Employees are not only asking IT departments for Macs at work, they’re bringing their own into the office. The Forrester report finds that 22 percent of enterprise businesses foresee the use of Macs owned by employees “increasing significantly.” But at the same time 41 percent of those same companies don’t allow those employees to access e-mail or the company network on those machines, either at the office or from home. As analyst David Johnson writes, that just encourages people to spend their own time figuring out how to bypass these rules:

That leaves a lot of employees to find their own ways to get around corporate prohibition. Companies Forrester spoke with for this document described a gray market emerging internally, where employees share tips and strategies to use their Macs at work and bypass corporate roadblocks.

Forrester says you may as well let Mac users have them out in the open and accessible to the network at work since their study shows that people who want to work on MacBooks, for instance, classify as a “power notebook user.” To them that means those employees are the ones that work longer and are more productive. Another reason for the change of heart: Forrester says Macs “have developed a reputation for reliability and low maintenance.” What IT person in charge of the budget doesn’t want to hear that?

But while the guys managing desktop and laptop deployment may still need to get with the program, the teams managing mobile IT have already seen the light on letting employees have input on their devices. Since the arrival of the iPhone and Android smartphones, this same phenomenon has been taking place. A group of mobile IT specialists talked about it at GigaOM Mobilize in San Francisco last month.

Julie Palen, SVP of Tangoe, says that a great percentage of employees are not asking their employers for a corporate phone. They don’t mind paying for a device or the plan as long as they can use a device of their choice and access the company network, she said.

“It’s irrelevant who owns the device or who pays for the plan,” said Palen. “It’s all about the device, as long as the data is secure and controlled … then that’s the big change and the answer becomes yes.”

Because the tools are there to secure those networks, companies are basically silly not to let tech-savvy employees use their own devices. And mobile IT guys finally figured it out this year, the Mobilize panel agreed:

“2011 was the year mobile IT was born,” said Bob Tinker, CEO of MobileIron. “It was the year the IT industry figured out mobile, and it’s the year that mobile figured out IT … Every small, medium and large enterprise around the world is going to be deploying smartphones and tablets at scale over the next 12 to 18 months.”

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of effect Forrester’s exhortation has over the next year or so. Will IT managers take it to heart, or just continue business as usual? We can guess which option employees would want.

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Forrester’s Ted Schadler looked at how tablets are making their way into the enterprise in a new report, asking more than 200 companies about their experiences with the iPad (primarily) since January 2010. What they found was both surprising and, in some ways, to be expected.

IT Leads the Charge

First, and most unusual, it looks like the drive to bring the iPad to enterprise isn’t being pushed from the bottom up, as is often the case with new technology adoption at larger companies. Instead, IT departments are stepping up and initiating iPad pilot programs of their own accord. According to Forrester, this time IT doesn’t want to be stuck in the reactionary position of playing catchup, as happened when the iPhone first starting infiltrating the enterprise in a major way.

The numbers reflect this strategy. 30 percent of firms are actively working on tablet apps, while another 43 percent are interested in the devices in some way or another. Considering the newness of tablet tech, those are very high percentages.

How the iPad Is Useful

In the report, Forrester identified three major ways the iPad is working its way into enterprise IT:

• Displacing Laptops. The iPad is a worthy notebook replacement for many, especially for people who use their portables mainly for email and other forms of web-based communication. But for now, the device is mostly appearing in scenarios where it’s more appropriate, so people aren’t ditching their notebooks entirely at the office just yet.
• Replacing Paper. We see this happening in the medical and pharmaceutical industries especially. Anywhere people once had to carry around a stack of paper, basically, is a good place for the iPad to step in. In many cases it’s more portable, and it’s definitely much more flexible .
• New Uses. Where companies may have lacked an efficient way doing something, or at least of doing it in a way that provided instant connection to additional resources and data, the iPad has stepped in to fill the gap. Forrester cites the example of sales floor personnel being able to instantly customize an order with a customer.

The advantages and disadvantages of tablets in enterprise, according to Forrester.

Effect on Business

It’s too early yet to provide solid numbers on the kind of business impact the iPad is having in enterprise, but a few use cases described in the report do point to some pretty significant advantages. One pharmaceutical company, for example, is using iPads to avoid the costs associated with the destruction and reprinting of new marketing materials when changes need to be made, something it’s required to do by the FDA. Sales staff can carry iPads instead of printed materials, so that updates can be issued on the fly, keeping everything current.

The introduction of the tablet isn’t without challenges. Forrester notes that IT will soon be faced with a glut of choice, and recommends prioritizing iOS, Android, and HTML5 first. There’s also the problem of when you can and can’t use an iPad. Office still has only limited support on the device, with no official solution from Microsoft on the horizon.

Problems aside, the iPad is already guaranteed to be a permanent fixture in business. It should provide a way for Apple to heighten the enterprise presence of all of its offerings, since iPad users will want greater cross-platform integration once tablets prove their worth.

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“What’s interesting about the iPhone is [that] the capability of the device is tremendous,” he added. “We’re looking closely at it. There are a lot of people in IT who play around with it. So I wouldn’t say we have our heads in the sand. And as Apple catches up on the centralized management issues, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we would replace BlackBerrys with iPhones, or add iPhones to the mix.”

I like the quote because it’s realistic. If you’re rolling thousands of these things out, then RIM is ahead of the curve in terms of manageability at this point. But, as he states, Apple is getting there. Someone with this attitude gives me hope that they’ll give the iPhone a fair review, keep an eye on it, and potentially roll it out as improvements dictate. With this kind of attitude, RIM should be worried.

On the other hand, there are still some backwoods folks, the kind RIM loves and hope to keep in its pocket forever:

“Frankly,” added a second, “some management in our organization think it’s more of a toy/gimmick thing because of the way it’s marketed.”

Ah, yes, the old “toy” argument. Just like a Mac was a “toy” 25 years ago. As if being fun, easy to use, and a major leap forward is a curse. Did they never consider that if a device is easy to use people will, you know, use it? Wouldn’t that be a benefit to their company? How short-sighted can a company get?

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Much has been made of the iPhone’s potential as an enterprise device, with many still holding out against its usefulness in a corporate environment. A new report from Forrester Research, however, finds that enterprise iPhone users get more than just a communication tool with Apple’s handset; they get happiness and productivity, too.

The 12-page report from Forrester covers three large companies that support iPhone deployment: Kraft Foods Inc., Oracle Corp. and Amylin Pharmaceuticals. In each case, the report’s author Tim Shadler says the evidence suggests that the iPhone not only lead to a “happier, more productive workforce” but also carries lower support costs, which is unexpected considering that the device is still a relative novelty in corporate IT environments.

Apparently the effects the iPhone has on employees depends more on it being what they want than on any specific software or hardware feature it offers. Basically, they’re happier and more productive because they’re using the tools they want to use, which in the cases described in the report, just happens to be the iPhone.

Not everything is roses, though, as problems persist with ActiveSync and calendering when using Apple’s smartphone. Also, tests find that BlackBerry Enterprise Server is much more dependable for messaging. The report recommends leaving phone plan management and hardware purchasing to individual employees, but managing device usage policy in-house in order to avoid even more issues related to ballooning IT costs.

At each of the three companies used in the report, iPhone adoption numbers were strong, and were expected to grow significantly in the next year. Kraft, for example, currently has around 2,000 employees using the devices, growing to an estimated 4,000 by year’s end. Considering some of the new enterprise-friendly features of iPhone 3.0 software, like copy-and-paste, push notification and custom hardware peripheral support, I wouldn’t be surprised if those estimates get revised upwards following the WWDC in June.

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