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‘Choose Your Own Device’ policies are rising in popularity among enterprise businesses, as ‘Bring Your Own Device’ stalls in the European region.
John Delaney, head of analyst IDC’s European mobility team, told delegates gathered at Microsoft’s Business Transformed event that responsibility for selection and procurement of business devices was moving back to IT departments, rather than allowing workers total control over which device they use.
“What we’re seeing in Europe now is an increasing preference for CYOD – ‘Choose Your Own Device’, whereby the employer has a list of devices from which the employee can select what they want,” explained Delaney.
IDC’s bi-annual survey of the European enterprise sector found that in the first half of 2014, a third (36 per cent) of businesses offered a BYOD policy, with a further quarter (23 per cent) planning to begin offering a policy in the next 18 months. Two fifths (41 per cent) stated that they had no plans to offer BYOD.
In the same survey conducted in the first quarter of 2013, only a marginally higher proportion of companies (44 per cent) said that they had no such plans.
“BYOD has taken off to quite some extent in the US, and for a while it looked as though it was going to take off in Europe as well,” said Delaney.
“[However,] we think this is the first data confirmation that European employees don’t like BYOD as much as American employees.
“One reason that BYOD may not be as popular here is that some of the more popular devices are now being supplied by enterprises [via CYOD] – if they provide the device you desire, the need for BYOD goes away.
“This is a gravitation of the selection and procurement of mobile devices away from the employee back to the corporate IT department – which has some big implications for future patterns of adoption.”
