Employees looked to Leone's group to tell them which wireless carrier to go with and what plan to buy. Leone resisted, because he didn't want to be in the position of telling someone how to use their device. Ingram Micro made a compromise: Leone let telecom providers come to the offices and pitch different programs during lunch to employees.

The transition to BYOD is labor intensive, and CIOs can't leave employees blowing in the wind. At VMware, CIO Mark Egan tapped an enterprise social network used by employees to exchange ideas and tips about new carrier plans. "Carriers don't have the greatest customer service," he says, understatedly.

"We average about 20 to 25 minutes per user to convert from a corporate-liable to an individual-liable line--and we're good at it," Brandon Hampton, a founding director of Mobi Wireless Management, a software and services provider advising Fortune 100 companies on wireless strategies, .

Ingram Micro was thankful that it had put the mobile device management technology in place and ironed out the BYOD policy particulars for a global rollout before BYOD could get out of hand. It's the kind of technology trend that can mushroom.