2012 was a pretty big year, in terms of mobile and enterprise mobility. Look at just a few of the milestones that spring to mind in a quick mental review of the year’s biggest mobile headlines:

Originally Posted by Aaron Goldberg, Tablets at Work Blog

When we start to talk about using tablets in an enterprise, one of the first things that must be understood is that the tablets we all know and love are not industrial-strength designs focused on the needs of a commercial organization.  Rather, these are consumer-first products that have real limitations when it comes to using them for business.  And this isn’t just a hardware discussion, although there are some key hardware differences.

1.  Operating System

The first large difference that has to be addressed is the operating system.  And the operating system is dramatically impacted depending on what the tablet is used for.  Consumer tablets are for browsing, running little apps, games, and generally “light-weight” work. 

I get to talk to a lot of CIOs in my line, and I always enjoy getting their perspective on technology and change. I’m frequently awed by their intelligence and the sheer scope of their knowledge and experience. I’ve often been surprised by their backgrounds, as well. I can think of top CIOs who came out of college with degrees in Philosophy, Chemistry, even Zoology. None of them thought they’d end up running IT for a major agency or corporation. (Guess which one ran an entire State’s IT? See the answer below.*)

So it’s particularly interesting to talk to them now, as the world they grew up and carved out a career in begins to disintegrate around them. Some people are even questioning if there will be such a thing as a CIO role 10 years from now. The question isn’t that far-fetched: “Self service” IT is a reality now, with a complete range of custom IT resources readily available to any department or individual who decides to “go rogue,” while bring-your-own device (BYOD) is spreading through organizations like wildfire – regardless of IT’s official policy on the practice, one way or the other.

In my conversations with CIOs and IT leaders during the past 18 months, most consider it a given that they must have a mobile strategy for their organizations. These strategies range from allowing employees to access the corporate network with their personal devices (a practice widely known as Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD for short), to pursuing a full scale switchover to a tablet-based infrastructure for users. Most companies find themselves somewhere in the middle.

The one fly in the mobility ointment for the majority of IT leaders is the issue of data security. Simply put, mobility breaks the time-tested perimeter security model that most organizations are still desperately clinging to. The fact is, the perimeter model is already broken. Mobility just brings this issue out into the light.

In a late 2011 interview with Campus Technology, the CIO at DePauw University, Carol Smith, said IT has “shifted from being the central entity on campus that provides and manages … to [the department] whose most powerful function is to act as a connector and an enabler.”

As students and faculty bring their own personal computers on campus, IT leaders in higher education need to focus on how to provide the necessary infrastructure support and security protections. As Ronald Danielson, vice provost for information services and CIO at Santa Clara University, says: “We’re far beyond the point where use of personally owned devices can be controlled.”

Here are just a few ways IT leaders in higher education can manage the risks associated with diverse consumer PCs:

The consumerization of IT remains one of the most talked-about issues in the technology space, particularly when it comes to mobile devices. Definitions vary, but most sources suggest it represents the blending of personal and business use of technology. Basically, your employees want to use consumer-oriented mobile devices for work as well as personal applications—whether that means their own smartphones, tablets and laptops, or devices that the company provisions for them.