Malaysia leads world in number of devices per employee

• Malaysia averages 6 devices per employee versus global average of 4.43 devices per employee
• 14% of Malaysian companies have fully adopted mobile workstyles, expected to hit 69% by mid-2014

WITH an average of six devices per employee, Malaysia currently leads the world’s population for the highest number of devices accessing the corporate network.
 
New research released by information technology (IT) solutions company Citrix revealed that Malaysia is ahead of its counterparts with the current global average at 4.43 devices and the Asia Pacific average at 4.39 devices.
 
The global average is predicted to rise to almost six devices by 2020. In Malaysia, this number is expected to rise to almost eight devices per employee by the same year.
 
Yaj Malik (pic), Asean area vice president at Citrix, said that corporate attitudes toward the use of personal devices in the workplace have changed markedly with the unyielding drive from employees, including senior executives, who use their personal devices for work.
 
The report, entitled Workplace of the Future’ also found that globally, a third of employees (29%) will no longer work from the traditional office. Instead, employees will be based at various semi-permanent locations including the home (64%), field and project sites (60%), and customer or partner premises (50%).
 
The report also found that people are expected to access corporate applications, data and services while working from locations such as hotels, airports, coffee shops and while in transit.
 
The trend towards fewer office-based employees using multiple computing devices to access corporate applications, and data and services from a range of locations outside of the traditional office, is part of a global trend called mobile workstyles. Globally, a quarter (24%) of organizations has already fully adopted mobile workstyles, that percentage is expected to hit 83% by 2014 (click on image to enlarge).
 
In Malaysia, mobile workstyles are establishing a foothold with 14% of organizations surveyed having already adopted mobile workstyles fully. By mid-2014, more than two-thirds (69%) of organizations are expected to have embraced it.  
 
However, the report also found that cultural concerns around trust, specific job roles and perceived difficulties in staff management (84%) were the top reasons why 19% of organizations in Malaysia have no plans for a mobile workstyle implementation.
 
The top challenge hindering the implementation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is concerns around information security (65%).
 
“While this poses a security concern, there is technology available today that can effectively manage and harness the proliferated use of devices in the workplace for the betterment of the organization,” said Yaj.
 
However, he added that more than half (54%) of organizations surveyed in the country admitted that they still do not have the technical capability to support mobile workstyles to employees who need it.
 
“The real winners then will be organizations that are able to empower the workforce of the future, resulting in increased responsiveness, improved productivity and reduced cost,” he said.

The Citrix Workplace of the Future report was conducted independently by Vanson Bourne in August 2012 with a representative sample of 1,900 senior IT decision makers from 19 countries across the globe.
 
Three-quarters of respondents were from organizations of more than 1,000 employees with the rest from organizations of 500-999 employees. From Malaysia, 100 senior IT professionals were surveyed.