CIOs must brace for employee devices in the workplace

Chief information officers should brace themselves for a future of flexible IT as employees will routinely bring in their own machines and expect the business to support them, says Tony Henderson, head of communications at UK tech sector trade body Intellect.

Henderson was speaking at a roundtable discussion organised by recruiter Adecco on the future of technology skills in the UK. Asked to predict the shape of the IT business landscape in five years' time, he said big businesses are going to have to become more flexible about how IT is provisioned and managed — to enable a new generation of workers who use consumer technologies to communicate and be productive.

"The big challenge for the enterprise space is that people will expect to bring their own devices and connect in to the office networks and systems," Henderson said. "That change is probably coming a lot quicker than just five years' time. I think it will be a lot sooner than that."

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see IT's future: Bring your own PC-tablet-phone to work on silicon.com.