Survey reveals misconception around consumerisation of IT

The 2012 Alfresco Global Tablet in the Enterprise survey, conducted by 451 Research, included nearly 15 per cent of organisations (14.9 percent) which are headquartered in Australia and New Zealand.

Alfresco says the survey results are counterintuitive to the general perception of the consumerisation of IT trend in which “employees bring consumer technology into the workplace, sneaking under the radars of unwitting IT departments that are resistant to change”.

“This is a unique time for the enterprise as two major technology trends – cloud computing and mobile tablets – are intersecting to create a significant opportunity for change in enterprise computing that is proving to be more complex than most organisations had anticipated,” said Chris Hazelton, research director, mobile and wireless at 451 Research.

The survey results also show that while many organisations are still struggling with tactical concerns such as security and ROI, respondents appear to be thinking more strategically about the role of tablets in business productivity and how tablets impact the greater IT infrastructure.

In this year's MIS100 report, the Bring Your Own Device trend emerged as the number one concern of CIOs.

Key findings of the Tablet in the Enterprise survey:

IT departments are leading tablet adoption.
Roughly 56 percent of respondents were from IT with over 90 percent of respondents reported having used tablet devices and over 75 percent have used tablets for work purposes.

Contrary to conventional “consumerisation of IT” thinking, IT is both aware and excited about tablets and is actively thinking about the best use cases inside their companies.

Tablets are still consumption and passive communication devices.
About 89 percent reported moderate to constant use for Web browsing and 82 percent reported moderate to constant use for email.

With over 60 percent reporting little to no use of VoIP, Skype, IM and other synchronous communications while 44 percent report little to no use for social networking, indicating that the tablet is more of a passive social device than an active one.

Tablets are making smartphones more mobile and laptops less mobile.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents still use smartphones in casual mobile contexts, such as lunch meetings (only 34 percent for tablets) and 51 percent (over 43 percent for tablets) in coffee shops. However, tablets actually overtake PC usage at home (48 percent vs. 46 percent), pull ahead during business meetings (55 percent vs. 24 percent) and clearly dominate at conferences (59 percent vs. 13 percent).

Small and medium businesses are leading the way, but large enterprises are not far behind.
About 75 percent of the respondents were from companies with fewer than 2000 employees and 62 percent from companies with fewer than 500 employees.

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