BYOC increasing every year, thousands spent annually per employee
updated 10:00 pm EDT, Wed June 13, 2012
by Electronista Staff
www.electronista.com/articles
Industry analyst company Forrester Research revealed this week that 53 percent of employees are using personally-owned technology in the workplace, a five percent increase from last year. Senior executives lead the charge, with 77 percent of them buying their own hardware, and 45 percent purchasing software. Nearly 10,000 IT workers were polled in 17 countries from companies with 20 or more employees to collect this data.
Forrester predicts that within three years, most companies will make any customer-provided technology the norm, and purge rules forbidding personal devices to the point that self-purchasing may become a requirement for new employees. Information technology departments' primary concerns with employee-owned hardware are usually security-related. Without a coherent and strict information-sanitization policy in place, an employee's Internet habits outside the workplace could introduce a virus or other malware into the company network.
A previous report about self-purchased information technology in the workplace by Forrester found that the average amount an employee spends per year on IT for work exceeds $1,200, with executives spending nearly $4,000 annually on hardware and software. Approximately 74 percent of workers completely paid for a work-related laptop in lieu of either using an issued computer or going without.
A previous Forrester analysis predicted Apple keeping the lead in the tablet market through 2016. Out of 1,810 Americans polled, Forrester Research found only 10 percent considering a Windows 8 tablet, which qualified for second place behind the iPad in the study.
