An important challenge, as well as opportunity, facing providers of personal cloud services is the separation of personal and work data. This has cropped up in mainstream media lately with articles such as this on NBCNews: Use your personal phone for work email? Your company might take it.
As a company that has wirelessly stored and synced people's 'personal information management' data (aka PIM data -- contacts, calendars, tasks and notes) for 10+ years, and synced files and rich media for several more, this topic has come to our attention many times, but it is now more pertinent than ever. In simple terms, as the article references, it is an outgrowth of the 'Bring Your Own Device' (BYOD) to work phenomena. This is a trend that will explode, as more people use smartphones, tablets and soon wearable devices that are capable of connecting with work systems. If you are a company, of course, you want to maximize productivity by making information available 24x7, but at the same time, this must be balanced against security needs. IT people responsible for satisfying these requirements are in for a tough time, as it was difficult enough to manage a fleet of PCs, but personal mobile devices that IT people don't even know about or can't manage dwarfs this challenge. It is also not cost-effective for companies to buy dedicated smartphones and tablets for most people, nor would most people want to carry separate mobile devices for work (although some professions absolutely require this).
What does this have to do with personal clouds? People's personal mobile devices are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The article mentions how people can accidentally and without knowledge store business data on personal devices by syncing them via usb ports or cables. As such, this makes their personal devices subject to company search and seizure. It also puts companies at risk because their valuable data can be interspersed with personal data and lost or stolen, without the company even being aware. Wireless syncing via the cloud is now much more common, convenient and built-in to many devices. Many devices sync people's data without them even being aware. The cloud makes it easier than ever to hook into work sources of data, e.g. into Gmail, Outlook and other email systems.
Consider the simple case of people's contacts and calendars. Many people might use Outlook or a company-sponsored Gmail account. Even if a person consciously only stores work related contacts and calendar events in these systems, it is only natural to want to access these on a smartphone while away from their primary workspace. This data can sync with their mobile device, which most likely also has their personal contacts and possibly calendar items. Depending on their phone and how things are setup, these contacts and calendar items may be merged into a single address book and calendar, or they might reside as separate entities. It depends on the specifics of the device and the software that keeps things in sync. Many people, even advanced users, are often baffled by how their devices store and manage this information. It is non-trivial to stay up to speed on the policies that are reflected in the latest versions of Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS 10, Windows PCs, Macs and so forth.
Initial attempts at separating work and personal data have left a lot to be desired and come with costs. For example, some devices let you explicitly define profiles for personal and work such that only personal data can be associated with a personal profile and the same for work data with a work profile. However, defining profiles is not always easy and then switching between them can be cumbersome. As soon as something becomes a hassle, it is a barrier that many people won't overcome.
So what's the answer, from a user, company and provider perspective? Our company is working on ways to keep personal and work data separate in the cloud and on mobile devices, that will be reflected in our solutions in the not-too-distant future. But for now, this separation of data remains a double-edged sword for every person and company. Feel free to share your views and solutions on this.
