Technology innovations for today’s workspace

We have seen a fundamental shift in the way in which technology innovations become part of our business lives. Only few years ago, new hardware and software would be first adopted in the enterprise and then trickle down to consumer computing. The situation is now reversed whereby consumer computing innovations lead the charge in business computing. Driving this shift is the fact that technology has become so affordable, and it is now seen as a necessity as opposed to a luxury in all aspects of our lives. As a result, technology manufacturers have refocused their efforts on the consumer market, making products in a huge range of form factors with millions of applications available that provide users with ease and convenience in their private lives. Now consumers demand this same ease and convenience in their business lives too.

This is what the consumerisation of IT is all about, driving big changes in the workplace. In fact, arguably because of an increasingly mobile workforce, the term workplace is becoming obsolete, giving way to a workspace that offers users access to applications and data anywhere, anytime, via the connected device of their choice.

Do employees always want to bring-their-own?

The bring-your-own (BYO) trend goes hand-in-hand with the consumerisation of IT, whereby more and more businesses are exploring the pros and cons of allowing staff to use their personal tablets, smartphones and laptops for work purposes. Some companies have realised early on the opportunities around BYO. Yet, although many are using their own tablet or smartphone for work purposes, it seems that few are willing to use their own PC as their primary office device.

A recent internal survey* of 5,000 employees globally investigated if a stipend-funded programme for BYO PCs would help optimise the annual PC refresh budget for a company by allowing staff to choose their PC for work use with financial support from their employer. Encouragingly, the survey found that 72% favoured a stipend-funded PC supply model. The greatest benefit cited was a faster refresh cycle, so employees could upgrade to the latest and greatest systems more quickly. Other benefits highlighted included more choice than the IT department tends to offer and the ability to choose a specific brand.

Yet, the study also revealed that just 4% would prefer to bring their own computer to work – whether or not the company pays for it – and that 40% of those interested in the stipend programme did not want to be responsible for hardware support. From our IT department’s point of view, while increasing choice remains a priority, the cost of the stipend programme proved prohibitive. To illustrate this, a gross stipend amount of $1,700, a net $1,000 payment to the employee, would end up costing the company $11 million more than the current PC refresh programme.

New usage models in the new workspace
There is a widespread misconception that companies will be able to hire the best and brightest people only if they are willing provide them with the fanciest devices. This is not necessarily the case. I have found that people simply want the technology that allows them to use it in their way – which might, or might not, be the way envisaged by the IT department. To illustrate, a group of people employed by the same company in different parts of the world may decide to form a Facebook group for a project they are working together on, to share ideas and collaborate more effectively. While this might not be the intended usage model of Facebook, it shows that people want to work in an environment that they are most comfortable in. It is the responsibility of the IT department to ensure that they provide employees with the type of workspace that helps them fulfil their potential, and gets the most out of them for the benefit for the business.

This trend has generated new technology usage models for the adoption of smartphones, tablets, and Ultrabooks or ultra-thin laptops – and everything in between in the enterprise. These usage models wouldn’t be possible with a traditional PC or chunky laptop, and they are predicated by certain technical capabilities and features such as touch, GPS, camera, instant-on, and enhanced portability. The four new usage categories are:
1) Companion devices: In this usage model, people use tablets and smartphones as companion devices to augment the functionality delivered by their primary device, such as a PC. This is the category where the BYOD trend is most prevalent.

2) Presentation devices: Particularly common in sales environments, for example in retail, a sales assistant in a clothing store may use a tablet or a smartphone to check if an item is in stock, or to even photograph people in-store and superimpose images of clothes on them to save them a trip to the fitting room.

3) Digital workflow devices: In paper-based workflows, we are seeing increasing digitisation. To illustrate, nurses may have previously relied on clip boards to keep track of medication records. In some hospitals they are now given tablets to connect this process to the rest of the IT system, increasing efficiencies.

4) Context aware devices: This future-orientated usage model is characterised by the adoption of emerging technologies that have traditionally been used by consumers, in business class devices. For example, an estate agent might use an augmented reality application to give prospective house buyers a tour of an empty property to demonstrate a possible furniture lay-out, or to show where the nearest train stations and schools are located in relation to the property.

Connecting everything to make our lives easier
What these usage models have in common is that devices are becoming more and more like proactive personal assistants that anticipate what you need, rather than simply react to your commands. Increasingly, your device will know more and more about you and use this knowledge to, for example, to set up a conference bridge for you and your colleagues when it sees in your calendar that you are scheduled to have a meeting. Or, your tablet or smartphone might alert your car that there is flooding in your planned route, and your car’s dashboard will suggest an alternative using this weather data and a GPS.

We are moving from connecting everyone to connecting everything. Some might find this increasing machine-to-machine communications a little bit disconcerting, but I believe that your device should know more about you and use that knowledge to make your life easier.

It’s all about choice
To adapt effectively to this evolution, IT departments need to change their mind set and focus on the user instead of the technology in the decisions they make. The IT department will live or die by how good a user experience it is able to deliver to employees, and by how it is able to support (not manage!) users as they move from Windows, iOS, and Android to BB10, for example.

While giving users the freedom to choose whichever device and software they find most convenient will undoubtedly make the IT team very popular amongst employees, this fragmentation is bound to cause many headaches when it comes to maintenance, licensing and security – and the additional costs associated to each. In many cases the additional costs of licences to support and secure an employee’s own device is far more expensive than buying them the same device from the corporate purse, as it adds hidden costs. Research published by the Aberdeen Group in April 2012 found that a company with 1,000 mobile devices spends an extra $170,000 per year on average, when they use a BYOD strategy.

So, if there are a dozen different devices with variations of three operating systems used within the business, what is the most effective way for the IT department to navigate this minefield? Writing a native application for each platform is prohibitively expensive. Another option is virtualisation, but as a desktop app won’t be optimised for touch, there are likely to be issues with the user experience. The best option in this instance – both from the IT department and the user’s point of view – is to make the app web-based and platform neutral using HTML5, which works on any web-enabled smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC.

In the end it’s all about choice. By taking advantage of a combination of technology trends and emerging computing models, such as ubiquitous Internet connectivity, virtualisation and cloud computing, IT departments have the opportunity to proactively address the changing user requirements and redefine the way they provide services for employees. The workspace of the very near future will give users access to corporate information and applications from any device, whether personal or owned by the company they work for – without compromising security. To optimise user experience and improve efficiencies, multiple personal and corporate devices across the computing continuum will work together seamlessly. As computing manufacturers introduce new, sleeker and lighter consumer devices with improved functionality such as an all-day battery, wireless charging, next-generation voice control and facial recognition, IT departments should embrace these developments and see how they can benefit the business, while delivering users the workspace they crave.

*The internal study by Intel IT is available to download at: http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/us/en/it-management/intel-it-best-practices/exploring-a-bring-your-own-pc-employee-stipend-at-intel.html