BYOD boosts productivity, but adds to security concerns

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 12:22

Business IT - Technology

It should come as no surprise that growing numbers of employees expect to use their own smartphones and tablets for work. But IT managers are apparently struggling to keep track of what's going on.

Those who were in the white-collar workforce in the late 1970s and 1980s may remember the way personal computers snuck into offices and labs as either personal property or purchases made from discretionary funds that did not require higher-level approval. In time, organisations worked out policies and procedures that hopefully balanced the desired flexibility with the need for oversight.

Something similar is happening with personally-owned smartphones and tablets, but one important difference is that in the current climate organisations seem happy to avoid having to pay for them. They also like the productivity improvement, which a recent international survey of senior executives and IT managers conducted for Citrix put at up to 36%.

Globally, 25% of SMEs and enterprises already support the use of personally owned devices for business purposes, and nearly half of the IT managers surveyed said they were unaware of all of the personal devices being used in that way.

The Australian experience is that a slightly higher proportion are aware of all the devices in use (47%, vs 45% globally and 43% in Europe), but the proportion of respondents saying they had no policies, procedures or IT systems to manage such use was very similar (63% vs 62%).

Australian and US respondents were particularly inclined to report productivity gains. 50% of Australian organisations reported productivity improvements of more than 10%, and 19% put the figure at more than 30%. US results were 53% and 16% respectively. In the UK, only 33% had seen improvements of more than 10%, and just 11% reported better than 30%.

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