Basic HTML Version
In brief
Six out of 10 SMBs have only a basic understanding of what
company data is stored on employees’ own mobile devices,
according to a study by TNS Infratest for Kaspersky Lab. Only
35% of IT managers admitted to having strict enough rules and
policies in place to provide an accurate overview of company
information contained on personal devices.
Six out of 10 businesses still don’t have a BYOD policy and 75%
don’t have a policy for the use of public clouds for company
files. Eight out of 10 businesses haven’t trained employees on
the risks of BYOD. (source: Acronis,
2013 Global Trends in BYOD,
Cloud, Hybrid Environments and Virtualization Survey
).
Users of cloud-based Office systems are expected to make
up 60% of all office system users by 2022, up from 33% in
2017 and 8% today. Gartner says the shift is partly driven by
a substantial expansion in the number of devices people use
to access cloud office systems. It estimates that the typical
knowledge worker now employs up to four devices – mobile
phone, media tablet, personal PC and enterprise PC – to access
such systems and that this could encourage organisations to
adopt cloud office systems as a way of reducing the burden of
software installation, maintenance, upgrades and licence costs.
www.binfo.co.uk
magazine
08
agenda
Senior directors and managers in the UK now rely more
on smartphones (55%) than their PCs (54%) and laptops
(52%) according to a YouGov survey of 1,200 senior
managers and directors at SMEs commissioned by Citrix.
Almost half (47%) of respondents surveyed in the UK
said their employees are already using their personal devices
for work.
Four out of 10 managers stated that using a single device
for all purposes makes employees’ lives easier, compared to
21% who point to the greater functionality of consumer-
focused devices and 13% to their greater flexibility.
Technology choice is
key to business growth
Business and IT leaders in the world’s
fastest growing companies believe
that providing technology choice to
employees can increase revenue and
profits by more than 35%, according
to a survey of more than 1,900
business and IT leaders, written by
the Economist Intelligence Unit and
conducted by Vanson Bourne for Blue
Coat Systems.
More than four out of five business
and IT leaders (84%) agree that
empowering employees to choose
from the best technology, devices,
applications and IT services, instead
of restricting them to IT-controlled
technology, drives greater efficiency
in the business. More than half believe
IT policies slow innovation (52%) and
customer service (53%).
Worldwide, two thirds (68%) of the
fastest growing companies increased
profitability by using new technologies
compared to only 39% of slow growing
companies: 66% of the fastest growing
companies have used
technology to empower
their users, compared
with only 48% of
slow growing
companies.
Switch to digital?
Businesses that embrace electronic
processes to cut costs and reduce
their carbon footprint shouldn’t
ignore the preferences of their
customers, warns Keep Me Posted, a
new pressure group set up to protect
consumer choice over how banks and
utilities present bills and statements.
The campaign argues that the switch
to digital communications and billing
inconveniences many UK consumers
and, in some cases, penalises them for
requesting hard copy communications.
Keep Me Posted points out that 7.1
million adults in the UK have never
used the internet (source: ONS Q1
2013) and 16 million people in the UK
aged 15 and over still do not have basic
internet skills (source: GoOnUK).
According to independent research
from Opinium, 84% of adults are
unhappy when companies take away
their right to choose how they are
communicated with and 81% feel
they have a better chance of reading
statements if they are available by post
and online.
The campaign is funded by Royal
Mail, TNT Post and UK Mail, but its
membership also includes Mind, the
National Consumer Federation, The
National Federation of Occupational
Pensioners and the Post Office.
www.keepmeposteduk.com
Off radar IT spending good for business
An average of £1.4m per business is being spent on IT services
without the IT department’s knowledge, according to a VMware
survey of 1,500 IT decision-makers and 3,000 office workers
across Europe.
Almost three quarters (72%) of IT decision-makers who
suspect this spending goes on within their business (37% of
respondents) believes it to be beneficial, with a third saying it
enables growth and innovation.
In the UK, 38% of respondents thought it helped a business to
respond faster to client demands, with more than a third (36%) of
UK office workers admitting to using unapproved cloud services
to get a job done. On the downside, 77% said that off-radar cloud
spending increases security risks.
Hands off my data
BYOD is often presented as an
employee-created security
risk. However, a new report by
Aruba Networks,
Employees
Tell the Truth About Your
Company’s Data
, suggests that
staff are keeping their devices
hidden from employers to protect
their own data.
The number one concern expressed by
people using personal devices for work
is that they will lose private data (cited
by 45% of EMEA respondents). One
in four worries about corporate access
to their device, with 18% concerned
that their IT department will interfere
with their private data. Around half of
all users across Europe and the Middle
East said they would be ‘angry’ if their
personal data was accessed by their IT
department.
Partly for this reason, 15% of
European workers have not told their
employers that they use a personal
device for work and 13% would not
report that their personal device had
been compromised, even if it leaked
company data.
Kensington
is addressing
BYOD security
concerns with a new line of protection
products for mobile phones and tablets.
The 360-degree mobile protection line
includes solutions for battery charging,
water damage, protection against loss or
theft and an easy way to
locate a mislaid device.
www.kensington.com
Smartphones preferred to PCs
The all-conquering smartphone has
received the ultimate accolade with the
launch of a touch-screen version of the
iconic BIC Cristal ballpoint. The BIC Cristal
Stylus (£2.49) has a pen at one end –
with a write length of 3km – and a 6mm
rubber tip at the other for interacting with
touchscreens on smartphones, tablets and other gadgets.