Employees increasingly expect to use devices of their own choosing at work. This trend, known as consumerisation or “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), is potentially diverting the attention of staff away from IT projects.
According to a survey of 1,500 IT professionals in Europe and North America conducted by Redshift Research for Cisco Systems, 44% of IT managers felt that they were wasting time resolving issues related to employees bringing their own devices to the workplace. The survey also showed that 48% of companies would never authorise a BYOD policy for employees, even though 57% believed employees were doing it regardless of policy.
Despite those negative responses, 60% of CIOs felt that allowing employees to bring and use their devices at work would ultimately be a positive development. According to one CIO, the crossover of private and work lives is allowing “individuals to drive technology change at work.”
This is an issue that is not likely to go away, and many IT departments are accepting the trend as inevitable and working with it instead of trying to stop it. “Mobile workers and virtual workspaces are here to stay, but so are the demands on IT,” stated Tom Puorro of Cisco Systems.