With enterprise BYOD programs on the rise, and an estimated 4.5 million Amazon Kindle Fire tablets sold, Good Technology is offering an enterprise management app for the Fire.
Following
the launch of a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) study, Good Technology has
announced a new application enabling enterprises to support a tablet that's
likely already made its transition from gift boxes beneath Christmas trees to
offices around the country: the Amazon Kindle Fire.
Amazon,
shy about sharing exact figures, is estimated to have sold about 4.5 million
Fire tablets since the device's November arrival.
Good
offers enterprise IT tools for supporting multiplatform mobility. Its Good for
Enterprise on the Kindle Fire app is now available in the Amazon Appstore for
Android and requires a Good for Enterprise server and client access license
(CAL).
In
its most recent survey of customers, Good found more than 70 percent to be
supporting BYOD programs, up from 60 percent a year ago. And for good reasonmore
devices than ever, approved and otherwise, are traveling through enterprise
front doors
.
Infinite
Research forecast this January that the enterprise tablet market is set to
increase from 13.7 million units in 2011 to 96.4 million units in 2016.
"Mobile applications are allowing enterprises to realize
huge productivity gains," Mark Ritorto, president of Infinite Research,
said at the time. "The tablet has emerged as the perfect solution to give
employees access to the computing tools necessary to succeed in todays
hyper-competitive business environment.
A
February ChangeWave survey found strong interest among business IT buyers in
the new Apple iPad. Among the companies planning to buy tablets during the
second quarter,
84
percent in the survey said they now plan to buy the iPad.
However,
with tablet adoption levels expected to be in-line with the historical growth
rates of smartphones, according to Infinite Research, there's still plenty of
room for Android-running devices.
"Our
latest device activation report confirmed that the Android OS continued to be
adopted and supported by the enterprise," Hervé Danzelaud, vice president of
business development for Good Technology, said in a March 14 statement,
pointing to Good's newest BYOD survey.
The
survey found BYOD to be particularly popular with larger companies; 80 percent
of those with more than 2,000 employees have a BYOD policy, as do 60 percent of
those with more than 5,000 employees.
Security
has been a primary concern with employee-owned devicesand so a primary driver
of BYOD programs. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that the vast majority of
Good customers supporting BYOD programs are in the security-sensitive finance
and insurance industries.
Among
Good's finance customers, 35 percent are currently supporting BYOD programs,
while in the next-largest industry, health care, there's currently 10 percent
buy-in. Following health care were professional services, manufacturing and
transportation/logistics, respectively, with 5 percent of the latter category
supporting BYOD.
Retail/wholesale
and government were among the industries least likely to support BYOD, said
Good, "at least for now."
Good
also found employees willing to pay for the convenience of using their devices
of choice. Among companies with BYOD programs, in 50 percent employees cover
all costs and "are happy to do so," said Good. In another 45 percent,
companies offer employees a stipend or "expense back" option to help
cover the costs of the device.
"Companies
that offer BYOD stipends have the highest rate of employees using mobile
devices when compared to companies that require employees cover all BYOD costs
themselves, or allow for expense-back of service plan costs but limit to users with
management pre-approval," said the report.
BYOD
is also gaining support globally. While nearly 49 percent of companies limit
their programs to the United States, more than 51 percent support BYOD in other
countries and 45 percent support BYOD in multiple countries.
"This
seems to be a time of transition, as companies are taking multiple approaches,
notably with respect to their overall BYOD program objectives, the geographic
scope of those programs, and their philosophy and approach to the user pays
model versus alternative stipend and/or expense back approaches," Good
concluded.
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