Malaysian enterprises turn to mobility for diverse reasons

By Edwin Yapp April 19, 2013

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MALAYSIAN enterprises are leaning slightly more towards embracing mobility in the workplace but the motivations for doing are as divergent as night from day, according to a new study by Symantec.

Malaysian enterprises turn to mobility for diverse reasons The information security specialist noted in a new report entitled “State of Mobility Survey” that 65% of Malaysian organizations surveyed said that they are motivated to pursue mobility because of business drivers which include shoring up revenue, increasing profitability, and boosting productivity while reducing the cost of operations.

However, 75% of those polled also cited “end-user demand” for embracing mobility, a trend largely driven by employees wanting to use their own devices at work, something that is commonly known as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon.

Conducted by research firm ReRez, the recently released global study commissioned by Symantec polled a total of 3,236 businesses from 29 countries. Other South-East Asian countries included in the study were Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand. In total, ReRez queried 150 companies in Malaysia.

The respondents comprised senior IT staff individuals in charge of computing in enterprises or employees with technical aptitude in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Symantec said.

The report segregated two distinct groups of respondents; the first of which Symantec classified as ‘innovators,’ which include organizations that welcome change and are early adopters of technology. The other group – known as ‘the traditionals’ – prefers to go with time-honored practices, views change as risky, and will only do so after thorough study.

In comparison to global figures, 84% of innovators consider business drivers as the main motivation for pursuing mobility while 51% of traditionals cited end-user demands as the main reason for doing so.

“Malaysian organizations are starting to see benefits of embracing mobility,” Nigel Tan, director for systems engineering at Symantec Malaysia, said at a media briefing on April 18. “The figures show that the benefits of mobility outweigh the risks.”

Asked what was the reason for the different motivations for embracing mobility in these two groups, Tan said there would be always organizations that are more proactive and others which are more cautious.

Notwithstanding the fact that the two distinct groups of adopters have different reasons for pursuing mobility, Tan argued they are still nonetheless doing so and this implies that “mobility has evolved into one of IT’s top priorities in Malaysia.”

Besides these findings, the survey also revealed that 50% more employees in Malaysia are using smartphones among innovators than among traditionals; 61% of innovators in Malaysia use technology to enforce mobility policies; and 83% of innovators are discussing deploying private enterprise app stores for employees as opposed to 55% of those in the traditionals categogy.

Malaysian enterprises turn to mobility for diverse reasons In terms of business benefits gained for those who have embraced mobility, Tan (pic) listed five that were significant: Employee benefits, company benefits, HR (human resource) benefits, higher revenue growth, and higher profit growth.

“Those who use mobility gained employee productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, speed and agility,” he claimed. “Companies gained by having better brand impact, happier customers, better and faster decisions resulting in being more competitive.

“Staff retention is also better and those surveyed indicated that they experienced about [an average] 40% higher revenue growth and [an average] 37% profit growth.

Tan also said it’s acceptable for traditional companies to be cautious about mobility but certainly not to be resistant against it.

“Organizations should embrace it as mobility is inevitable. Start with deploying apps with the greatest productivity benefits for employees and learn from innovators that have already benefited from mobility deployments.

“The key is to be aware of the risks associated with mobility such as information loss and to protect their data with secure authentication, application and device management tools.”

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