While many CIOs start a BYOD program with designs to let more employees bring in personal devices, Northern Star Council takes the opposite approach. If BYOD iPads show their worth and begin replacing workstations as the go-to computer, then Northern Star Council will likely flip BYOD into a company-owned iPad approach.

Company-owned iPads are easier to secure, support and manage for a small IT staff, says Andrea.

"We've been able to get into a pretty good cycle of hardware management" for workstations, he says. "When people come and go, we can manage the resources. From a support standpoint, uniformity eases support."

Even among test-bed BYOD iPads, security and ease-of-security was top of mind for Andrea, which is why he wanted to bring VPN to the iPad. He chose Asavie Technologies iSimplyConnect, a cloud-based service for remote VPN access for iOS devices launched earlier this month, in part because he was already familiar with Asavie.

Also, iSimplyConnect seemed to be made for test-bed BYOD iPads. Andrea installs the agent on his servers, and end-users download the free app from the App Store. While other VPN solutions are sold via licensing packages, iSimplyConnect matches one user to one account.