Many of us are familiar with our employer not supporting work functions such as email on our personally owned smart phones. I purchased my first smart phone, a Palm device, in 2005. It wasn’t until 2009 that I worked for a company that offered to open up email security to be enabled on my personally owned device.
Tables have turned, according to a new report from Forrester.
“59 percent now supporting employee-owned smartphones in various ways,” and that number is rising.
“[I]n the next 12 months, 83% of firms expect to support iOS and 77% expect to support Android, despite underlying security concerns for these platforms.”
“Consumerization of IT” is a commonly debated buzz-word in the industry these days, but it’s an important one. Employees are also consumers, and as we all gain faster and cheaper access to productivity-enabling devices outside of work (and on our own dime), the enterprise is forced to adapt in order to keep employees satisfied and to, more importantly, ensure that their work-related communications can be tracked safely under the corporate IT umbrella (i.e. imagine your account teams using their Gmail or Hotmail accounts to email customers valuable information instead of their work email, just because they can get their Gmail on-the-go on their smart phone, but not their work email.)
My key takeaway from Forrester’s insightful report is this:
..While IT takes months to build a strategy, weeks to get budget approval, and years to revise their strategy, the workforce is going ahead with or without IT’s guidance and sign-off.
This is driving much-needed innovation and flexibility into workforce productivity, but at the same time it’s challenging I&O executives’ leadership in the decision-making process. Because waiting for the technology to mature is simply not an option, we encourage I&O executives to start with an investment in MDM solutions today and then build out a single mobile policy that encompasses both corporate and employee-owned devices.
