In today’s world, every day is Bring Your Own Computer to work day.  But the mobile scene is stretching into corporate environments with workers roping in smartphones and tablets under the Computer umbrella.  And there’s not much anyone can do about it, including management and IT.  We all know that coworker that pre-ordered their iPad, their face constantly aglow from the light of their smartphone.  Business apps are jumping all over this mobility trend, launching Office suites, cloud file management and flow chart apps for the Apple App Store and Android Market.  But is this really shifting corporate culture, or are we still just a bunch of geeky consumers that merely carry our devices to the office with us? A study commissioned by Citrix looked at whether or not these trends in mobility have gone mainstream yet, and the answer is yes–they’re on their way.  Organizations are recognizing the benefits of adopting BYO device policies in the workplace, enabling a company to keep up with IT consumerization trends, and setting standards around forward-thinking strategies to attract tech-savvy employees that appreciate the promise of productivity and a happy work life. The survey, which was conducted independently by Vanson Bourne in May 2011, based its findings on responses from 700 IT professionals across seven markets.  Some 100 IT professionals were surveyed in each market, spanning Austrailia, Canada, Germany, India, the Netherlands, the U.S. and the U.K.  For each country, half of the respondents represented companies of 500-1,000 employees, while the other half work for companies of 1,000+ employees.  And it turns out, 92% of IT organizations are at least aware of workers using their own devices in the workplace.  That’s a start. Ninety-four percent of survey respondents intend to have a formal BYO policy in place by mid-2013, which is up from 44% today.  The research listed two primary reasons for an organization’s plans for implementing a BYO policy, which the VP of Desktop Marketing & Strategy for Citrix, Mick Hollison, outlines:

“There are those who  are using BYO to keep up with the rapid consumerization of IT and then there are forward-thinking CIOs who have embraced BYO as a way to attract the best talent, encourage a flexible working environment and raise productivity levels.”

While there’s a pretty big jump in the number of organizations hoping to have a BYO strategy in place by 2013, 62% of respondents indicate they already have invested or plan to invest in desktop virtualization.  This is a particular area of interest for businesses, with 80% of those organizations intending to leverage desktop virtualization investments to support employee-owned devices.  Desktop virtualization addresses the two key challenges cited by participants–security and device management.  Seems easy enough when it comes to desktop virtualization, but what about employee-owned devices? There’s some evolution still anticipated in the device sector, as connected gadgets will only grow in popularity.  Laptops are still commonplace for employees to bring to work, but tablets are centralizing themselves as the primary personal computing device for about 23% of workers by 2013, as opposed to 8% today.  That leaves a pretty wide range of devices to manage, spanning a few different mobile operating systems, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows.  Desktop virtualization technology will really come into play here, helping IT to manage the myriad of devices and platforms that make up the mobile ecosystem of tomorrow.  A universal solution will certainly be required, but what will it look like? Citrix has an idea, as its virtualization products already address the main issues around network security and cloud access.  The company’s most recent product pushlooked at several developing trends in this space, and sought to provide solutions for them all.  From XenDesktop to GoToMeeting, virtualization is a key driver in Citrix’s long-term offerings, and developing out this space will further position Citrix for the workplace of tomorrow.

“When I came into the workforce it was assumed that a company would provide the network you work in,” Hollison recalls, as I ask him what the workplace of tomorrow will actually look like for IT.  “And the onus around that will move around the users themselves.  It will move to service delivery instead of break-fixes and managing devices.  Users will do the device management–it will be more about service maintenance and access to apps.”

It sounds like IT heaven, where calls about missing ethernet cords and system crashes are a thing of the past.  But from what we’ve seen so far, this uncertain byproduct of the mobile industry shift is still finding its legs.  There’s a few companies we’ve been following at SiliconAngle that are addressing the needs of network security and BYO device management, and they all have a different take on a solution. Beyond Citrix there’s also Zenprise, which uses blacklisting and app approvals as the basis of their network security and device control mechanisms.  AppSensedeals with virtualization, with a series of management features that set up user layers for access points.  They all still require a level of administrative know-how, and IT will certainly be pivotal in this aspect.  And Wikibon analyst David Floyer points out that IT will have to be more flexible in supporting end users.

“There’s several trends going on,” Floyer says.  “IT used to be able to define everything, from devices to security.  There are issues but those are going to be for a subset of programs.  But problems with end users and their devices have never gone away.”

Floyer goes on to note an interesting opportunity he’s identified some time ago, around designing a cloud operating system that can deal with the back end as well as the content servers.  It would need to be a single OS, and so far Floyer fingers Apple, Google and Microsoft as being best suited for the deed.  These are the pillars of tomorrow’s technology ecosystem, but it still leaves plenty of room for companies like Citrix to bridge these operating systems, enabling them to work seamlessly for IT departments and beyond.