A recent report by TrendMicro provides some insight into the rather large shift in opinion regarding the massive influx of mobile devices into the corporate environment. The survey was conducted in in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States (50% of the respondents were from the U.S.). Those surveyed were CEOs, CIOs and IT executives within companies that had 500 or more employees.

The general consensus of the report is that while the flow of personal devices into the workplace has not changed, the perception of those personally owned devices by top corporate executives has drastically changed from just a year ago. Where before there was great fear of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, today there is a much broader level of executive and C-level acceptance. This could be due, in part, to the marked increases and productivity associated with companies that fully embrace BYOD, along with the observed decrease in IT cost.

Some of the top takeaways from the survey:

  • 78% of companies now allow personal devices (BYOD) as long as there is a Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform controlling the data
  • Security breaches have been experienced by nearly half of surveyed companies (we know, from other reports, that about 4 in 10 are from mobile device breaches/weaknesses)
  • Companies that allow BYOD environments to thrive, see appreciable increases in productivity
  • Employees like companies that allow BYOD, over companies that do not
  • iOS and Android, are leading the pack (currently) in terms of security perceptions and usage preference, with RIM fast losing ground

While mostly good news for mobility productivity device manufacturers, RIM did take a serious hit in this report — losing its perception as the “most secure” operating system. RIM fell from that “most secure” slot, losing to Apple’s iOS. Whether this is reality or not (this was an anecdotal item and not tested in this survey) is irrelevant, as CEOs were seen to be the most enthusiastic driving force behind more rapid adoption of allowing personal devices in the workplace setting. About half of the companies in the survey had already implemented or were planning on implementing some form of mobile device management.