More and more evidence is piling up about the light speed growth of BYOD in the workplace. Gartner, a research firm, just released their annual BYOD report with a bunch of interesting findings. According to Gartner, 38% of companies plan to stop providing employees with mobile devices by 2017, signaling a major tipping point for BYOD. It’s a trend that goes hand in hand with the consumerization of IT. People will work using all the tools they have available to them on their personal phones. A couple of excerpts from the report are below – you can purchase the full report here.
“BYOD strategies are the most radical change to the economics and the culture of client computing in business in decades,” said David Willis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a release. “The benefits of BYOD include creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs.”
Gartner believes that while BYOD is occurring in companies and governments of all sizes, it is most prevalent in midsize and large organizations ($500 million to $5 billion in revenue, with 2,500 to 5,000 employees). BYOD also permits smaller companies to go mobile without a huge device and service investment. Adoption varies widely across the globe. Companies in the US are twice as likely to allow BYOD as those in Europe, where BYOD has the lowest adoption of all the regions. In contrast, employees in India, China and Brazil are most likely to be using a personal device, typically a standard mobile phone, at work.
