How the Cloud Is Reshaping the Modern Office [Infographic]

The office-provided BlackBerry was only the beginning of what we now see as the modern office revolution.

Freedom to work anywhere, anytime was a wildly liberating achievement, and it helped kick-start the smartphone era into high gear.

But the modern office has changed drastically since BlackBerry launched its 8800 model in 2007.

Corner offices and reserved parking spaces mean less in the modern office, now that people have started taking their work outside the office to their living rooms and favorite coffee shops and even on vacation. Workers are swapping their office-provided mobile devices for their personal mobile devices, resulting in a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) revolution.

These trends and more were revealed in a study of 450 IT professionals, conducted by Microsoft and Harris Interactive, the results of which have been compiled into an infographic.

The study found that productivity in the modern office is achieved through a combination of on-premises and cloud solutions. While we’re still in the early stages of business going 100-percent cloud, it is clear that hybrid on-premises and cloud-based solutions are the norm. In fact, only 34 percent of the professionals surveyed said that their organizations use only on-premises solutions for productivity.

Another major growing component of the modern office is BYOD. According to survey data, 57 percent of organizations currently allow employees to bring their own devices, and an additional 15 percent plan to do so in the future.

IT workers, however, still have some concerns about it. Almost two-thirds of the professionals surveyed are extremely or very concerned that, as a result of BYOD, their organizations will lose sensitive data without knowing about it.

Take a look at the full infographic on the modern office, below, and check out this post for tips on defining a BYOD policy for your organization.