In the past I have worked in organisations that have provided me with all the office equipment I could ever need. Laptops, blackberry, wireless connectivity, etc, etc, and I expected them to provide this equipment, after all I was working for them.
Today, I would rather bring my own equipment to work. This seems to be a growing trend, where employees would rather bring and look after their own equipment, so they are able to have the equipment they need to do their jobs the way they wish to. This is actually not all that new, I recall attending a Gartner conference about five years ago where this was one of the main themes, it seems now however to be picking up pace.
Major enterprise IT departments just can't provide the new equipment at the pace staff need it today. They need to lock down and manage everything tightly, and for good reason, where as staff want to have open collaboration and work with each other when and where they need to, this does not often suit the IT departments time table.
New software needs to be installed for projects on the fly, support departments hate that! Corporate licenses need to be managed, how do you do that when staff are installing and using software ad-hoc?
A balance will need to be struck in the future, allowing staff more freedom to use the hardware and software they need, when they need it. I can see SaaS models playing a larger role in this space in the future, allowing staff to use whatever hardware they want, and working in the cloud more often where the IT department can provide a greater level of flexibility, yet still have control.
At home today most of my data sits in the cloud, and this seems to be a trend that will find its way into corporate environments in the future, we need to be ready to manage it when it happens, if its not already here.
