The majority of UK IT leaders still do not have a handle on adopting the BYOD trend into their organisations.
According to a report published by AppSense, 67 per cent of IT leaders cite developing BYOD IT policy as a major challenge, despite a similar amount (69 per cent) of them already supplying two or more devices to employees.
"The defining factor of BYOD is freedom of user choice," said Nick Lowe, Vice President Sales and General Manager, EMEA. "With so many devices offering different kinds of user experience, BYOD instantly becomes a challenge of scale - more devices equals more operating systems, more security protocols, more application portals, more user profiles to manage consistently and more platforms to support.
"Improperly managed, BYOD can also mean more trouble for today's IT department. Since it relates very specifically to user experience, when those users don't enjoy the quality of service that they've come to expect, it can create a rift between the two parties. IT can commonly be seen as inflexible or stubborn, while users become perceived as unfairly demanding. IT departments are struggling to keep up the pace end users want them to keep - finding themselves compromised by a user base that fails to understand the effort required, and the potential issues raised, in achieving this goal.
"This report shows a potentially perilous gap between user expectations and IT's perceived remit. From a user perspective, the BYOD experience is hampered by IT not delivering on the promise of 'any device, anywhere'. Simplicity, not case-by-case decision making, needs to be at the heart of any good BYOD strategy. Anything else will frustrate not only the end user, but make the IT department's life more difficult."