KUALA LUMPUR: Symantec Corporation’s 2012 State of Mobility Survey shows a significant uptake in mobile applications across organisations in Malaysia.
The survey found 67 per cent of Malaysian enterprises at least discussing deploying custom mobile applications and 26 per cent currently implementing or having already implemented custom mobile applications.
Despite this adoption, 44 per cent of survey respondents in Malaysia mentioned that mobility was somewhat to extremely challenging and a further 43 per cent identified mobile devices as one of their top three Information Technology (IT) risks.
The survey was conducted by Applied Research on 6,275 global organisations, including 150 in Malaysia.
The findings, revealed at a media briefing here yesterday, also show that the mobility risks impacting organisations due to mobile incidents, including data loss, damage to the brand, productivity loss and loss of customer trust amounted to an average loss in Malaysia last year of US$183,000.
The survey showed IT was also striking a balance between mobile benefits and risks by transforming its approach to mobility to deliver improved business agility, increased productivity and workforce effectiveness.
“We are seeing a cultural shift and rapid adoption in mobile devices among organisations in Malaysia — from refusing mobile devices not long ago to actively distributing and developing mobile applications today,” Symantec Malaysia senior country manager Alex Ong said.
“In spite of the challenges and complexities, it is encouraging to see organisations in Malaysia taking bold steps in embracing mobile devices in the workplace.
“Whether large enterprises or small and medium businesses (SMBs), the high adoption of mobile devices at the workplace among local businesses is impressive as it underlines a mature business environment that is keeping pace with global trends and technologies,” Ong said.
Although 70 per cent of the Malaysian organisations surveyed expected to see increased efficiency, 60 per cent actually saw efficiency gains after implementation of mobile devices.
The top three business benefits of mobile devices are increased efficiency, increased sales and reduced time to accomplish business tasks.
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. — Bernama