Today, I’m excited to announce Avanade’s latest global research findings addressing the impact of consumerization of IT. As we’ve heard from executives and IT departments of our customers, and as noted in the press, we found that there is a rapid shift in the way employees are using personal technology in the workplace. In fact, globally, 88 percent of executives report employees are using their personal computing technologies for business purposes today. So it may not be surprising that nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of C-level executives report that the growing use of employee-owned technology is a top priority in their organization.
Our global survey of 600+ C-level executives and IT decision makers also dispelled several commonly held beliefs about the trend – including employee device preferences, hesitance of business leaders to embrace the trend and executive perspectives on Millennials. For business leaders, the consumerization of IT has less to do with the worker and more to do with the way employees work. Our research shows that productivity and anywhere access are rated significantly higher by executives over improved employee morale or providing greater responsibilities to younger employees.
And, despite the notion that business leaders are resisting the shift, we found that companies are investing in staff and resources to enable the consumerization of IT and have many of the resources that are needed today. Here’s my quick take on investments for consumerization of IT.
As you can see, progressive CIOs and IT organizations have moved from gatekeepers of consumer technology to enablers of these innovative devices, applications and services. Enterprises have an opportunity to embrace the consumerization of IT to help IT be a strategic enabler and leverage the breadth of today’s powerful consumer technologies to drive business productivity.
I encourage you to read the full report here. Or, check out our infographic on the findings below.
To download the infographic as a PDF, please click here.
Very interesting, but I think you are making a mistake. You can’t conclude that Android is leader of the pack, if you compare to iPhones on the one hand and iPads on the other. Obviously, you have to compare Android to iOS (iPhones and iPads together) – at the very least. And even that wouldn’t give a very informative result. You have to ask which company is leader of the pack. If you add up the numbers for iPhone, iPad and Macs, it is almost certainly Apple – which is also what a recent report from Forrester concludes. But even that result is not accurate as both the Avenade report and the Forrester report completely forget to take account of Google’s cloud based solutions. If the question asked is not which privately owned devices are most popular at the workplace, but which company is most likely to dethrone Microsoft as the most dominant in the enterprise, the answer is almost certainly Google
@Jannik Thanks for weighing on this hot topic. I think it’s important to note that our survey asked about the top personal devices being used for business purposes, not about cloud-based services employees may be using. The survey found that Android phones are the top device, while if you aggregate by brand (including smartphones, tablets and laptops), Apple did still come out ahead. You raise an interesting question and definitely a topic of hot debate on who will become the most dominant player in the enterprise.
Who owns the actual mobile service in these cases (when employees bring their own device, smartphones/tablets); are business pushing the entire liability to the employees or are they saying you can BOYD, but you need to connect to our mandatory service plan (ie, businesses supply the SIM card or service plan)? Keen to see any data points and your views.
@AST Great question and definitely something many companies are trying to manage. In our survey, we didn’t specifically ask about business support of service plans separate from the device. However, we found that companies are supporting their employees’ right to choose. Nearly 40 percent of global respondents say they allow employees to bring any smartphone they want into the workplace and nearly 30 percent allow employees to bring any tablet they choose. Additionally, more than one-third of companies cover the entire cost of smartphones and tablets their employees are bringing into the enterprise. The real priority today is for each company to make sure it has a clear understanding of what devices are connecting to their systems and then, create a roadmap to secure, manage and provide access for this array of devices.
Some really compelling data in your globabl research findings report. I especially like the infographic! I saw the word “embrace” and had to comment. Within Intel IT we have shifted our approach from “gating” to “embracing” BYOD.
There are some related stats about our Intel IT organization in our annual report “2011 Intel IT Performance Report” http://bit.ly/xgbcKi. On pg. 9: 58% of all IT supported devices are now employee owned. That’s 17,000 personally owned devices in 2011, up from zero personally owned in 2009.
We also shifted our security strategy to support this huge shift to get to “embracing” BYO – see more on pg.11 of the Perfomance Report. I think a lot of companies are dealing with security challenges around BYOD in the enterprise. I would like to share one of our Intel IT Best Practices, “Improved Device Security: Intel IT Best Practice – A robust security model and workspace mobility provide benefits for BYOD” http://bit.ly/A15wSK.
Thanks again for your blog and research report.
Kelli Gizzi (IntelITsme)
@Kelli Gizzi: Thanks for the comment! Our findings definitely showed that an ‘embrace’ is happening when it comes to consumerization of IT and BYOD. Progressive CIOs and IT organizations are moving from gatekeepers of consumer technology to enablers of these innovative devices, applications and services to meet employee needs and demands. However, there are certain risks that can’t be ignored. Our report also showed that executives and IT are still working to put the right security policies, procedures, training and technology in place. Thanks again for weighing in and nice to see some common themes emerging from our respective reports!
Given all the recent hknaicg incidents that have taken place and Wikileaks being fresh on everbody’s minds..clients are going to tighten their audits/reviews of internal control mechnisms and service provider controls. This will make it very difficult for service providers like us (Infy) to implement bring your own device models. It is easy to say that companies need to trust employees..all it takes is one bad onion ! It might end up being a combination..firms might allow certain classes of employees (senior management, sales types) to BYOD..most others will have to live with device firewalls .