CIOs with loose bring-your-own-device policies might find their corporate networks clogged should employees bring the just-announced Macbook Pro computers to work.
Introduced at Apple’s developer conference Monday, the new Macbook Pro is fitted with a Retina display, whose resolution of 2880-by-1800 pixels packed into a 15.4-inch screen is the crispest screen for a computer yet, clearer than Apple’s newest iPad.
But it may also wreak havoc on CIOs’ networks and connectivity budgets — better quality displays require more network bandwidth, which allows users to increase data consumption. Consider that experts told CIO Journal earlier this year that the new iPad, which includes a Retina display of 2048-by-1536 resolution with 3.1 million pixels, would slow enterprise networks to a crawl and increase data costs from carriers. Now imagine how a Macbook with 5.1 million pixels — two million more than the new iPad — will increase data traffic in office networks.
CIOs would do well to monitor network usage and make sure their employees aren’t watching too much high-definition content on YouTube and other data-hungry websites. CIOs whose policies for content consumption are lax must be prepared to increase bandwidth. Another option might be for CIOs to require workers who want to bring their own high-powered devices to the office to bring their own bandwidth as well. At the very least, CIOs might want to follow the lead of companies such as Google, which give employees a monthly “bill” for the IT services that they consume, and make the usage a matter of record throughout the company.
