Consumerization
Encyclopedia
Consumerization is a stable neologism that describes the trend for new information technology
to emerge first in the consumer
market and then spread into business organizations, resulting in the convergence of the IT and consumer electronics
industries, and a shift in IT innovation
from large businesses to the home. For example, many people now find that their home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in their workplace
. The term, consumerization, was first popularized by Douglas Neal and John Taylor of CSC
's Leading Edge Forum in 2001 and is one of the key drivers of the Web 2.0
and Enterprise 2.0
movements.
, and from the activities of early consumer market adopters. Both processes emerged as an important phenomenon in the late 1970s and mid-80s as the microprocessor
flourished, and PCs
, calculators
, VCRs, facsimile machines, and other devices were all consumerized. Each of these early examples began as relatively expensive private infrastructures that were primarily used by large organizations. By contrast, CD-ROMs
, DVD
s, video games, and instant messaging
all had their roots in consumer markets. Still other technologies – email
, PDA
s and cell phones – have both consumer and business market origins. In all three of these cases, pervasive societal usage eventually created vast economies of scale that businesses alone could never have achieved, supported by interoperable standards, ever-improving quality, and self-service operation. Business buyers are often surprised to learn that in many consumerized markets they are viewed by the vendors as just a small niche market.
Figure 1 – The process of Consumerization pulls from both private infrastructure and early consumer adopters.
Consumerization presents significant new business challenges and opportunities. Historically, businesses – and particularly large enterprises – have viewed information technologies as private infrastructure, to be owned and used by the business, not individuals. Even today, many businesses are more comfortable with traditional sourcing through private infrastructure markets. But consumerization establishes new norms that are just as relevant to business as to anyone else. For example, some worry that consumer services are unreliable. In fact, many are more reliable than their business counterparts. Yahoo, for example, supports more than 250 million email
accounts – a scale that dwarfs even the largest enterprises. The company would be out of business if its services were unreliable, and it is a recognized leader in dealing with spam
. Over time, it has become clear that the needs of consumers for reliability, security, cost effectiveness
, interoperability
and self-service are similar to the needs that most enterprises have.
Consumerization not only enables vasts economies of scale but it also shapes the technology
, as consumers become the primary market and as many services are supported by advertising
. This can create an additional psychological barrier for businesses, which often struggle with the idea that the same device employees use for work is also the one that they use for entertainment, and therefore the traditional boundaries between work and play must blur. In many ways, consumerization is the process by which the IT industry is being transformed from its roots as a business tool into primarily a social medium. It's consequences are expected to grow sharply in the future.
Consumerization has reached the tipping point
Data shows that the majority of companies surveyed already allow employees to use their personal devices for work-related activities. On an aggregate, 56% of the respondents say yes to Consumerization as end-users favor personal devices because easier to use, more convenient and allow them to mix personal and work. While the trend is clearly affecting organizations worldwide, not all regions have adapted at the same pace: the U.S. already lead this innovation with 75% of yes, the more conservative Japan is on the raise with 36% and Germany somewhere in between with 59%. From an industry vertical perspective, Education (80%), Health Care (69%) and Business Services (67%) are the most consumerized industries while Manufacturing (48%), Government (39%) and Utilities (36%) are slower at embracing consumer technology. Company size doesn’t seem to be a discriminating factor although mid-large organizations show higher adoption rates, up to 65% for companies with 1,500 employees.
A strategic approach to Consumerization starts with providing IT support to personal devices
31% of the mobile devices connecting to the corporate network are owned by the employees in organizations that open up to consumerization: 66% are laptops, 25% smartphones and 9% are tablets. Considering that consumer smartphones and tablets are likely to run non-standard operating systems – such as Android and Apple iOS – Taking a strategic approach to consumerization starts with providing IT support to these employees for their personal devices when used for work related activities. The majority of the organizations (59%) already provide full or limited support: within the IT department, Security Teams (37%) are the most likely to provide this kind of service, Help Desk (24%) and Endpoint Management (23%) are quite common while some organizations also have dedicated Mobility Teams (14%.
New IT tools reduce security risks and management costs
Security (64%) and data loss (59%) remain top concerns for most companies allowing employees to bring their personal devices in the workplace. Compliance and legal implications are greater concern in the U.S. and Japan than in Germany. To reduce security risks and to lower management costs, 79% of respondents require employees to install mobile security solutions on their personal mobile devices. 69% of respondents agreed that mobile device security is a key component in protecting their IT environments from employee-owned mobile devices while 71% of respondents consider a combination of mobile security and mobile device management to be the most effective.
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
to emerge first in the consumer
Consumer
Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...
market and then spread into business organizations, resulting in the convergence of the IT and consumer electronics
Consumer electronics
Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver...
industries, and a shift in IT innovation
Innovation
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society...
from large businesses to the home. For example, many people now find that their home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in their workplace
Workplace
The workplace is a place where someone works.*Toxic workplace*Workplace aggression: A specific type of aggression that occurs in the workplace....
. The term, consumerization, was first popularized by Douglas Neal and John Taylor of CSC
Computer Sciences Corporation
Computer Sciences Corporation is an American information technology and business services company headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, USA...
's Leading Edge Forum in 2001 and is one of the key drivers of the Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
and Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise 2.0 is the use of "Web 2.0" technologies within an organization to enable or streamline business processes while enhancing collaboration - connecting people through the use of social-media tools. Enterprise 2.0 aims to help employees, customers and suppliers collaborate, share, and...
movements.
Understanding the consumerization process.
As shown in the figure (first drawn in 2002), consumerization can emerge in several different ways—from the consumerization of traditional "private" business infrastructureInfrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
, and from the activities of early consumer market adopters. Both processes emerged as an important phenomenon in the late 1970s and mid-80s as the microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
flourished, and PCs
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
, calculators
Calculator
An electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.The first solid-state electronic...
, VCRs, facsimile machines, and other devices were all consumerized. Each of these early examples began as relatively expensive private infrastructures that were primarily used by large organizations. By contrast, CD-ROMs
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s, video games, and instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
all had their roots in consumer markets. Still other technologies – email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, PDA
PDA
A PDA is most commonly a Personal digital assistant, also known as a Personal data assistant, a mobile electronic device.PDA may also refer to:In science, medicine and technology:...
s and cell phones – have both consumer and business market origins. In all three of these cases, pervasive societal usage eventually created vast economies of scale that businesses alone could never have achieved, supported by interoperable standards, ever-improving quality, and self-service operation. Business buyers are often surprised to learn that in many consumerized markets they are viewed by the vendors as just a small niche market.
Figure 1 – The process of Consumerization pulls from both private infrastructure and early consumer adopters.
Consumerization presents significant new business challenges and opportunities. Historically, businesses – and particularly large enterprises – have viewed information technologies as private infrastructure, to be owned and used by the business, not individuals. Even today, many businesses are more comfortable with traditional sourcing through private infrastructure markets. But consumerization establishes new norms that are just as relevant to business as to anyone else. For example, some worry that consumer services are unreliable. In fact, many are more reliable than their business counterparts. Yahoo, for example, supports more than 250 million email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
accounts – a scale that dwarfs even the largest enterprises. The company would be out of business if its services were unreliable, and it is a recognized leader in dealing with spam
E-mail spam
Email spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email , is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. One subset of UBE is UCE...
. Over time, it has become clear that the needs of consumers for reliability, security, cost effectiveness
Cost Efficiency
Cost efficiency , in the context of parallel computer algorithms, refers to a measure of how effectively parallel computing can be used to solve a particular problem...
, interoperability
Interoperability
Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...
and self-service are similar to the needs that most enterprises have.
Consumerization not only enables vasts economies of scale but it also shapes the technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, as consumers become the primary market and as many services are supported by advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
. This can create an additional psychological barrier for businesses, which often struggle with the idea that the same device employees use for work is also the one that they use for entertainment, and therefore the traditional boundaries between work and play must blur. In many ways, consumerization is the process by which the IT industry is being transformed from its roots as a business tool into primarily a social medium. It's consequences are expected to grow sharply in the future.
Consumerization Facts
An increasing number of organizations take a strategic approach to Consumerization by providing IT support for personal devices and by deploying new IT tools to secure and manage them. This online survey was conducted in June 2011 in the U.S., Germany and Japan among IT personnel responsible for endpoint operational management and/or messaging and collaboration operations. Respondents needed to be part of an organization with at least 500 employees worldwide. A total of 600 surveys were collected equally distributed across countries and industry verticals.Consumerization has reached the tipping point
Data shows that the majority of companies surveyed already allow employees to use their personal devices for work-related activities. On an aggregate, 56% of the respondents say yes to Consumerization as end-users favor personal devices because easier to use, more convenient and allow them to mix personal and work. While the trend is clearly affecting organizations worldwide, not all regions have adapted at the same pace: the U.S. already lead this innovation with 75% of yes, the more conservative Japan is on the raise with 36% and Germany somewhere in between with 59%. From an industry vertical perspective, Education (80%), Health Care (69%) and Business Services (67%) are the most consumerized industries while Manufacturing (48%), Government (39%) and Utilities (36%) are slower at embracing consumer technology. Company size doesn’t seem to be a discriminating factor although mid-large organizations show higher adoption rates, up to 65% for companies with 1,500 employees.
A strategic approach to Consumerization starts with providing IT support to personal devices
31% of the mobile devices connecting to the corporate network are owned by the employees in organizations that open up to consumerization: 66% are laptops, 25% smartphones and 9% are tablets. Considering that consumer smartphones and tablets are likely to run non-standard operating systems – such as Android and Apple iOS – Taking a strategic approach to consumerization starts with providing IT support to these employees for their personal devices when used for work related activities. The majority of the organizations (59%) already provide full or limited support: within the IT department, Security Teams (37%) are the most likely to provide this kind of service, Help Desk (24%) and Endpoint Management (23%) are quite common while some organizations also have dedicated Mobility Teams (14%.
New IT tools reduce security risks and management costs
Security (64%) and data loss (59%) remain top concerns for most companies allowing employees to bring their personal devices in the workplace. Compliance and legal implications are greater concern in the U.S. and Japan than in Germany. To reduce security risks and to lower management costs, 79% of respondents require employees to install mobile security solutions on their personal mobile devices. 69% of respondents agreed that mobile device security is a key component in protecting their IT environments from employee-owned mobile devices while 71% of respondents consider a combination of mobile security and mobile device management to be the most effective.