Respondents came from
organizations with 500 or more employees and an in-house data center in
the United States; the United Kingdom; Germany; Australia; Brazil,
Russia, India and China (BRIC); and Japan. The survey was conducted in
October through November of 2011.
The survey centered on the deployment
status of, and plans for mobile device adoption; bring your own device
(BYOD) policy; and investment in data centers and adopting technology
drivers, including hosted virtual desktop (HVD) for enterprise mobility.
"Healthy
growth in smartphone and media tablet shipments over the next five
years will enable a much higher level of IT consumerization than is
currently possible," said Chae-Gi Lee, research director at Gartner.
"Enterprises should recognize this and look to 'mobile enable' their IT
infrastructure for employees to meet the growing demand for mobile
device use in the enterprise IT environment."
A
further impact of consumerization is the proliferation of BYOD in
enterprises. Gartner's survey found that many enterprises are allowing
personal mobile devices to connect to the enterprise network. BYOD
demand was higher in the BRIC countries where more Generation Y (Gen Y)
employees are working. With the proliferation of BYOD, there are many
security issues for enterprises to consider before they invest in mobile
computing. According to the survey, the top issues were "use of
privately owned devices" and "deployment of new enterprise mobile
platforms." Enterprises should focus on mobile data protection (MDP),
network access control (NAC), and mobile device management (MDM) tools
to support their BYOD and new enterprise mobile platform efforts. These
technology factors are essential to establish a standard mobile platform
for enterprises.
Many of the enterprises surveyed
indicated that they provide technical support for personal devices — 32
percent of smartphones, 37 percent of tablets and 44 percent of laptops.
However, the results around technical support varied significantly
between regions, with 28 percent of respondents in non-BRIC countries
receiving technical support for connecting personal devices versus 44
percent in BRIC countries.
"Mature countries consider
BYOD programs as bringing with them both legal and technical issues,
whereas emerging countries only see technical issues. For instance,
mature regions are more concerned with security and data privacy
regulations for immature MDM than emerging regions," Mr. Lee said. "In
BRIC countries, employee turnover can be high in some sectors, leading
to more theft of devices and data. BYOD and virtualization can reduce
those enterprise losses."
Gartner believes that BYOD
is an inevitable requirement and recommends that a mobility strategy
team should be established as part of the IT department for data
management and control. In addition, enterprises should create a BYOD
policy for balancing cost control and reimbursement.
Additional information is available in the Gartner report "User Survey Analysis: Impact of Mobile Devices on Network and Data Center Infrastructure." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2004115.
