Device Security, Mgmt Biggest Mobility Concerns: McAfee

McAfee has announced the results of a Trust Digital survey of 150 Fortune 500 CIOs, CTOs and CSOs that reveals 76 percent of respondent organisations are planning at least one strategic mobility initiative in the next six to 12 months, including infrastructure integration, offering employee device choice and increasing productivity through the use of widely available mobile apps like CRM, ERP and proprietary, in-house applications. The survey demonstrates that the consumerisation of IT has had a noticeable impact on enterprise IT, especially when it comes to security.

Device security and management continue to be major concerns for organisations looking to roll out mobility initiatives. In addition, application management and compliance management ranked high on C-level executives’ list of mobility challenges. Further, the survey reveals that a large percent of these organisations currently use or support BlackBerry devices and 45 percent are planning to support the iPhone and Android smartphones as enterprise devices due to employee demand. Users are no longer satisfied with carrying two devices (personal and work) or having one device that will only make calls, enable texting and support e-mail functionality.

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According to the survey, the migration to mobile applications is underway with 76 percent of companies planning, in the next six to 12 months, to mobilise internal applications other than email for employee use. In fact, according to another survey by online measurement company Crowd Science, nearly 40 percent of BlackBerry users continue to prefer Apple’s iPhone as their next smartphone purchase, while a third of them would also switch to the Android operating system.

“The coming wave of enterprise mobility is all about the ‘app phone’ devices like the iPhone or Android that provide laptop-like support for apps, not just email,” said Todd Gebhart, Executive Vice President - Consumer, Mobile and Small Business, McAfee. “As the proliferation of these consumer technologies into the enterprise continues, the ability to manage and support the rollout of mobile applications that enable greater productivity will continue to be a huge priority for CIOs.”