Over Half of UK Organisations Have Employees Who Connect Wearable Devices to Company Wi-Fi
London – October 7, 2015 – Ipswitch announced the findings of its 2015 Wearable Technology Survey* which polls IT professionals from businesses and organisations within the United Kingdom. This year’s survey reveals concerns about wearable technology in the workplace.
Almost half (49%) of IT professionals are running networks that have smart watches connecting to them via Wi-Fi. 43 per cent have fitness bands connecting, almost a fifth (17%) have health monitoring devices and 12 per cent have recording and photography gear.
Only seven per cent of all respondents say that their company provides wearable technology to its own workers. This is despite a quarter (25%) of IT professionals saying in a similar survey** in October 2014 that they expected to introduce wearable technology within the next year.
More wearable technology, more concerns for IT pros
Top concerns for IT professionals relating to high adoption of wearable technology in the workplace:
- Security breaches (71%)
- More work to support more devices (48%)
- Decreased network bandwidth (32%)
However, when asked if they had IT policies in place to manage the impact of wearable technology, over two-thirds (69%) did not and only one-fifth (21%) did have such a policy. This compares to almost three quarters (73%) who said they had no policy in place in last year’s survey.
“Wearable technology might be convenient for the user, but our survey shows that it’s the IT professionals who get inconvenienced by supporting more devices and worrying about security breaches,” said Alessandro Porro, Vice President of International at Ipswitch.
“Fortunately, IT pros can be better prepared to deal with Apple Watches and Fitbits when they have the proper tools to provide total visibility into network traffic and bandwidth utilisation. A clear picture of what is happening helps to ensure that wearable technology isn’t going to affect network or application performance.”
Ipswitch WhatsConnected helps IT pros monitor and manage devices including wearable technology in the following ways:
- Understand detailed physical connectivity, device type, and configuration information of anything with an IP address
- Quickly pinpoint network performance issues visually with auto-generated topology maps
- Automatically maintain a comprehensive network and server inventory of physical connectivity, device asset information, configuration information, and systems inventory
- Generate comprehensive reports to help meet compliance
For a free 30-day trial of Ipswitch WhatsConnected, visit http://ipswit.ch/T0DxK.
Ipswitch 2015 Wearable Technology Survey Resources
- Full survey results: http://ipswit.ch/T0Ebf
- Infographic: http://ipswit.ch/T0Efz
* The Ipswitch 2015 Wearable Technology Survey was taken by 450 IT pros in the United States, the UK, France and Germany from September 17-24, 2015. Of the total number of IT pros surveyed, 111 of them work in the UK.
** Last year’s survey of 316 IT Professionals was conducted in October 2014 and included 104 responses from the UK
About Ipswitch
Ipswitch helps solve complex IT problems with simple solutions. The company’s software has been installed on more than 150,000 networks spanning 168 countries to monitor networks, applications and servers, and securely transfer files between systems, business partners and customers. Ipswitch was founded in 1991 and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts with offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. For more information, visit www.ipswitch.com.
Ipswitch and WhatsUp Gold are registered trademarks of Ipswitch, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.
###