The percentage of enterprises supporting BYOD has increased to 76 per cent, according to Good Technology’s 2nd Annual State of BYOD Report.
This was due to companies with no plans to support BYOD dropping from nine to five per cent.
Good Technology APAC vice president and corporate general manager, Jim Watson, said the results are a validation of BYOD.
“When we have this discussion with our clients in Australia, they all pretty much bought into BYOD,” he said.
“With results such as these, it was just a matter of how large and fast the deployment.”
To give an insight into the scale of BYOD phenomenon, Watson said the vendor has clients with 20 to 50,000 seats discussion implementation
He also said that while the numbers are along the lines of what Good Technology predicted a year ago, the forecast at the time was a bit conservative based on what is taking place now.
“I was 26 per cent off, as I said that with a year there will be a 50 per cent adoption,” he said. “I think what we’re finding is that it is 76 per cent.”
Watson has also seen an increase in the amount of customers that expressed their interest in getting out what he calls the “mobile device management business,” at least in terms of managing thousands of BlackBerry smartphones or other devices, and instead allowing their employees to bring their own.
“We predicted that as well, as employees are willing to pay for the right to bring their own device,” Watson said.
Backing up his claim is the fact that 50 per cent of companies that use BYOD require all costs to be covered by employees.
Going into 2013, Watson expects that the discussions around BYOD will focus on the potential cost savings for organisations.
“A BYOD strategy could at a minimum could reduce your costs by 65 per cent,” Watson said.
Android
When it comes to identifying the biggest factor driving BYOD, Watson alludes to a certain percentage of the workforce being clued up on mobile technology.
“You can almost tell it from afar, as they show up with their Android, are technically savvy, and are capable of deploying their own applications on the device,” he said.
Watson hesitates to refer to this audience as Generation Y, as there are people of various ages who are also quite comfortable in using technology.
Other key findings in the report included companies extending their BYOD practices to more countries around the globe, with financial services/insurance and healthcare industries being the most active in supporting BYOD.
Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.