Organizations face a critical decision in video conferencing: choosing between BYOD, BYOM, and room endpoint systems. As cloud platforms and personal devices take center stage, the right approach can balance cost, security, and user experience. A hybrid strategy, combining the strengths of each model — BYOM for consistency and scalability, room endpoint systems for high-fidelity rooms, and BYOD for remote staff — may hold the key to optimized meetings.
1. Deciding on a Video Conferencing Setup?
The way we meet has changed fundamentally. Not long ago, a video conference required heavy, purpose-built room systems tied to on-premises hardware.
Today, cloud services and personal devices play a bigger role. This shift offers amazing flexibility but also presents organizations with a crucial choice. They must balance budgets, IT support loads, and the day-to-day user experience.
To navigate this complexity, we need a clear understanding of the three main models shaping today’s collaboration environments: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), BYOM (Bring Your Own Meeting), and Room Endpoint Systems. Here, we clarify what each model entails, weigh their pros and cons, and offer a path to adopting the best strategy for your remote meeting requirements.
2. Defining Hybrid Collaboration Models
BYOD: Bring Your Own Device
The BYOD model is the most straightforward: participants use their personal or company-issued laptops, tablets, or phones to join a meeting. The device is the primary client, connecting directly to the cloud platform and using its own internal camera, microphone, and speakers.
This approach greatly reduces centralized hardware procurement and offers maximum flexibility for remote staff. However, because these devices are often unmanaged — for example, they may not have standardized antivirus software — they increase the risk of security vulnerabilities.
What’s more, the diverse range of equipment inherent to the BYOD model can quickly lead to inconsistent meeting audio and video quality, resulting in subpar meeting experiences and an increase in IT support requests. While BYOD offers financial efficiency, it may generally be best suited for organizations with a tech-savvy workforce and less stringent security requirements.
BYOM: Bring Your Own Meeting
BYOM centers on cloud meeting platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. Instead of relying solely on a laptop’s peripherals, the user connects their personal device to lightweight room kits or USB peripherals integrated into the meeting space. The user brings the meeting license and interface, while the room provides the quality hardware.
The key benefit here is consistency. People join meetings using the familiar interface of their own laptop but benefit from the room’s high-quality camera and audio equipment. BYOM is especially well-suited for hybrid teams seeking a similar meeting flow whether they are in a huddle space or working from home.
It offers a balance by centralizing the platform while giving users control of the meeting via their own device, often simplifying firmware management by relying on updates and maintenance provided by the platform vendor (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc.).
Room Endpoint Systems
Room endpoint systems represent the established standard for high-fidelity communication. These solutions allow users to initiate video conferences directly in the meeting room without needing to connect their own PCs. Integrated meeting peripherals can be accessed easily from the room endpoint system via touch panel.
These systems are ideal for boardrooms, executive spaces, or large training rooms where the highest levels of performance and reliability are essential. They deliver predictable, studio-quality audio and video and provide the strongest physical and network control over the equipment.
The trade-off may be a higher cost of ownership and a tendency to be slower to adapt to the latest cloud-native features and workflows without specialized bridging hardware. They are the clear choice when audiovisual perfection and total environment control are the primary business drivers.
3. Key Comparison Points
User Experience and Consistency
The quality of the meeting experience is often the clearest differentiator.
With BYOD, while users feel comfortable on their own device, the experience has the potential to be less reliable. When problems occur, such as a personal laptop not connecting to the meeting room’s microphone or system audio being overridden by a user’s setting, the host often has to troubleshoot, which can delay the start of the meeting. Also, the sheer diversity of personal hardware makes it tough to maintain a consistent standard.
BYOM is designed to unify the experience. Since the room is essentially an extension of a cloud platform, the joining process is similar whether you are in the office or remote. Rooms present a familiar cloud interface, and the steps to start a meeting are nearly identical to the desktop client. This cross-platform consistency is highly valued by users.
Room endpoint setups deliver superior audiovisual quality in a controlled environment, and as opposed to traditional room-based setups updated infrequently via firmware, they can update quicky through software updates, enabling users to always be using the best latest software available to users.
Budget and Financial Considerations
The financial impact of each model is a matter of prioritizing capital expenditure versus operational expenditure.
Room endpoint systems can sometimes require a larger upfront capital investment due to specialized hardware, more complex installation, and initial training. However, long-term maintenance and management expenses are lower.
BYOD virtually eliminates capital expenditure on centralized room hardware, as it shifts the cost to end-users. However, it could come with increased ongoing operational expenditure. IT staff spend more time troubleshooting a wider variety of personal hardware and software issues, a hidden cost that must be weighed against the initial savings.
BYOM reduces the hardware expenditure compared to traditional systems by opting for simpler room kits. That said, recurring operational costs tied to cloud license subscriptions must also be taken into account, especially if organizations need premium features for all their meeting spaces.
Security and Compliance
The three models differ fundamentally in their approach to security.
BYOD introduces a comparatively higher level of endpoint risk. Personal devices might be running outdated operating systems, lack essential security updates, or be infected with malware. This vulnerability can potentially compromise meeting data and the wider network. Research1 would appear to confirm a correlation between unmanaged personal devices and increased meeting-related security incidents.
Room endpoint systems generally offer the strongest physical and network control, making compliance simpler in highly regulated sectors. Since the appliance is dedicated, IT can tightly manage its patch cycle and network access, and since the conference equipment stays in the meeting room, it simplifies the management security and management of the products.
BYOM also requires careful network design. Cloud meetings and the peripheral devices connected must be properly segmented. Strong policy and network security are necessary to ensure the room’s account is not used to expose sensitive organizational data. Regardless of the model, using strong meeting authentication, role-based controls, and network segmentation remains the gold standard for reducing exposure.
Deployment, Scalability, and Flexibility
The complexity of deployment directly affects IT resources and the ability to grow rapidly.
Because room endpoint systems host meetings on one main device in the meeting room alongside a set of familiar video conferencing peripherals, it makes deployment and troubleshooting easier. Yet, because meetings are generally hosted from the integrated setup in the meeting room, flexibility is generally lower than BYOD and BYOM.
In comparison, BYOD requires minimal physical setup per room but, as noted, increases helpdesk volume due to the challenges of supporting diverse personal hardware.
BYOM scales effectively and fast because adding a cloud-managed kit is a predictable process. The primary setup effort lies in configuration and account provisioning. This makes BYOM the most flexible option for organizations experiencing fast growth in smaller, multi-purpose spaces.
4. Actionable Decision Framework
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. For many organizations, running a metrics-driven BYOM pilot that tracks join times and support tickets and adopting a hybrid approach to match each room type to the right model is the way to go for optimizing cost, security, and user experience.
For instance, BYOM for general spaces, room endpoint systems for premium spaces, and BYOD for remote staff.
Pro Tips
Here are five immediate steps you could consider moving forward:
- Standardize Your Platform: Select one cloud-first platform that can support both BYOM and traditional endpoints to ensure a consistent meeting flow across all devices and rooms.
- Enforce a Security Standard for BYOD: Require basic security standards for all personal devices (OS updates, antivirus software) to reduce endpoint risk without blocking usability.
- Isolate Meeting Traffic: Use network segmentation, such as dedicated VLANs or guest networks, to isolate meeting devices and room systems from sensitive core infrastructure.
- Pilot BYOM in a Subset of Rooms: Run a 60-90 day pilot in three to five representative rooms. Collect data on average join times and support tickets to refine hardware choices and policies before a full rollout.
- Define Simple, Role-Based Policies: Establish brief, clear rules for meeting hosts and attendees covering sharing, recording, and external participant access.
5. The Upshot
With more video conferencing options than ever, a tailored approach is key to success. The right approach is to assess your meeting spaces by purpose and security needs, run a BYOM pilot, and use those results to guide a hybrid rollout. Prioritize BYOM for a modern, scalable, and consistent experience across most of your spaces. Reserve room endpoint systems for the highest-value rooms where quality and control are paramount. And support your remote staff with BYOD but ensure you back it up with a clear security standard.
References
- Ratchford, Melva; Wang, Yong; Noteboom, Cherie; and El-Gayar, Omar F., "BYOD security issues: a systematic literature review" (2022). Research & Publications. 374.https://scholar.dsu.edu/bispapers/374 ↑