While recognising that business and consumer technology is converging, the majority felt that a lot of the hype had been led by IT vendors. However, the majority of IT directors (68%) did admit the increased use of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, had increased the number of sleepless nights they had, spent worrying about the security of their organisation’s ICT.
“It isn’t uncommon for consumer trends to influence enterprise IT; you only have to look at the growth in the use of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media in the workplace,” explained Glyn Owen, Portfolio Manager, Damovo UK. “However, the accelerated pace of this trend; the recent leap forward for workforce mobility; and the rapid advances in tablet and smartphone technology over the past few years; have raised awareness of the issue. Certainly the trend of bringing personal devices into the workplace has heightened security concerns, with the potential to bypass firewalls and create a potential bridge between the corporate network and the internet. Therefore organisations need better visibility over what devices are on their network, as well as the ability to enforce new security policies.”
The survey went on to ask IT directors what their top priorities were for 2012. Future-proofing and updating their network infrastructure (32%), moving applications and services to the cloud (27%) and securing/managing employees’ mobile devices (18%) were seen as highest on their agenda for 2012, further indicating the growing shift towards greater workforce mobility. Lesser priorities for 2012 were virtualising server estates (14%) and enabling multi-channel communications between employees and customers.
When it came to supporting overall business objectives, 42% of IT directors said that improving operational efficiencies was their biggest priority, followed by business growth (37%). Interestingly, only 4% of respondents indicated that compliance was high on their agenda for 2012. However, when it came to delivering on these business and technology objectives 79% of IT directors admitted that that resource and skills restraints were hindering their ability to deliver.
“IT departments are being asked to do more and more as ICT underpins an increasing number of business functions. Yet at the same time, IT directors are being asked to reduce costs while also needing to ensure that ICT is delivering on business objectives. With this in mind it seems that as they continue their efforts to drive down costs, moving ownership of the more remedial IT functions towards managed service providers will become an increasingly attractive option for many organisations. By alleviating some of the burden on their department, IT directors will be able to ensure their staff are freed up to drive more growth and efficiency initiatives through the business rather than struggling to maintain the status quo,” added Glyn Owen.
The survey of 100 IT directors at UK organisations across multiple business sectors and with more than 1,000 employees was commissioned by Damovo UK and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne.