BYOD has gone
mainstream with smartphones and tablets. But what will happen with PCs?
It's dangerous for those of us in the tech industry to naively take
what we see playing out in our workplaces every day as a mirror of the wider
world. High-tech workers are often more technically savvy and likely to be
early adopters. High-tech employers are likewise more inclined to let employees
use the tools of their choice. And high-tech companies as a group are, almost
by definition, far closer to technology adoption's leading edge.
Which raises the question of whether all the personal gadgets from
smartphones to tablets to
laptops that appear to be an increasingly integral part of most high-tech
workplaces represent a broader norm or just a tech industry anomaly. Forrester
Research's Frank Gillett recently
published a report that takes a look at this question and highlights
some of the findings in a blog post .
Forrester's "latest Forrsights workforce employee survey asked
more than 9,900 information workers in 17 countries about all of the devices
they use for work, including personal devices they use for work purposes."
I found the results a bit eye-opening. I wasn't especially surprised to see
that "IT consumerization," as the trend of bringing personal
technology into the workplace is often called, does indeed appear to be a broad
phenomenon. But I still sat up a bit because of just how big and how rapid the
change has been. A couple of examples.
About 74 percent of the information workers in the survey used two or
more devices for work -- and 52 percent used three or more.
When you dig into the data, the mix of devices used for work was
different than what IT provides. About 25 percent were mobile devices, not PCs,
and 33 percent used operating systems from someone other than Microsoft.
The vast majority of these gadgets aren't "Bring-Your-Own-Device "
(BYOD) in the sense of a formal IT program that provides a stipend for
employees to purchase specific types of devices.Gillett
notes that : "If you only ask the IT staff, the answer will be
that most use just a PC, some use a smartphone, and a few use a tablet."
It's something of an irony that BYOD in its original tops-down, vendor- and
IT-driven sense has largely fallen flat even while grassroots BYOD is going
gangbusters.
That said, a new report by market researcher IDC that looked at BYOD
trends in Australia and New Zealand suggests
that more formal BYOD programs may become more common . "Widely
publicized and high-profile BYOD case studies are further adding to the peer
pressure. One in every two organizations are intending to deploy official BYOD
policies, be it pilots, or partial- to organizational-wide rollouts, in the
next 18 months," said Amy Cheah, market analyst for Infrastructure.
What's perhaps the more interesting tidbit in this report though is
when it offers something of a counterpoint to the assumption that BYOD is
something that everyone outside of IT strongly wants and prefers. Cheah writes
that "IDC's Next Generation Workspace Ecosystem research has found that
only two out of ten employees want to use their own device for work and for
personal use, which means corporate devices are still desired by the majority."
Why the apparent disconnect between the apparent pervasiveness of
employee-purchased devices in the workplace and the continued desire for
IT-supplied hardware? I think that Vittorio Viarengo is onto something when he wrote me
that : "It is not about BYOD. It is about SYOM (Spend Your Own
Money). That's why people like corporate devices."
It's increasingly common practice for people to use their personal
smartphones for both business and pleasure, whether their cell phone bills are
subsidized or not. And there doesn't seem to be a widespread expectation that
employers will start buying tablets for their employees.
However, most companies still buy and support business PCs. I suspect
we're seeing a certain lack of enthusiasm on the part of many employees for
that part of the status quo to radically change, especially if it means turning
a company expense into a personal one.
Gordon Haff
news.cnet.com
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