Consumerization of IT Limping Along

Though the consumerization of IT has been a hot topic lately, with more consumer gadgets hitting the workplace, a recent report from research firm Forrester (News - Alert) finds the trend moving forward unevenly.

The desire of corporate workers to use their own personal gadgets on and off the job has been growing for a number of years. But it seems to have been the launch of Apple’s (News - Alert) iPad last year that lit a bigger match. On the surface, tablets seems like the right device to bridge the gap between home and work as they offer the essentials of e-mail, web browsing, text messaging, and are increasingly supporting apps specifically geared toward the enterprise environment.

As part of its annual hardware survey in last year’s third quarter, Forrester polled a number of IT professionals in charge of purchasing for end users. The results of that survey told Forrester that the consumerization of IT is proving to be a slow but growing process.

Forrester specifically defines the consumerization of IT as using personal devices for work, pay-per-use payment models (such as those used in cloud-based computing), spending personal money for work-related cloud services, and employee self-provisioning of IT capacity outside the purview of IT.

Among the companies with 1,000 employees or more, 26 percent of the IT pros said they were planning to deploy or had already deployed tablets such as Apple’s iPad. Among that 26 percent, 4 percent said they had already deployed their tablets, while 17 percent were looking to deploy by the third quarter of 2010. Among smaller businesses with 999 or fewer employees, 18 percent said they were looking to implement or had already implemented tablets among their user population.

Only 2 percent of all the companies included in the survey reported that they’ve set up a process for users to bring their PCs to work, though Forrester does expect this trend to grow overtime.

Companies are increasingly relying on Web-based applications, with 84 percent of those polled reporting this trend. But that doesn’t mean they’re jettisoning their local applications. Among those surveyed, 55 percent said they’re increasing or keeping the same number of local apps, while only 4 percent said they’re considering lowering the number.

Finally, 80 percent of those questioned say they’re supporting a growing variety of smartphones and laptops rather than standardizing on the same makes and models. Even further, 80 percent said that over the past couple of years and through 2012, they anticipate supporting a growing variety of different PC configurations.

In short, the use of such personal devices as tablets and the move toward Web-based applications are slowly and unevenly but clearly changing how IT departments are supporting their end users and businesses.