IT managers highlight personalization, collaboration, and virtualization as key functionalities, while security is the main concern
Madrid, January 24, 2012. – Although currently only 12 percent of Spanish workers request a tablet for work (compared to 21 percent in the United States and France or 13 percent in Germany), nine out of ten IT managers in our country believe that this device will become a more widespread work tool in the next two years.
Tablet popularity will also grow in the other countries surveyed, as 86 percent of IT managers in France, 82 percent in the United States, 80 percent in Canada, 79 percent in Germany and 74 percent in the United Kingdom think.
This is according to an international study commissioned by Cisco and conducted by Redshift Research1, which highlights that globally 75 percent of IT managers point to document sharing and e-mail as essential applications on business tablets, while video conferencing, instant messaging, access to corporate databases and synchronization with other business devices are demanded by about 50 percent of respondents globally.
Likewise, personalization, collaboration and virtualization are perceived as key functionalities, so that although workers currently request one tablet for every three smart phones globally, 2012 appears to be a turning point towards a greater preponderance of tablets.
Users
Tablets are currently more widespread among sales staff in Germany (31 percent) than in any other country in the world (21 percent on average globally and 19 percent in Spain).
On the other hand, according to IT managers, executives are likely to use tablets the most: 38 percent in the U.S., 31 percent in Spain and 27 percent in the U.K., for an overall percentage of 31 percent.
Security
In the United States, the country with the most experience in tablet management, 75 percent of IT managers say that new rules need to be established around the security and use of tablets, a ratio that stands at 64 percent in Spain and 70 percent on average globally.
Similarly, almost half (47 percent) of all respondents globally believe that access to corporate applications should be restricted for all employees, 22 percent believe the opposite and 31 percent believe that the restriction should only apply to certain workers. In Spain, 44 percent believe that access to applications should be restricted to all employees, 19 percent do not, and the remaining 37 percent believe that it should only apply to certain employees.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
Globally, 48 percent of CIOs say their company would never allow employees to use their own device for work (47 percent in Spain), although 57 percent admit that some workers do so without permission (same percentage in Spain) and 51 percent believe it is a growing trend (56 percent in Spain).
Similarly, access to corporate servers has been identified as a ‘serious problem’ of the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon by 64 percent of IT managers globally, a ratio that rises to 70 percent in the case of Spain, while 44 percent of CIOs say that managing a BYOD strategy diverts attention away from other important IT projects (36 percent in Spain).
As Alberto Fernández, Director of Collaboration at Cisco Spain, points out, “the exponential growth of mobile workers and virtual desktops is an unstoppable trend, but it must be combined with necessary security, management capability, and business interoperability. Cisco is committed to helping organizations make the leap into the new post-PC era, assisting IT managers in fostering innovation and transforming businesses by leveraging new collaborative tools with the utmost guarantees.”
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