Managing the BYOD trend

The analyst firm surveyed 96 C-level executives and IT decision-makers in April and found 72 percent of businesses support BYOD.

Within this group, more than half (53 percent) allow BYOD for all employees and offer full support for devices, with another 19 percent allowing BYOD for specific departments.

The report, entitled NZ Enterprise Mobility Market 2012, finds more than 21 percent of businesses rate mobility to be either their top priority, or a very important priority in 2012.

“Security risks and increased cost management complexities as a result of non-corporate plans are the top concerns in supporting BYOD,” says Andre Clarke, New Zealand country manager at Frost & Sullivan.

Finding appropriately skilled IT professionals to manage the increased complexity that comes with supporting multiple platforms and devices is another challenge, he adds.

Google, Apple and Microsoft are viewed as the major players for enterprise mobility. For the mobile operating system (OS) best suited for enterprise use, most businesses prefer Apple’s iOS platform followed by Google’s Android and then Microsoft.

Clarke says that New Zealand businesses are confident that Microsoft will provide end-point operating systems by 2015. The majority of businesses consider Microsoft holds enough expertise in desktop applications (Office, Outlook, Lync etc) to remain a major player in the mobile OS segment .

Google, however, is also seen as a key contender, with 45 percent indicating Google has the potential to challenge Microsoft’s dominance in the market. This view is largely due to Google steadily strengthening its productivity and collaboration solutions to offer a cloud based alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite.