Where are mobility and consumerization of IT heading in 2013?

IDG News Service - Analysts predict that cloud computing will play a larger role in mobility and consumerization of IT, Windows Phone and Android tablet sales will grow and there will more hot-desking in large organisations in 2013.

IDC head of research Matthew Oostveen said there will be more software services hosted in the cloud to meet the needs of mobile workers.

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"Software as a service deployment models have been rapidly taken up," Oostveen said. "Research shows that by 2014, 80 per cent of new software will be available via a cloud. The reason for this, of course, is to associate the need for applications and data and workloads on the move this mobile workforce is going to have," he said.

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda also sees more uptake of software services in the cloud, which will fuel the bring-your-own-application (BYOA) trend.

"This trend in consumerisation will extend to software, in addition to devices," Gedda said. "More consumers are using increasingly sophisticated, cloud-based software to manage their information -- everything from document and photo management to social collaboration. This is giving rise to the bring your own app revolution."

Gartner fellow David Cearley said more people will look at hosting their data in a private cloud to be able to access their information using any device they like, enabling greater mobility.

"The personal cloud will gradually replace the PC as the location where individuals keep their personal content, access their services and personal preferences and centre their digital lives," he said.

"It will be the glue that connects the web of devices they choose to use during different aspects of their daily lives. Users will see it as a portable, always-available place where they go for all their digital needs.

"No one platform, form factor, technology or vendor will dominate and managed diversity and mobile device management will be an imperative."

Cearley predicts Windows Phone and Android tablets will grow in the market and compete a lot more with Apple devices.

"If the Nokia/Microsoft alliance executes well Windows Phone should grow to take the number three position in smartphones displacing RIM by 2013/2014 and could match Apple's market share by 2015," he said.

"In the tablet space, Apple's dominance will be attacked by Android as lower cost devices emerge in 2013."

With the increasing trend in mobile workers, Oostveen said more large organisations will practice hot-desking in the workplace where a desk is allocated to more than one worker at a time to save on office space and cost.

"We are not going to be bound to our desks in 2013, there's going to be a lot of liberated workers out in the Australian market place," he said.

"We going to see the uptake of more hot-desking situations as more and more workers have no need to come into the office on a daily basis. We are seeing a lot of technology vendors and also higher end organisations, higher-end being larger in size, starting to adopt these new workplace practices."

Follow Rebecca Merrett on Twitter: @Rebecca_Merrett

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Originally published on www.cio.com.au. Click here to read the original story.