MDS finds that BYOD costs 20% more than company provided

Rating: 49% of SMEs have still adopted BYOD

Independent research conducted by MDS suggests that there is significant disparity in how businesses adopt Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. It highlights the resultant problems in transparency, cost-planning, and productivity. This shows a disparity which service providers need to address in order to smooth the deployment of such services in medium and big businesses, according to MDS. Of all the respondents, a massive 71 per cent suggested service providers need to be doing more to support the growing BYOD trend. The report also suggests that allowing employees to use their own device is estimated to cost businesses 20 per more than providing them with a company-secured contract.Of the companies surveyed, just over half (56 per cent) have a BYOD policy for employees wanting to use their own mobile devices for work purposes.

Such programmes more likely to be found in bigger businesses with 64 per cent of companies with 1,000 plus employees have a BYOD policy.

Interestingly, 49 per cent of businesses with under 1,000 employees still have adopted the BYOD model.

The cost burden to businesses adopting the policy is a critical element to resolve – with 61 per cent of respondents thinking the cost of BYOD is difficult to ascertain.

That compares to 59 per cent who think that BYOD will make balancing spend visibility and control with user empowerment a major challenge.

Other key findings include:

• 63 per cent believe increased productivity and user empowerment through BYOD comes at a significant cost

• 61 per cent think the cost burden of employees using their own mobile device is difficult to ascertain

• 71 per cent believe service providers could do more to support the growing demand for BYOD

“A robust BYOD policy can help augment an agile business – however, when untended, it can develop into an unmanageable process and cause unnecessary cost, negating the business benefits, ” observed Matt Hooper, CMO with MDS.

The findings are the result of research conducted among 205 IT/Telecoms decision makers in the UK in April 2012.