Ford's BYOD success story

The Ford Motor Company first began thinking about allowing employees to bring their own devices to work way back in the beginning of 2007, according by senior network engineer Randy Nunez at the recent mobileNext Forum hosted by IDC in San Francisco.

At that time, the American automotive icon hadn't even taken smartphones into consideration, ZDNet reported. Apple was still months away from introducing the iPhone, Google had yet to acquire and release the Android platform and many employees were perfectly happy with their BlackBerry devices.

In fact, according to Nunez, the company thought they'd have to deal more with personally owned laptops and Palm Pilots, according to the ZDNet report. But much surrounding both consumerization and mobile device management has changed in the nearly four and a half years since Ford first approached the topic.

Nunez had also spoken with TechTarget this summer about how Ford has evolved its stance on bring-your-own-device mobility to meet the modern needs of the trend.

"It was really caused by what's happening in the corporate environment, especially around the concept of the consumerization of IT," Nunez told the news provider about Ford's shift in policy. "So, we have a lot of people who have their own smartphones today, and they just want to enable those devices in their work life as well as their personal life."

Both at the mobileNext conference and in his earlier interview with TechTarget, Nunez detailed Ford's BYOD program, which the company has taken to calling ePOD or email on Personally Owned Devices. While not the most well-rounded consumerization program, it does demonstrate that the largest companies in the world have recognized the momentum built up by consumerization.

Under the ePOD program, Ford allows employees to access the company's enterprise email platform, calendars, business contacts and task lists through personally owned devices. The program initially began with just a few different models of BlackBerry smartphones, Nunez told TechTarget, but it has since grown to include the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

“It was a cost-effective way of getting into the game,” Nunez said, according to ZDNet.

A number of large companies have recently embraced BYOD policies, and international technology giant IBM is among them. In October, Computerworld reported that IBM has plans to support 100,000 personally owned devices by the end of 2011, with another 100,000 on tap for 2012.