South Africa is not far behind other countries when it comes to the adoption of 'bring-your-own-device' (BYOD) policies.
This is according to a recent Citrix Systems survey of more than 100 CIOs and information workers, which discovered that 71% of South African knowledge workers are leveraging flexible working arrangements, with their companies permitting flexible and virtual working conditions.
According to Gartner's top predictions for IT organisations, BYOD will have a major impact on user demand, especially in requests for supporting applications on tablets.
Martin Kelly, VP of information technology at Citrix Systems, says the consumerisation of IT is driving a trend in which employees no longer want to work on the end devices provided by their organisations, but prefer to bring their own high-end personal devices to work.
“Organisations opting to implement BYOD models are realising that it is more cost-effective as it helps reduce costs incurred by the organisation by taking the user endpoint off the books and out of the IT department.
Further, he explains, the use of desktop virtualisation technology allows IT to instantly add or remove users on the organisation's network while only incurring licensing and infrastructure costs as they are added.
The survey also found that 75% of respondents use their personal computing devices at work and that laptops (83%) and smartphones (73%) are the most-used devices when travelling and working away from the office.
Some 92% of respondents said working remotely is acceptable in their organisations, while 54% now claim to work out of the office for between one and two full days per week.
Describing the challenges that local organisations are facing in implementing BYOD models, Kelly says there is a perception that network security is negatively affected. Another concern of BYOD is the management of these multiple devices, he adds.
“The old format of a 'locked down' work environment, where all employees were forced to work on similar devices, allowed the IT department a greater sense of control and uniformity.
“However, with multiple devices entering the workplace, companies fear that confidential information may reside in numerous places like laptops, iPads and other end-user devices. Also, it will not be as easy for the organisation to manage these varied devices that employees today want to work on,” Kelly explains.
Allaying fears, he notes the technology that underpins a BYOD infrastructure is desktop virtualisation and it allows IT to manage and secure applications and data more simply and effectively in a single location, as opposed to thousands of different locations across the organisation and beyond.
With the consumerisation of IT, Kelly urges organisations to look beyond legacy security strategies, as they do not provide complete and effective information security protection.
“Desktop virtualisation is the technology that allows IT to centralise and secure enterprise data in the data centre. It also allows them to provide secure access to applications and data using granular controls that ensure the right level of access by the right worker at the right time.
“The modern workplace deserves and urgently needs a modern information security strategy, and desktop virtualisation provides this security.”
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