The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement is beginning to gain ground. IBM’s CIO Jeanette Horan says the company plans to provide support for personal devices of all 440,000 of its workers, reinforcing an existing adage: IBM will never go out of style.
As more employees enter the workforce with smartphones and tablets in hand, forward-thinking companies want to find ways their employees can work from any device. While IT professionals once developed risk-adverse solutions, they’re thinking about BYOD.
This reflects how quickly mobile technology is gaining popularity among a growing workforce majority. According to IDC, smartphone sales rose by 58% from 2010 to 2011. By Q4 2011, 32 per cent of mobile communication device sales were smartphones.
Innovation by Apple, RIM, Motorola, HTC and other mobile device makers have brought many mobile device choices to market. When employees bring their own devices to work, progressive IT departments are finding ways to support a range of devices.
Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is often cited on how his company always strives to satisfy customers’ preferences, not developers’ needs: “Specs for Amazon’s big new projects, such as its Kindle tablets and e-book readers, have been defined by customers’ desires rather than engineers’ tastes,” says Forbes writer George Anders.
As smartphones eventually dominate the mobile communication devices marketplace—and as more employees prefer tablets over consoles—will your company initiate its own BYOD strategy? Do you think that will change the way your employees login to work?
Embracing a diverse mix of mobile technology may improve sales team performance and enhance government agency workflow, but will IT professionals buy it? With so many products, this will be a challenging time for their department. Comedian Joe Bob Briggs sums it up nicely: “We love our own cell phones, but we hate everyone else’s.”
Tweet back: Has your company embraced its own BYOD strategy? Why or why not?
