In this era of belt-tightening and corporate P-90X, that’s not really the kind of title you really want to read. It is, however, fairly indicative of the reality of what is occurring in workplaces across the U.S. (and Europe, and Pacific Asia); with this reality comes additional IT requirements and executive expectations. It’s up to IT to effectively take on the unstoppable influx of personal devices into the workplace. If you’ve got more than 50 mobile devices, and a mixture of operating systems, it will be nigh on impossible to do this with stock tools. Don’t worry, there’s good news at the end of the story … but let’s take a look at some of the statistics from a report released today from the Osterman Research Group.
- There are currently around 3 staff per every 1000 devices in organizations, expected to rise to 4 by the end of 2014.
- average cost-to-IT per user this year is has increased to $294 from about $230 in 2011. This is expected to grow to over $340 by the end of 2013
- Nearly 60% of companies plan to institutionalize formal management of their mobile device by the end of 2013
Most of the companies surveyed intend to implement some sort of cloud solution for their enterprise-wide mobile device management. The good news when it comes to the commercial options available for companies to wrest a modicum of control of their data back away from the consumer is that the top tier MDM providers are CONSTANTLY making improvements to both the quality and execution of mobile device control. MobileIron and Fiberlink’s MaaS360 continue to impress in the innovation realm. They both have vastly different approaches, but are constantly improving (*clap clap*). The good news for companies looking at the rising cost of supporting mobile devices in their workplaces is that these mobility management tools can mitigate (and in some cases reverse) the speed at which those costs rise.
Tech Orchard sees examples of this every day with our clients. Ask us!
