Trends in Enterprise IT: It’s Time to Prepare for BYOD

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Trends in Enterprise IT: It’s Time to Prepare for BYOD

The age of Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) is upon us, and with it many new opportunities and challenges.

BYOD opens the door to a world of rich employee-facing mobile apps that have the potential to improve workflows across the enterprise. Some benefits to implementing a BYOD strategy include drastically reduced mobile hardware costs, enhanced employee productivity due to the use of familiar personal devices, and wider distribution for employee-facing apps. The potential BYOD represents is vast, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.

BYOD also presents many challenges. According to a recent IBM assessment of CISOs, only 39% of CISOs are planning to create BYOD strategies, while only 29% percent have already done so. These numbers are startling considering a Cisco survey released just last year reported that 78% of the US workforce uses a personal device for work purposes. The gap indicates that most companies are not prepared to support and secure the diverse ecosystem of mobile devices and apps that BYOD presents.

This is reflected in Gartner’s recently identified Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014, the first of which is “Mobile Device Diversity and Management.” Their predictions note that BYOD programs will result in “a doubling or even tripling of the size of the mobile workforce.” They go on to recommend that “enterprise policies on employee-owned hardware usage need to be thoroughly reviewed and, where necessary, updated and extended.“

It’s clear that BYOD is here to stay, and if you haven’t already, it’s time to get prepared.