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Businesses struggling to keep up with BYOD trend

Simon Quicke

Businesses are lagging behind in the challenge to meet user demands for BYOD policies with most staff simply bringing their own technology into work regardless.

The consequences from a security point of view could be significant as well as having some implications on IT budgets with many firms not planning to contribute to staff buying kit.

Research from Equanet has shown that the horse has well and truly bolted on the BYOD issue with 72% of firms having staff use personal devices at work and 76% revealing it has increased productivity.

But one 62% of those 1,000 IT managers quizzed by the Dixons Retail owned firm had a BYOD policy in place and 24% were not sure.

Just over half of businesses did not encourage staff to use their own devices and 66% made no financial contribution towards the cost of the kit, with 43% having no intention of doing so.

Phil Birbeck, managing director of Equanet, said that BYOD did pose some questions for firms because it offered more efficiency.

"Personally owned devices are often faster and more efficient than the IT equipment businesses can afford to provide. Recent advances in smartphones and tablets have revolutionised the way we work and blurred the distinction between social and office usage. As a result, the popularity of personally owned devices has been rapid and inevitable," he said.

The most popular personal devices in the workplace were iPhones, followed by iPads, laptops and Blackberries.


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