Privacy and security are two of the primary concerns of most companies. That is why you will see a lot of companies investing in security applications, firewalls, DLP solutions and a lot more. How about allowing employees to bring and use their own notebook to do corporate work? Do you think companies will allow this?

A recent report released by Gartner seems to be pointing to that direction. Enterprises are increasingly considering the use of employee-owned notebooks, and more than 40 percent of organizations have a policy regarding the use of employee-owned PCs, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Companies in the sample expect the average number of workers using employee-owned notebooks as their primary work PC to increase from 10 percent in 2009 to 14 percent by mid-2010.

The survey took place in the second quarter of 2009 and involved 528 IT managers in organizations with more than 500 employees in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom via a combination of phone-based and Web-based interviews.

During the past two years, nine out of 10 companies have addressed the issue of employee-owned devices. Nearly half (48 percent) prohibit their use outright; many others (43 percent) have specific policies that allow their use.

The Gartner survey found that service companies, such as insurance and telecommunications companies, are more likely to allow employee-owned PCs than organizations in the manufacturing, wholesale or government sectors. There were also differences from a country point of view with 60 percent of the German companies in the sample currently allowing the use of employee-owned PCs versus only 30 percent of U.S. and U.K. companies.

Across all three surveyed countries, organizations expect to see an increase in the average number of notebook users that are using employee-owned PCs in the next 12 to 18 months. U.S. companies expect to see the biggest increases in employee-owned PCs with approximately a 60 percent increase. German companies expect a nearly 40 percent increase, while U.K. organizations expect only modest increases of approximately 15 percent in the next year.

Gartner analysts said that successful employee-owned notebook programs have the potential to improve predictability and manageability of the users’ software environment. Compared with less-managed deployment scenarios, a managed virtual machine on an employee-owned notebook offers total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of between 9 percent and 40 percent when compared with company provided notebooks.

Gartner maintains that most of the cost savings with employee-owned notebooks are in indirect management costs. The direct costs of a virtual machine on an employee-owned mobile PC are actually higher than for a company-provided mobile PC, but this is more than compensated for by the greater worker satisfaction and potential increased productivity.

Here in the Philippines, I think this will take some time before this employee-owned notebook thing will be allowed. I know of companies who prohibit its workers to bring even just a USB drive for security reasons - What more an employee-owned notebook? To each his own I guess.

I am logging off. Stay cool everyone and God Bless! Merry Christmas to all!