Mobility is Top Priority Among Global Businesses

As technology continues to seep into all aspects of our lives, businesses around the world are making the implementation of mobile initiatives as one of its main focuses.

A new survey by market research specialist Vanson Bourne, conducted on behalf of cloud solution provider Citrix, reveals that 71 percent of global organizations consider mobility a top priority for their businesses.

Among the 1,700 senior IT decision makers from the 17 countries that were surveyed, roughly half have already put technologies into place that support mobile devices, with 48 percent utilizing mobile device management and 47 percent using mobile application management.

To make it easier and convenient for mobile employees, 41 percent of these businesses are using or are planning to use application virtualization and 40 percent saying the same for desktop virtualization. To support mobile users, file sharing, sync and storage have also been or will be implemented by 40 percent of those organizations.

Continuing on the path towards mobility, the Bring Your Own Device trend is becoming increasingly accepted, as 71 percent of companies now allow it and 51 percent report that they are altering management processes to better manage those working from anywhere on any device. Seventy-six percent of companies reported that more than 100 unidentified devices access their networks every day, with a global daily average of 425 connections, the highest counts being in Brazil, Canada and Japan.

Despite this accelerating transition to mobilized environments, it is not without its problems.

Surveyed organizations cited numerous barriers when implementing their mobility strategies, including a lack of security controls for new devices and clients, legacy systems being unfit for mobile purposes, and issues supporting multiple mobile operating systems.

Nonetheless, companies are still making mobility an important goal with 63 percent stating that it will be the primary method that will help them to gain an advantage among its competitors.