Yet, despite this, 55 per cent of respondents to the survey have no plan to launch a BYOD policy to inform employees of how they should protect business data on personal devices and alleviate worries about the use of technology such as iPads.
Security still remains top priority for all respondents, with concerns over data loss, privacy, misuse and theft of devices all featuring to some degree in the results of the survey of over 200 corporate professionals including senior executives, Managing Directors and IT Managers, from across a broad range of sectors including education, finance, media, pharmaceuticals, public sector and IT itself.
This comes despite almost three quarters (73 per cent) of businesses questioned issuing mobile devices (smartphone or tablet) themselves. Interestingly, a further third (27 per cent) allow employees to bring their own personal devices and connect to either the corporate or a guest network to view, edit, and save corporate documentation, and most importantly allow it to leave the safety of the office network.
Increased support for Windows and IOS devices; Android and BlackBerry a second tier:
• Currently 26 per cent of IT departments support just iOS and Windows mobile device operating systems
• Going forward, IT departments intend to support these further, with Apple devices (38 per cent) and Windows (29 per cent) featuring the most in IT department plans
• Android and BlackBerry devices are almost comparable in terms of how support is planned moving forwards, with Android (17 per cent) just one percent ahead of BlackBerry (16 per cent)
Simplification and support top of mind behind security:
• While security (82 per cent) is top of the to-do list, IT departments are determined to make device integration into existing corporate IT systems a priority (60 per cent) while increasing internal know-how and providing support for BYOD users is a close third (52 per cent)
• Until BYOD usage is made easier and support in place, businesses are less concerned (35 per cent) with increasing the availability and breadth of applications available to staff through corporate application stores and through existing consumer channels
Sales and new business teams still most likely to adopt personal devices successfully for business use:
• 58 per cent of sales staff benefit from having mobile devices to access and display corporate documents on the go
• IT departments (44 per cent) are the second most likely to see an uptake in productivity from use tablets, with Customer Service (35 per cent) and Marketing (26 per cent) teams also seeing strong use cases for the technology
Inclusion important to successful adoption:
• Almost two thirds (60 per cent) of respondents include all staff, no matter what their job function or status, when considering implementing a BYOD strategy
• Worryingly, 22 per cent only consider the need of their senior executives when evaluating policy and provision for mobile devices and smart phones
Ashley Gatehouse, VP EMEA Marketing, Insight, said: " It's interesting to note that a year down the line almost three quarters of those businesses surveyed have seemingly moved to tackle this trend by issuing their own devices to employees and you'd think that means those allowing BYOD would now have their ducks in a line when it comes to policies surrounding this.”
He added: “To hear almost half have no plans to create a policy is clearly at odds with the raft of measures we know businesses already have in place to protect the flow of data within the corporate network. Failure to implement a policy or define rules regarding the use of personal devices at this stage of proceedings is tantamount to leaving the backdoor wide open and hoping you don't get robbed.”