Every once in a while, a trend resonates closely with the needs of IT professionals - driving many discussions in the press and across the internet. One way to identify the importance of these trends is through google trends - an online tool that allows you to view the relative number of searches on a topic versus others.
Out of interest, I had a look at four ongoing topics that are pervasive to the world of business communications: Unified communications, collaboration, VOIP and Cloud applications. As expected, searches on Unified communication and VOIP have already peaked and are slowly falling off. Searches on Collaboration remain fairly consistent over time, and searches on Cloud Applications continue to grow.
Surprising, however, is the rapid rise in the number of searches for the term "bring your own device" - a search term that did not register prior to 2012, and which is currently out trending all the search terms listed above.
Why the recent and rapid increase in interest surrounding BYOD?
Quite simply, the ability to save on purchasing and managing devices, while leveraging the latest technology available.
A recent survey conducted by Vanson Bourne, found that 80% of IT managers / directors surveyed believe that BYOD will lead to significant cost savings.
In Canada, where companies have invested less in communications technology as a percentage of GDP over the past 8 years, there is an opportunity to leap-frog a generation of communications technology to increase collaboration amongst employees as well.
A plethora of online business articles over the past few weeks points to the importance of this emerging trend, from a business week checklist on BYOD preparation to the Pros and Cons of BYOD from IT World, it is clear that BYOD is increasingly on the minds of IT leaders in today's environment.
Avaya is poised to deliver real solutions for BYOD - check it out here.
Posted 30 Jan 2012 at 12:56 PM
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