Firms should embrace crowdsourcing and employee-led innovation, say Dell and Intel

Much has been written about the consumerisation of IT, but the implications of this trend go much further than just companies allowing staff to bring their iPad to work. In the longer term, it could lead to a wholesale reorientation of the way businesses are organised, as well as radically changing the way IT services are delivered.

Dell and Intel are halfway through a project to examine the issues that are likely to confront enterprises in the future, and are to deliver their full findings in January.

In the meantime, the two companies have published an intermediate report entitled The Evolving Workforce, which identifies a number of trends indicating that companies will need to change the way they measure productivity, and foster greater employee involvement in coming up with solutions to IT problems in the future.

The main trend that will have an impact over the next five to 10 years is the consumerisation of enterprise IT, according to Bryan Jones, Dell's executive director for public and large enterprise.

This blending of personal technology and corporate technology, typified by 'bring your own device' policies, has been much discussed already, but Jones claimed that it is happening at an increasing rate, and that it is radically changing the expectations of end users.

"They want the same functionality, accessibility and productivity they get on a smartphone for their personal life in their professional environment, but right now in a lot of IT environments those two things don't intersect," he said.

The problem with a growing number of device types is picking the correct tool for the job, while the need for compatibility and interoperability becomes paramount, according to the report.

Another issue that will have to be overcome is security. New security models may have to be developed to cope with staff accessing data from outside the network, and companies will no longer be able to assume that data and applications are safe simply because they are behind the firewall.

But all of this will be nothing more than pie in the sky if IT chiefs see 'bring your own device' as simply an extravagance that they are unwilling to indulge, especially given the current economic conditions.