The Consumerization of IT Continues

Baseline’s exclusive annual research study of midsize and large organizations reveals the 10 trends that will play a significant role in enterprises in the coming year.

Trend 9: The Consumerization of IT Continues

Weaved throughout our trends is the ongoing influence and pressure being exerted by the expansion of consumer technology—social, mobile and even cloud—into the enterprise. Our data shows that significant numbers of midsize and large organizations are beginning to proactively manage and even court this movement.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents are increasing their investments in “bring your own device” systems, in which the use of employee-owned equipment to access corporate data and applications is allowed and managed, fostering creativity and employee satisfaction. Similar numbers of organizations are also “consumerizing” application user interfaces (UIs), allowing self-provisioning, deploying app stores, or otherwise becoming more user-centric when it comes to IT.

“The consumerization of IT goes well beyond BYOD and extends to mobile apps, the cloud and social tools,” says PwC’s Garland. And pressure isn’t coming just from employees, either. Doug Saunders of Republic Services
says, “Very large customers demand that we communicate with them in a particular way.” This is helping drive Republic toward the multistream (instant messaging, video and audio) communications discussed in trend 2.

For more, read Baseline's Top 10 Business Trends of 2012.