DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to a new survey from CompuCom, a leading end-user services company, nearly a third of companies do not actively support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program despite increased popularity among “always on” workers. The online poll from CompuCom collected responses from 418 IT pros across multiple industries from April 18 – May 28, 2015.
For the majority of companies that do support BYOD, 35 percent of IT professionals polled said their companies specify either the devices or operating environments that will be supported or allowed on the network; 37 percent of those companies empower their employees to choose the devices and operating environment that best enable their productivity.
Companies slow to adopt BYOD may need to get in synch with an important industry trend, according to industry analysts such as Gartner Research, which estimates that 70 percent of mobile professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices by 2018, just three years from now.
According to CompuCom CTO Sam Gross, organizations lagging in either adopting or preparing to support BYOD need to accelerate or advance their thinking and/or policies with regard to BYOD, so that they can meet the competitive pressure of richly enabled end users and their quest for improved productivity. “The ‘who decides and who pays’ conundrum with respect to technology enablement is the key tipping point in designing and implementing effective IT support for the business,” he said.
Respondents to the CompuCom poll were asked, “When it comes to BYOD, which best describes ‘Who decides which technology to offer and who pays’ in your organization?”
- Business decides, business pays – 24%
- Business decides, end users pay – 11%
- End users decide, business pays – 19%
- End users decide, end users pay – 18%
- BYOD not offered at my company – 28%
Many organizations continue to voice concerns about data security and policy issues when it comes to BYOD, which is why they may be lagging in adoption of the trend. “However,” Gross said, “we see more and more companies striking the right balance between empowering employees and corporate protection. Evolving to IT support models – such as convenient on-site, walk-up support – is a major step toward enabling a multi-generational workforce to use mobile devices of choice without jeopardizing security. It's also important to create a well thought-out BYOD program that is compliant with business and IT polices, aligned within a strong governance model.”
Gross added, “Our experience supports the poll data showing that businesses currently lean more toward specifying technology choices and paying for them, but we also see the beginning of a trend where costs are being transferred to employees, as well as hybrid programs where responsibilities are shared.”
CompuCom is a leader in transforming IT organizations from desktop management or end-user computing to rich end-user enablement, helping many of the largest companies in the world deploy, secure and manage the technology and applications that empower their employees to be most productive, including BYOD end-user support options that improve speed, agility and flexible capacity.
CompuCom was positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the “Leaders” quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for End-User Outsourcing, North America 2014. The company was positioned in the highest leader quadrant based on “Ability to Execute.”
About CompuCom
CompuCom Systems, Inc., a global company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, provides IT managed services, infrastructure solutions, consulting and products to Fortune 1000 companies committed to enhancing their end users’ experience. Founded in 1987, privately held CompuCom employs approximately 11,500 associates. For more information, visit www.compucom.com.
