MobileIron, Mobile Device Management, and More on Personal Liability

I spoke with Bob Tinker, CEO of mobile-device-management vendor MobileIron last week about their announcement, made yesterday, of the newest version of their Virtual Smartphone Platform product. I’ve known Bob since his days at Airespace, which was of course acquired by Cisco and now forms the core of Cisco’s WLAN product line. Our conversation was wide-ranging, beginning with (obviously) the key features of the latest release of this mobile device management suite. And, for a product line that was first announced just a few months ago, there’s a lot here. There’s helpful statistical information available even to end users, with the goal of improving the mobile experience, lowering costs, and pinpointing service quality problems. The enterprise can easily track usage and spot potential fraud. There’s even an enterprise app store facility. And it works across a broad range of handsets, including the iPhone, with Android coming soon. I’m impressed.

But we also touched on the personal liability opportunity I previously wrote about. Specifically, Bob mentioned to me that he’d heard that some companies are now using a personal ownership (of the handset)/enterprise liability (for the monthly bill) model, which I noted in our recent White Paper as being, IMHO, impractical. I still think that this approach is indeed that. I have noticed that some companies have “cell phone days” or similar events where carriers will come in and offer handsets at discount to employees, and I must admit that sometime the employer does pick up the monthly service charges. But, in sum, this is still an enterprise-liability approach, which the choice of handset left to the user. The employer converts a depreciating asset into an expense, albeit with some likely tax consequences for the employee. The employee would then be free to take the handset with them should they leave the company, but they’ll likely be obligated to pick up a more-expensive monthly plan – kind of like COBRA coverage in the world of healthcare. You get the service, but at full price.

A better approach, IMHO, would be for the employee to buy whatever phone they want (OK, for reasons of mobile device management, there might be some restrictions required here, at least for a while longer), but being able to sign up for a cell plan negotiated by the employer – a volume discount, if you will, which I’ve seen applied in other areas like rental cars, for example (personal car rentals available at the corporate rate with the right ID card). This makes a lot more sense for all concerned, but I’ve not seen this implemented yet, although it may well have been in some cases. If anyone’s on a plan like this, let me know. But I still think the reimbursement model (employer to employee) makes more sense.