Bring your own device (BYOD) is a trend that is spreading throughout companies and enterprises similar to the speed of a forest fire. While it can be controversial due to the fact that many organizations are afraid to fully embrace the strategy, primarily due to security concerns, one thing we do know is that whatever side of the fence you happen to be on, BYOD isn’t going away anytime soon.

In an exclusive interview with Mobi Wireless Management President Mitch Black, the topic of BYOD was spoken about in-depth: its advantages, disadvantages and where the space is headed within the next few years.

Commercially launched in 2009, Mobi Wireless Management is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and is highlighted for being a managed mobility services provider that assists corporations in managing their mobile environments in a couple of different ways, including through a highly configurable software solution that enables a corporation to centralize and manage their wireless portfolio of devices, carrier and human resource information; wireless expense optimization, which enables firms to optimize wireless invoices with major operators; and a managed services help desk that essentially serves the key role of acting as a mobile IT help desk for corporations.

Targeting larger corporations and government entities in addition to major companies, such as P&G and Ford Motor Company (News - Alert), when asked why he believes the BYOD trend has become so popular so quickly, Black commented, “Smartphones themselves have created a major trend in terms of the end-users themselves wanting to bring the device they feel most comfortable with into the work environment because they don’t necessarily want to carry two phones. From a corporate perspective, corporations are increasingly realizing that mobility needs to be a differentiator for them in the marketplace for their workers to be more effective and efficient and have real-time access to information. So, you take the combination of both of those, and the consumerization of IT is beginning to occur. It really is being driven by both sides.”

Concerning some of the most prevalent advantages and disadvantages seen when leveraging a BYOD strategy, typically employees tend to be more responsive when utilizing the device of their choosing, and a business can cut costs significantly that are related to having to procure and directly support various devices.

However, there are some pretty significant disadvantages that can arise within a BYOD scenario, like corporations not really understanding the expenses associated with managing BYOD.

Black added, “I think that a lot of IT departments can quantify the expenses that relate to the corporate liable line, but to support them, in terms of connecting them with the corporate environment and ensuring that policies have been developed and are effectively adhered to, continue to be somewhat of a challenge for some of these companies.”

Additionally, there are a myriad of security, technical and legal challenges that come up when an organization is trying to support a personal device on a corporate infrastructure. This in addition to the fact that, because there are so many mobile device management solutions currently on the market, an integral part of any BYOD plan, firms find it hard to the select the best one to meet their individual needs.

While the use of BYOD may have started at the C Level, with executives wanting to bring their own devices into the office, currently what we are seeing is the infiltration of BYOD into field sales and nearly every other aspect of company operations. In the next few years, we can expect that at least half of all employers in the U.S. are going to have a mandatory BYOD strategy, and that’s really going to require staff themselves to bring their own device to work.

“On the other hand, I will tell you that we support a lot of corporate environments, and today BYOD still represents a small segment of devices supported through software and managed services. Hence over time, we see BYOD increasing in the overall mobility market,” Black further commented.

While BYOD has yet to reach its full potential, you can bet that as organizations begin to see the countless benefits associated with enabling their workforce to be fully mobile and work from wherever they are at anytime, it will continue to garner attention from business looking to remain profitable for the long term.