and join the ReadWriteCloud LinkedIn Group.

• Red Hat Sets a Date for OpenShift Source Release
• Box Launches Its Own Enterprise Cloud Operating Ecosystem
• Google's Go Programming Language Grows Up: Now What?

Hack

Follow ReadWriteHack on Twitter.

• Google Adds New Toys to OAuth Playground
• Trello: Online Collaboration Software at Its Finest
• Revenge of the DevOps: Microsoft Targets Next Visual Studio for Admins Too

ReadWriteWeb Community

You can find ReadWriteWeb in many places on the web, a few of which are below.

• ReadWriteWeb on Facebook
• ReadWriteWeb on Twitter
• ReadWriteWeb on Google+
• ReadWriteWeb on LinkedIn
• ReadWriteWeb on Pinterest
• ReadWriteWeb on Storify

Subscribe to the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up

Want to have this wrap up delivered to you automagically? You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrap-up by RSS or by email.

YouTube Networks: An Inside Look At Their Unsavory Business Practices

Ray William Johnson, the world's most successful YouTuber, announced he is leaving his signed network Maker Studios earlier this week via video. The news sent the YouTube-o-sphere abuzz with gossip as both Johnson and Maker Studios are citing wildly different reasons for his departure. Almost everyone believes Johnson's side of the story, however, because most YouTube networks have earned a nasty rep for screwing their talent out of money and other unsavory business practices.    

YouTube and its roughly 200 or so networks may be the new 'new media,' but their way of doing business is very 'old Hollywood' - meaning young talent is scooped up, and more often than not, taken advantage of because they don't know enough to read the fine print or hire a lawyer. It's been happening for years, and it's become one of the most common complaints coming from YouTubers.  

Why YouTubers Join Networks

YouTubers are eager to join networks for a variety of reasons, either because the network promises production assistance, management, agents and other resources, help contacting YouTube over site issues or securing higher advertising rates. In return, networks take anywhere from 30% to 50% of revenue generated by the video content. If that cut seems high to you, you're not alone.

The Fine Brothers, creators of the hit YouTube series 'Kids/Teens/Elders React,' have a well known anti-network stance, especially when it comes to how much of a cut networks are taking. (They believe it shouldn't be more than 10%). 'We've seen too many people taken advantage of,' said the duo in a recent phone interview.

Like the VlogBrothers, The Fine Brothers are older than the average YouTuber, and have adopted a 'kind uncle' persona where younger YouTubers email them for advice, or in this case, to complain about unfair network contracts.  

Widespread Complaints

'The worst networks are the ones that have been here the earliest,' said Benny Fine. 'A lot of things happened in the early days that are very disappointing - basically, networks try their best to get the worst contracts out.'  

One of the best-known examples of unsavory YouTube network business practices brought to the Fine Brothers' attention concerned the 'perpetuity clauses' in contracts teen YouTubers signed without realizing that 'perpetuity' means 'for life.' This led to bad press earlier this year for Machinima, the first network on the YouTube scene, when partners tried to leave the network only to be told they couldn't, because they had signed on for life. (According to a brief in-person interview with Machinima recruiter Zach Boone at this year's VidCon, Machinima no longer offers perpetuity contracts.)

'It's not just Machinima," charged Rafi Fine. 'Every single network has multiple stories, but people are too fearful to speak out -  there's a lot of fear tactics keeping people silent, even blackmailing' added Fine.

YouTuber and fellow mentor like the Fine and VlogBrothers, gamer Bachir Boumaaza aka Athene Wins on YouTube, grew so distraught with all the complaints received from '15 and 16 year old YouTubers being misled' that he created the Union for Gamers, a website, community and network known as Curse as an alternative, to Machinima, for gamer-centric YouTubers.

'Contracts are getting more and more aggressive,' said Boumaaza in a Skype interview earlier this year. 'It's not very healthy for the artist -  it stifles creativity, and it backfires, because the artists don't want to make videos anymore.' Boumaaza touted Curse as offering the best rates for its partners at the time. But Curse was shut down by Google immediately after the search giant invested $35 million in Machinima earlier this year, which resulted in the fledgling network hemorrhaging thousands of dollars a day for a month. Curse was eventually saved by Maker Studios through means that have yet to be substantiated.

Why Johnson Left Maker Studios

In Johnson's case, the issue was less of the network trying to take advantage of him (Johnson is a Columbia University graduate that was preparing to study law before his YouTube career took off) as it was Maker Studios trying to overstep its original contract agreement. 

In response to New Media Rockstars founder Benny Luo, Johnson tweeted he is leaving Maker Studios because the network and production company 'suddenly insisted on owning part of =3 [intellectual property],' =3 being his hit show. When Johnson refused to give Maker Studios ownership, Maker Studios stopped production of Johnson's Your Favorite Martian album, which was scheduled to come out later in 2012. The halting of his album was the last straw for Johnson, it seems.    

Maker Studios, however, is saying that because of a decline in viewership (which appears to be directly related to the redesigned YouTube layout that drove down viewership for everyone), 'it made sense for him to go back to producing the show himself,' and stated employing 'a full production staff of 12 people including a team of writers no longer was a viable option.'

Johnson countered on Twitter saying his departure had 'nothing to do with =3 viewership, and I'm not sure why their PR person is saying that.' Indeed, many in the YouTube community are perplexed by Maker Studios' statement: If Johnson, the top YouTuber and first user to become a millionaire, isn't profitable enough for Maker Studios, then who is?

Others were less surprised by the news, including popular YouTuber and businessman Philip DeFranco, who wrote in a Facebook comment, 'I was wondering if/when [Maker Studios] would overstep their relationship with Ray' adding, '[h]onestly I'm surprised to hear that he doesn't own part of Maker.'  

DeFranco is signed with Revision3, one of the few networks without bad press or contract disputes to its name. In fact, the Fine Brothers just signed with Revision3 last month after a year of negotiations with more than 10 networks.

 

 

Edit: A previous version of this post stated Curse Network was saved by an acquisition with Maker Studios, but this is not the case as Curse is still an independent, privately owned company.  

Why The Music Industry Should Be Thanking Illegal Downloaders

Next month, people who download music illegally may start getting anti-piracy warnings from their Internet Service Providers. If recent research is any indication, maybe they should be getting "thank you" notes instead. 

Turns out that people who frequently download music without paying for it actually end up buying 30% more music than everybody else, according to a study from the National Assembly at Columbia University. This isn't the first research that has shown file-sharing to be beneficial to artists, but this comprehensive study blows yet another good-sized hole in the conventional music industry wisdom. 

It makes sense, though.

That heavy-duty downloaders also pay for lots of music isn't shocking, considering they're likely to be much more passionate music fans than others. In Napster's heyday, I must confess, I routinely queued up albums to download overnight, which I then burned onto CD-Rs before walking to high school in the morning (this was pre-iPod). I quickly grew accustomed to the immediacy of file-sharing and before I knew it, I had ripped the audio from all of my CDs so I could get rid of them once and for all. When Napster shut down, I switched to Soulseek and blog searches to find MP3s. 

See Also: Music Piracy Debate Reignites, Despite Evidence That Digital Distribution Pays

I still paid for some music, especially if it was recorded by a smaller, independent artist whose work I wanted to support. But of the several-hundred gigabytes of music I amassed in the early 2000s, the majority of it was pirated.

Over time, though, my music consumption habits - along with my disposable income - evolved. So did the digital music ecosystem. These days, I spend $10 per month on a premium Spotify subscription and on top of that, am known to eagerly drop at least another $30 on vinyl records per month, on average. Last month, when I set foot in San Francisco's Ameoba Music for the first time, I may or may not have gone a little overboard. It makes sense to me that those of us who hopped onto peer-to-peer networks are also quick to throw down some actual money for music, even while others aren't. 

That isn't to say that file-sharing hasn't done very real, palpable damage to the traditional business model of the music industry. It has. Put more accurately, the changes in music consumption and consumer expectations brought on by the advent of the Internet, have crippled the old model. 

On one hand, that's hurt deep-pocketed gatekeepers who are widely perceived as having hampered innovation for years (instead opting to sue Internet companies and consumers alike). It's hard to shed too many tears about that. On the other hand, the decline in album sales has also hurt what musician and piracy critic David Lowery calls the "middle class of the music industry." Music might be easier than ever to create, disseminate and discover, but it's still quite difficult to make a living creating it. 

As encouraging as the National Assembly numbers might seem, paying consumers like me are not enough to "save" the music industry, or at least the version of it that existed 15 years ago. It's gone. But maybe that's okay.

See Also: BitTorrent Downloads Booming - And Benefitting Musicians

Perhaps it's time, as many have suggested, to stop thinking about recorded music as the cash cow it once was and instead treat it as a smaller revenue stream that has enormous promotional value to support an artist's other work: touring, merchandise, licensing their music and selling it in deluxe package with extras that fans can't download. 

It's hard to picture overall music sales numbers climbing back up to their pre-digital heights anytime soon. Listeners are being conditioned to expect to find and listen to music instaneously, with or without shelling out money for it. That trend started with Napster and continues today with more legitimate services. Today's teenagers instinctively search for new releases on Spotify. If they're not there, they check YouTube or SoundCloud. Some might pay for a download from iTunes or Amazon, but with so many free and ad-supported options, why bother forking over actual dollars?

In 2005, authors David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard imagined a future in which everyone carries Internet-connected media players and subscribes to a massive library of music in the cloud. "Music like water," they called it. That's exactly where we're headed with smartphones and services like Spotify and Rdio.

Early research conducted in Sweden suggests that subscription services help reduce piracy. Yes, the financial viability of the services model is still unknown, and many artists are nervous about the financial payoff. But there's still hope that with enough scale, those services can help the music industry thrive in the 21st Century. Even if it looks very, very different than it once did.

Forget Bring Your Own Device - Try Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled

As consumer devices and services increasingly outstrip their corporate competitors in power, productivity and cachet, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has become the latest so-hot-you'll-melt trend in the world of corporate IT. But plenty of IT departments see it as a demon to be exorcised from the cubicle farms - or an opportunity to dump the responsibility for hardware upkeep on their internal customers. Rather than struggle with BYOD, some companies are turning the whole concept of BYOD on its head in favor of Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE) policies.

The idea behind BYOD is to let end users choose the devices, programs and services that best meet their personal and business needs, with access, support and security supplied by the company IT department - often with subsidies for device purchases.

But BYOD places new burdens on IT as it tries to deal with an infinite variety of platforms and profiles. COPE takes the opposite approach - instead of making corporate functions work on personal devices, it sets up a framework to support and allow personal uses of company devices. 

COPE essentially works like this: the organization buys the device and still owns it, but the employee is allowed, within reason, to install the applications they want on the device, be it smartphone or traditional computer.

For BYOD, the question for IT is "How do I secure information on a device that I don't own?" With COPE, the question becomes, "How can I loosen my grip for my employees to use their devices for personal use?"

That's how Philippe Winthrop, VP of Strategy at VeliQ, framed the questions for me. He's passionate about COPE, even though his work at VeliQ, the mobility Platform-as-a-Service company he recently joined, isn't even centered on it.

COPE vs. BYOD

According to Winthrop, COPE offers big cost benefits. Under BYOD, employees buy and expense the devices and services they need, while the employer may reimburse all or a portion of these costs, based on preset policies.

But that can leave companies paying retail prices. COPE lets IT departments keep their sweet corporate discounts.  With BYOD, Winthrop said, "CFOs see a way to save a couple hundred bucks on CapEx [capital expenditures]. They're missing an opportunity to save far more on OpEx [operational expenditures]."

Keeping data where it belongs is the other big problem within BYOD. Worries about misplaced and insecure devices or malware-infected machines keeps the IT folks reaching for the antacid.

Not only are employee-owned devices at greater risk, but sometime laws can hamper what a company can do to help itself. In the European Union and South Korea, for instance, laws specifically forbid a company from wiping data from equipment it doesn't own. So, if a smartphone gets left in the airliner's seat pocket, any data on that phone is out in the wild.

COPE neatly circumvents challenges like this. If the company owns the device, it can yank data back regardless of regulations. And, since they can preconfigure the device before handing it to employee, IT can easily insert security and application-management protocols.

"With COPE, it's all about balance," Winthrop explained. "When I said 'loosen my grip,' I didn't say 'let go.'"

COPE also eases support issues by deploying the same hardware to every employee. In the BYOD scenario, IT might not even be able to repair all the possible devices, and vendor or third-party support services may not be completely secure.

To be fair, there are ways of mitigating the BYOD issues. Many companies that support BYOD maintain lists of approved devices, and let employees choose only from lists of approved devices and engage trusted third-party service and support vendors. Others keep all secure company data and access in a cloud-based virtual desktop or profile, reducing the risk if the device is compromised. 

What's Keeping COPE Back?

Still, COPE has many benefits compared to BYOD, at least from the IT perspective. So why aren't more IT shops adopting the COPE model? It's those darn users. 

Winthrop attributes the fixation on BYOD to the GenY-ers, staffers who insist on wanting to do everything their way and their way only.

"You could call it the Frank Sinatra Syndrome," Winthrop joked. (Clearly not a Sex Pistols fan, then.) Faced with these attitudes, many IT departments seem to think their only options are caving entirely or completely stonewalling user requests.

It doesn't have to be that way. By embracing COPE, IT can reassert the control it must have to keep data and work processes secure, while still giving employees the shiny toys they so desperately want.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.