infoTECH Feature

September 07, 2011

IT Admins Acknowledge Consumerization of IT but Still Face Hurdles

IT departments are starting to see the value of the consumerization of IT and are striving to support it, but still are bumping into a variety of issues, says a new study from research firm IDC.

Sponsored by Unisys (News - Alert) and based on two separate surveys of IT professionals, the study "IDC 2011 Consumerization of IT Study: Closing the “Consumerization Gap” found some improvements since last year when IT administrators and managers were more reluctant to acknowledge the growing trend of IT consumerization. Since then, more “executives are recognizing that the consumerization of IT trend is real and inevitable,” says Fred Dillman, Unisys chief technology officer.

Conducted across nine different countries, one survey polled close to 2,660 workers, while the second questioned around 560 IT department executives and managers.

The results show that more employees are bringing their own personal devices to work, and at this point, 40 percent of the devices used to access business applications are employee-owned, a 10 percent rise from last year.

The use of social media, blogs, and microblogs is also up. Specifically, 20 percent of the workers polled are using Facebook (News - Alert) and MySpace for business, compared with just 8 percent last year. Thirty-three percent are using blogs, wikis, and forums, up from 23 percent in 2011. And 13 percent now use Twitter (News - Alert) on the job, compared with 9 percent last year.

Mobile devices have also grown more popular. Among the workers polled, 53 percent say that mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets are the most critical devices for getting their work done, while 7 percent are eyeing the iPad as a critical device for next year.

IT management is seeing this trend as positive. Three quarters of the executives surveyed said that letting employees use personal devices on the job boosts morale, while 72 percent said that such employees are more productive.

Though IT executives may be more accepting of the consumerization of IT, challenges remain.

Only 6 percent of the executives and managers polled said their business has updated customer-facing applications to support mobile devices, while 89 percent admitted no plans to do so even over the next year. IT managers also acknowledge that they’re doing less now to secure mobile devices than they did last year, including publishing social media guidelines, training employees, and requiring complex passwords.

IT resources are also limited as 80 percent of the IT managers questioned said that the workload faced by their staff has increased as a result of consumerization. Employees who run into a problem with their own personal device will still contact internal IT at least 60 percent of them time rather than tackle the problem themselves or contact the device’s vendor.

As a result, IT executives gave their own organizations poor grades at supporting consumer devices and software, ranking themselves only 2.9 out of 5 points.

The survey is significant since it points out that the consumerization of IT isn’t going away and is in fact growing stronger. Yet rather than keeping up with the trend, IT seems to be falling even further behind. That’s certainly understandable as this is still new territory for IT professionals, and companies don’t always have clear guidelines and policies regarding employees using their own devices and applications.

That’s why it’s important for IT staffers and management to devise and communicate concrete policies that explain both the role of IT and the role of the end user when it comes to using personal devices on the job. If IT doesn’t have the resources or the time to support such devices, then employees must understand that they’re on their own and be prepared to manage their own devices. But ultimately, IT must also update its own skills and technology to be able to support the consumerization trend so that the gap doesn’t continue to widen even further.

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Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page

Edited by Rich Steeves
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