Almost half of European companies let employees run their own personal applications on work equipment, and provide IT support for them. This is in marked contrast to the US where only 10% of firms offer IT support, the global survey of 686 large organizations found.
But this liberalization is having a knock-on effect on how firms deal with the extra support burden. Companies that take a liberal attitude to staff using instant messaging, blogs, and wikis and other technologies that are part and parcel of the Web 2.0 revolution are more likely to outsource their support. Some 65% of consumer-friendly firms are looking to outsource end-user support within six to 12 months, compared to 38% without a consumerization initiative.
According to Paul Bevan, Unisys’ director of field marketing for outsourcing, IT chiefs should accept that Generation Facebook will not be stopped from using their own technology, so they might as well get with the program.
Consumerization is a massive issue for the enterprise and should be embraced by CXOs. The pressure on both business and IT for speed and agility is making the idea of limiting staff to a small prescribed list of IT tools increasingly unworkable, he said.
