Exclusive Research Shows CIOs Embrace Consumerization of IT

Workers today want more and more flexibility between home and the office and companies are warming up to that idea. The 2011 CIO Magazine Consumerization of IT Survey, conducted in September with a base of 556 CIOs, shows that 49 percent are allowing their employees to do work on personal devices from home or the office.

Currently most companies aren’t yet able to support every possible operating system and device but 44 percent say they are working to expand the list to include more consumer devices, with 74 percent of IT groups still favoring BlackBerry and 67 percent sticking with Apple’s iOS.

Tablets, a relatively new addition to the list of consumer devices used in the enterprise, are quickly catching up to smartphones in adoption. Forty-eight percent of those polled say they currently support employee-owned tablets and 59 percent of IT groups are specifically supporting iPads.

Shyam Desigan, CIO and CFO at Volunteers of America Chesapeake has brought tablets to the forefront of his mobile testing. Being that his organization deals with a lot of temporary employees, the case management and time/attendance applications need to be accessible from whichever device the volunteer has at the moment. Desigan says those are the only applications accessible because they have to limit how much critical business information they put on mobile devices. Desigan now supports Android and iOS, and is testing Android tablets.

The ability to access critical business information on-the-go is a driver of the consumerization of IT but more IT leaders are saying that they also need to keep users happy as well as productive. The survey indicates CIOs are getting those results and view consumerization of IT as having a positive impact on user satisfaction (83 percent), user productivity (81 percent) and access to critical business information (74 percent).

Scott Saundry, CTO of law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain, is diversifying his mobile strategy to continue driving those results. Lawyers at the firm are constantly working on the go and need access to corporate applications and email; but more importantly, Saundry says they need mobile devices to work seamlessly and not be disruptive to their workflow.

“Having a good mobile platform allows them to maintain that out of office connection,” he says. He gives employees the choice of an iPhone or Blackberry, and supports a small number of Windows phones.

“We are trying to allow [them] to pick what makes sense to them; a personal device as well as a work device.” Saundry notes that a cookie cutter approach just won’t cut it but in order to allow the freedom that the lawyers want, he has to assign them part of the responsibility due to the firm’s increased security risks. “We’re promoting it as a shared responsibility, it’s not just an IT problem, it’s also the end users’ [problem],” he says. “We still have to be in control of the data.”

Despite the rise of more progressive mobile strategies, security concerns linger for many CIOs with 82 percent citing that as the most bothersome issue in the way of IT becoming fully consumer-centric.

Saundry agrees saying it’s imperative,“that’s why we don’t compromise on hardware encryption and passwords,” he says.

Other Findings from the Consumerization of IT Study Include: