Mobile device adoption (BYOD) at Asia Pacific enterprises is expected to grow in 2014, according to Forrester. Frost & Sullivan says BYOT (bring your own technology) trend is evidence of a climactic shift in technology’s discovery and adoption.
The growth in enterprise mobile adoption is primarily driven by declining hardware prices, a large young online population, and the increasing affordability of wireless broadband, said Forrester on Friday.
Forrester analyst Katyayan Gupta said its survey data shows that 49 percent of organizations across AP plan to increase their spending on mobile software by 5 percent or more in 2014; 42 percent plan to do so for smartphones and 39 percent for tablets.
A recent research report says key factors driving enterprise mobility today include BYOD, Mobile Device Management (MDM), and application management. Big Data also plays a role as corporations seek to better understand both their own employee’s as well as customer behaviors to optimize internal and external applications respectively.
BYOD boosts productivity
A survey by CompuCom, a technology infrastructure services company, revealed that 67 percent of IT professionals strongly agree (37 percent) or agree (30 percent) that BYOD policies enhance their productivity in the workplace. The poll collected 294 responses from IT professionals across multiple industries from September 15 through October 15, 2013.
Forrester says while emerging countries like India and China will lead the growth in mobile software spending, more developed countries like Australia and Japan will lead the growth in spending on smartphones and tablets.
In the past two years, most AP firms have primarily focused on using mobile apps to connect their organizations with internal employees. For instance, 59 percent of organizations in India have developed applications for employees, compared with 24 percent for customers and 19 percent for business partners. However, this trend will reverse in 2014: 44 percent of AP IT decision-makers say they will prioritize building a mobile strategy for customers or partners, while only 39 percent will prioritize this for employees.
BYOT gains momentum
Frost & Sullivan, IT research agency, says BYOT (bring your own technology) trend is evidence of a climactic shift in technology’s discovery and adoption. Every day, employees use more of their own technology at work, including devices, services and applications, instead of employers being the first to establish new technology at the office.
Frost & Sullivan Enterprise Communications and Collaboration Research Vice President Melanie Turek, said: “Our research finds the tables are turning. And there’s a reason so many employees are using their personal smart phones and tablets, services and applications — they enable their own productivity, making it easier to stay in touch with colleagues and customers, and up-to-date on company news and information.”
Forrester says organizations are also prioritizing the use of mobile channels to connect with external stakeholders such as customers and business partners, underscoring the region’s evolution toward the age of the customer.
To thrive in this new world, firms must leverage business technology (BT) and become even more customer-obsessed. This report provides insight into what BT will mean for AP firms in the age of the customer and how IT decision-makers across the region are likely to support enterprise mobility in 2014. Infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals can leverage this insight to better support their organizations’ mobile strategies.
Suggestions to CIOs
Frost & Sullivan says CIOs and technology leaders should take advantage of BYOT for many reasons, but the biggest is its impact on innovation. As employees embrace mobility, collaboration and social media in particular, they are using these tools at work to share expertise, knowledge and data — in real time, with people within and outside the organization. This leads to better processes, faster outcomes, improved customer experiences, and new products and services — in a word, innovation.
The trend towards BYOD is accelerating in which employees are allowed to choose their mobile/wireless devices to use for work purposes. BYOD has many implications to the enterprise with the key issue being security. MDM provides one means of ensuring that there is a management layer to control the user environment and thereby protect corporate data and assets.
Enterprise mobility strategy must include the design, building and integration of mobile application as well as management. Management consists of MDM as well as Apps Stores management, which itself includes app publish/distribution, managing the Run time environment and app performance management.
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
