Gartner considers consumerization of IT to be the single most influential technological trend of this decade. Consumer technologies that include tablets, iPhones, iPads, smartphones, Facebook, and Twitter have slowly started treading their unending journey to the IT sector. This movement is inevitable due to the influx of breakthrough ideas and innovative products in the consumer technology arena.

1. BYOD is Here to Stay
Gartner considers consumerization of IT to be the single most influential technological trend of this
decade. Consumer technologies that include tablets, iPhones, iPads, smartphones, Facebook, and
Twitter have slowly started treading their unending journey to the IT sector. This movement is inevitable
due to the influx of breakthrough ideas and innovative products in the consumer technology arena. With
people increasingly embracing these latest innovations and getting used to its presence in their personal
lives, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to manage work with outdated gadgets and devices.
Their greatest concern is that they use the most modern technology and powerful devices at home while
at office they have to work with obsolete gadgets. This greatly affects their productivity.
There are two ways to address this problem. Enterprises can increase employee productivity by
purchasing latest computing equipments for them. However, such a move can prove costly for the
companies, as it would increase their expenses sky high. This is because employees prefer to work with
devices that they are most comfortable with and not all employees have the same preferences. Moreover,
with technology changing every day companies would have a hard time in keeping pace with rapid
changes on the technology front. Hence, when considering all these aspects, IT provisioning would
definitely be a bad move.
The second option, which is gaining popularity among employees, is Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
BYOD is the result of consumerization of IT. Wikipedia describes BYOD as the trend of bringing
personally owned mobile devices to the place of work and using those devices to access privileged
company resources such as email, file servers, and databases.
Though the corporate sector is divided as to whether allow employees to use their own devices for work
considering the security aspects, the BYOD trend is catching on as more and more employees are using
personally owned devices for work related purposes without consent. However, implementing BYOD
programs at workplace bring in immense benefits for companies as well as its employees. For companies
BYOD translates into reduced expenses. They need not spend dollars neither for IT provisioning nor for
maintenance. In return, the companies get increased productivity and efficiency from their employees. On
the other hand, BYOD helps employees to save time and effort as they get to work with the most modern
and powerful technologies. This not only helps them to get their work done quickly and efficiently but also
provides them the flexibility to work anytime, anywhere.
BYOD is here to stay and there is nothing that the enterprises can do but to get accustomed to it.
However, they need to bring a balance between freedom and control so that it does not threaten security.
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