In Yankee's latest survey of enterprise employees, 68 percent said they feel they have equal or greater control than IT in terms of installing new applications on their business-issued PCs.
Some 49 percent of the workers replied that consumer technologies are already more advanced than those they have access to at work, and 54 percent said they would be more productive in their jobs if they were allowed to use applications they utilize in their personal lives.
Even though IT administrators often cite the enterprise-class manageability and control of the BlackBerry platform as the primary reason it has prevailed as a leading business device, the experts said consumer-driven mobile technologies will advance so quickly that administrators won't have the same luxury of calling the shots and pushing users onto a single type of handheld in the future.
"The advent of consumer technologies in the enterprise is the first thing that has left IT in the dust. In a lot of cases, companies admit that they're not sure how to deal with it, and a lot of the use of the technology is being driven by different age groups and work styles," Kerravala said. "People on IT steering committees tend to have a different view of usage than college-aged workers; the role of the IT department is to get involved on matters of policy and allowed use."
