IBM's Tami Duncan: BYOD 'May Go Away'

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IBM channel chief Tami Duncan, who has held the role at IBM for six months, talked about BYOD with CRN when asked about the new IBM-Apple partnership.

’Customers and clients have been very interested in BYOD; I actually predict that BYOD may go away. I think that the device is going to become so critical and so packed with critical business information and knowledge that firms will want closer control of that,’ Duncan said.

In terms of what IBM and Apple are looking to bring into the enterprise space, Duncan was tight-lipped, saying only, ’We’re working together now to create a suite of enterprise applications.’

IBM’s focus right now is to leverage people-centric engagement, mostly through collecting data from mobile device users. However, to get that data in the first place companies have to earn trust. That’s no easy feat.

’A company does that by ensuring that they have analytics-based security in their firm, and that they’re constantly monitoring systems to ensure that any data that an individual or client entrusts them with stays secure,’ Duncan said.

As for IBM’s evolving partner ecosystem, Duncan said the company is keeping up with trends in the partner community.

’The partner community used to be very driven by infrastructure partners. We’re now seeing, with this convergence of mobile, social, cloud, analytics, a lot more developers coming into that community, driving new workloads,’ Duncan said. ’And then those traditional infrastructure partners are really branching out into software solutions.’

PUBLISHED AUG. 21, 2014