Mobilocracy to Rise Within Corporations Globally – iPass Report Says

iPass Inc. released (pdf) its year-end Mobile Workforce Report that predicts the rise of the Mobilocracy – (1) a powerful class of worker who relies on mobile devices for greater productivity; (2) the common worker, esp. as a mobile workforce – within corporations, as mobile employees’ behaviors and preferences increasingly play a larger role in IT decisions and directions.

The year-end Mobile Workforce Report is based on surveys of more than 4,000 mobile workers and nearly 30 million user sessions. It examines the trends that shaped the mobile workforce in 2010, and five predictions for 2011 and beyond.

As mobility increasingly shapes the IT landscape, enterprises will need to develop a holistic mobility strategy that maximizes the use of the best and most cost-effective networks.

The report predicts:

• The rise of the Mobilocracy – trained in the consumer world, today’s end users are increasingly more sophisticated in troubleshooting technical issues than a generation ago, and they expect to play a larger role in technology decisions within their company and rely on IT for education and training.
• ‘Bring your own mobile’ device will become a company policy – In the next several years there will be a shift in mobile device liability. At the same time employees and their companies will become much more cognizant of which type of network they connect their device to and how much it costs – regardless where liability rests.
• Security will get a makeover – With a trend toward “bring your own,” enterprise-security will need a significant makeover. A shift will take place from securing each individual system, to securing data – much of it in public and private clouds. Mobile employees need to be custodians of their own mobile security, and IT needs to provide the educational resources to empower employees on how to operate in a safe manner.
• The trivialization of place will increase– work is something people do, not a place that they go to. Where people work will matter less and less for a number reasons from improved productivity, to decreased carbon footprint and reduced office expenditure.
• Social boundaries will be redefined – mobile employees will develop coping strategies to deal with hyper-connectivity and increasing demands on their attention. Most will find a way to redefine their social boundaries between work and personal time.