Australian mobile device management market doubles as more employees bring their own apps and devices to work: Telsyte

The mobile device management (MDM) market in Australia is booming, with a growing number of employees using their own apps for work purposes and embracing the bring your own devices (BYOD) trend, according to new Telsyte figures.

The Telsyte’s Australian Enterprise Mobility Market Study 2014 interviewed 460 chief information officers and ICT decision-makers about MDM, bring your own apps (BYOA) and MDM.

The figures show around a quarter of Australian businesses use a dedicated MDM system, more than double the levels a year ago.

The report shows BlackBerry has emerged as the leading Australian vendor, with one in five businesses (with 20 or more employees) using an MDM system in place using BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), with the remainder of the market fragmented among a range of smaller vendors.

The widespread deployment of MDM is being driven by the need for security and concerns about data privacy on BYOD devices, according to ICT managers.

MDM systems, such as BES, allow businesses to set up Secure Work Spaces on employee devices for work-related apps and emails, keeping them separate from a user’s personal apps and emails.

The Secure Work Space can also be remotely administered or deleted by the employer’s IT staff.

The report also shows a growing number of companies are letting their employees select their own apps for work purposes, a trend known as BYOA, with 27% allowing the practice without restrictions.

In businesses that allow or tolerate employees using personal apps or cloud providers on mobile devices, around 30% of staff have opted to do so.

Popular work-related tasks for BYOA apps include cloud storage (Dropbox), calendaring, collaboration (GoToMeeting), voice communications (Skype), task management (Remember the Milk), productivity and note taking (Evernote).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, around 34% of employers have banned users opting to use personal apps or cloud providers on company-issued smartphones.

The figures also show that 44% of organisations currently support the BYOD trend, with 34% of organisations that do not support it planning to adopt it within the next two years.