cross pond high tech

Latest research suggests half of employers will, in just four years time, require employees to bring their own devices to work. Should BYOD be a requirement over a personal, optional decision?

 

Some interesting tidbits from the research:

38 percent of companies expect to stop providing workplace devices to staff by 2016. (PCs, such as desktops and laptops, are included in the definition of BYOD.)BYOD is most prevalent in midsize and larger enterprises, often generating between $500m-$5bn in revenue per year, with 2,500-5,000 employees on the roster.BRIC nations, such as India, China, and Brazil, will most likely already be using a personal device — typically a "standard mobile phone" — at work.Meanwhile, companies in the U.S. are more likely to allow BYOD than those in Europe (likely due to stronger data protection rules, see below).Around half of all BYOD programs provide a partial reimbursement, while full reimbursement costs "will become rare."Gartner vice president David Willis says companies should "subsidize only the service plan on a smartphone."

Today’s workers are tech-savvy, mobile, and always-on, and they are increasingly on the move, whether roaming about on a corporate campus, visiting a branch office, working on the road, or doing their job from a home office.

From the millennial masses up through the C-suite, employees are using personal technology—be it laptops, tablets, smartphones, or cloud computing services accessing their companies’ networks—at work, fueling the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend.

It’s generating a lot of buzz about BYOD, and depending on who’s doing the talking, conversations tend to center around productivity (end-users), security/privacy (CIOs and IT departments), or cost (finance folks).

SummaLogic’s Robert Keahey chummed the BYOD waters recently at focus.com when he wrote: “We’re a couple of years into this new paradigm, and with the use of SaaS, cloud-based integrated business suites and digital supply chains on the rise, we should step back and see what we’ve learned.

Has BYOD helped or hindered your business model? Has IT been able to respond to this challenge/opportunity? … What are your experiences (or those of the companies with which you work)? Success stories? Horror stories?”