BYOD: A Green Computing Approach to Greening Institutions Of Higher Learning
Mutwiwa Petronilla Ndunge
Mount Kenya University
Keywords: green, BYOD, sustainability, Computing devices, Green computing
Abstract
Bring your own device (BYOD) refers to the practices of bringing personally owned device
to the workplace, connecting them to the corporate network and using them for business
purposes. BYOD can be considered as an approach to optimize the use of IT devices through
the use of the same device for both personal and office work in various forms such as laptops
or smartphones. Green computing refers to the approaches meant to reduce the carbon
emission, electricity consumption and waste in lifecycle of IT devices existing within the
business processes as a core value of the organization. The miniaturization of technology and
growth in pervasive computing has enhanced mobility of computing devices and enabled
users to carry these network enabled devices anywhere, anytime. This has made it possible
for users to fully exploit the vast computing capabilities availed by these devices maximally
without the barriers of time and location that characterized the traditional computing
environment. These capabilities entrench the core objective of green computing. Thus, the
ability of every organization to link the promise of BYOD with a desire to enhancing and
building sustainable learning institution would prove beneficial from several fronts mainly
because both technologies offer means of cutting costs by leveraging on the scarce resources Both green computing and BYOD have been touted as cost cutting approaches for any
organization willing to invest in sustainable environments. This paper therefore tries to link
the overall goal of BYOD to that of green computing and provide a case on how institutions
of higher learning can exploit BYOD to enhance their sustainability agenda. The research is
based on secondary data gathered from the practitioner community and academia and from
articles and reports written within the last 6 years. The result of this research is a toolkit for
exploiting and enhancing BYOD as a green computing approach for sustainable institutions
of higher learning
