More than 87 per cent of New Zealand organisations are investing in mobile systems to improve their experience with customers, according to the 2014 IDC New Zealand Cloud Study.
Security, however, remains the top concern when deploying these systems and should be a priority for these organisations, meaning mobility and security deployment should go hand-in-hand, says Adam Dodds, IT services research manager, IDC New Zealand.
"Organisations will live and die by the value of their information and how it is protected from others,” says Dodds. “Customers are willing to share more information about their location, preferences and needs but will act with ferociousness if this is not treated with due care.
“Security, irrespective of whether it is aligned to cloud or mobility, should be focused on as a discrete function – it connects to everything,” he says. “You must have a policy in place that will cover it and it needs executive champion at the back of that.”
Customers are willing to share more information about their location, preferences and needs but will act with ferociousness if this is not treated with due care.
This will force security up the priority lists, he says, and allow businesses “to take an organisational view including physical and technical security, and act as such".
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The study finds New Zealand in the top three countries in the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) when it comes to maturity of mobile adoption. Some 2000 organisations (including 150 in New Zealand) were covered in the study.
New Zealand organisations signal a strong proportion of budget for mobility – 40 per cent of businesses will spend 10 to 30 per cent of their budget on mobility. This is higher than their counterparts in Australia, says Dodds.
The study notes that the budget for mobility is coming from across the business.
Over a quarter (29 per cent) of businesses now have a budget that is dedicated to mobility; 35 per cent is coming from existing IT budgets and 9 per cent from marketing. The remainder (27 per cent) is evaluated on a case by case basis.
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With 53 per cent of businesses now saying up to 20 per cent of their revenue is coming from online, the ability to be more insightful about the customer and their customer's environment is a must, says Dodds.
Send news tips and comments to divina_paredes@idg.co.nz
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