COPE

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COPE (corporate-owned, personally-enabled) is a business model in which an organization provides its employees with mobile computing devices and allows the employees to use them as if they were personally-owned notebook computers, tablets or smartphones.

Because a corporation can often get IT products at wholesale or bulk prices, the COPE business model can be more cost-effective for both the organization and the employee. Although the business technically owns the devices and is responsible for monthly usage costs, employees are free to use them off the job.

The COPE model can facilitate an organization’s mobile device management and mobile application management initiatives and provide the organization with greater power to protect the organization’s data both technically and legally. Because the company owns the line of service, it also has the power to select which vendors to work with and which device models (and data plans) will be provided. Both the BYOD and COPE models reflect an ongoing trend towards more fluid boundaries between personal and work-related use of technologies.

The COPE approach can be contrasted with both the BYOD (bring your own device) model, in which employees purchase their own mobile devices and use them for work too and the traditional IT provisioning model, in which employees are assigned computing devices that remain permanently located in the workplace.