Andrea saw an opportunity to test the BYOD movement to find out how an iPad can really benefit the Northern Star Council. After all, BYOD employees are passionate about technology. They'll explore and test out apps and usage scenarios to prove that the iPad deserves a place on the network.

"By having people bring their own, they'll be the power users to help us figure that out," Andrea says. "The value of the iPad is going to be in finding those apps."

But IT can't leave apps up to BYOD power users alone. Andrea says IT must be intimately involved in choosing apps because BYOD users will often ask IT for advice. Consider file browser apps: There are lots of choices, and all can access files. But to the end user, they all look the same.

For IT, though, file browser iPad apps differ in many ways. The "right" iPad app may depend on how a network is already set up to work with workstations, thus making things a little more unified. "You've got to spend some time playing with them and figuring out what's good, what's bad," Andrea says.

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