Companies will offer work apps for smartwatches, says Telsyte report

COMPANIES might soon supply work-related apps for employees’ smartwatches and other wearables they bring to the office.

COMPANIES might soon supply work-related apps for employees’ smartwatches and other wearables they bring to the office.

An analyst report predicts that wearables in a workplace could deliver everything from operator assistance to safety alerts and fire drill instructions and would have “a profound impact” on business.

The findings by Telsyte draws on survey findings from 461 Australian chief information officers and IT decision makers.

It said 65 per cent of teleworking organisations expected more staff to work from home over the next 12 months.

“To prepare for this, chief information officers must have ­applications and security procedures in place to keep staff productive while ensuring the information they access is secure,” the report, commissioned by UXC, said.

It said more than 50 per cent of Australian companies with 20 or more employees used cloud services and of these, nearly 40 per cent used an international provider that hosted their data offshore.

“The appetite for cloud computing remains strong and it is likely that cloud computing will continue to become more diverse and cater for workloads traditionally seen with on-premise IT.”

It said an era of collaboration would replace standard communication with the functionality of a traditional PABX system broadening when combined with the cloud.

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda said videoconferencing, instant messaging and chat while collaborating to create documents would be more common.

The report said 25 per cent of survey respondents made use of big data while a further 42 per cent of organisations were investigating the need for big data and analytics. But it warned that firms needed to innovate technology at a rate they could support, and with advances aligned to their business’s aims.

It said about one-third of Australian businesses have experienced problems from IT-related purchasing outside of the IT department.

“However, IT still has the responsibility of managing and securing all information used by the organisation, including from services procured outside of the IT department’s control.”

It said CIOs should consider transforming IT operations from being project oriented to service oriented.

UXC managing director Cris Nicolli said CIOs who mastered this balance would spearhead agile organisations that could further adapt to change.