Mobility Now Drives Cloud Computing Adoption

Up to now, it may have been reasonable to consider the impact of "mobility" on enterprise workflow, and separately from other trends, such as "consumerization" or "cloud computing" – though all three are related.

Workers now report using an average of four consumer devices and multiple third-party applications, such as social networking sites, during the course of their day, according to a study sponsored by Unisys.

Workers also reported they are using their own laptops and mobile devices in the workplace at nearly twice the rate reported by employers.

In fact, 95 percent of respondents reported they use at least one self-purchased device for work. Another big change is that where enterprise IT staffs used to assume they were responsible for training and supporting users on enterprise technology, many users will now simply train themselves to use tools they prefer.

That 'consumerization' of technology is quite a big shift. Decades ago, the pattern of technology diffusion was fairly straightforward. The latest new technology was purchased by large enterprises and large government entities. Over time medium-sized businesses bought the same technology. Later, small organizations adopted the tools. Finally, some consumers 'brought the technology home' and used it as well.

All of that has changed over the last two decades. These days, many enterprise tools were actually brought into the enterprise by consumers who already use the technology at home.

But it’s looking more as though mobility will drive cloud adoption. That's new.

When cloud storage provider Box tracks its enterprise sales, it finds there has been a 30-fold increase in the number of mobile-driven enterprise deployments.

So while mobile user growth may be up nine times, enterprise activity is producing more revenue growth. The Box enterprise customer base now includes 82 percent of the Fortune 500, the company said.

That mobile drives enterprise cloud computing adoption should not be surprising. Networked computing has been driving most application trends for some time. Most consumer apps now run in the cloud. And though enterprises can afford to run apps using their own data center infrastructure, it increasingly makes sense to create web interfaces for enterprise apps, whether the facilities are run "in the cloud" or on owned locations.