Born digital, the kids who grew up with the Internet are appearing in the workforce. It is important to attract and retain the best of this Generation Y, and unified communications and collaboration systems have a role to play.
It is clear from Fujitsu’s research that IT managers and CIOs recognise this. Forty percent of respondents to a recent survey conducted by IDG Connect on Fujitsu’s behalf saw the provision of a unified communication and collaboration (UCC) infrastructure as either very important or important today. In three years’ time, 43% said they expected it to be extremely important, up from today’s 15% figure. Only a tiny minority (4%) perceived it as not very important.
Further, 79% of the survey’s respondents said that their implementation of UCC had been accelerated either moderately or significantly as a consequence of the needs and expectations of Generation Y employees.
As well as the need to deliver a UCC to meet expectations, IT managers further reported that the work styles of a younger generation raised a number of challenges. Core among these is data security (77% said so) and individual IT requirements, such as new devices (54%). For example, the survey found that 82% of end users have a mobile phone or smartphones, and 76% have either a tablet or notebook. Phones and file sharing receive the most organisational support, the survey found.
Other research clearly demonstrates a shift of power away from the centre and towards the end user. This appears unstoppable. More than one survey result shows that many users will break corporate device usage and security policies if the company does not provide devices and adequate infrastructure support, leaving corporate data at risk on unprotected device storage. Not only is there a commercial risk here but the possibility exists that this may expose a company to becoming non-compliant with legislative requirements.
The trend of a growing number of personal devices containing increasing amounts of storage looks set only to continue, as hyper-connected wearable computers start to appear on the market from 2015 onwards.
It is clear that end-user devices are here to stay and there is little or nothing the IT department or the company as a whole can do to hold back the tide. Instead, the organisation must embrace and extend its security and communications systems to include those devices, and continue to educate users in best practices.
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