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Press Release -- July 29th, 2014
Source: Verizon
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BYOD 2.0: The Influx of IoT Wearables in the Enterprise

Do you think wearable technology such as smart watches and smart glasses is just a passing whim of millennials, health and fitness experts, Silicon Valley upstarts or creative types in the advertising and entertainment industries? Consider these scenarios.

You work at a major retailer and a customer approaches you. Through the use of wearable facial recognition technology that your customer has opted into, you are able to recall your last interaction with this customer and immediately give them a heads up about an upcoming promotion.
You work at a local trauma center and it’s your day off. Suddenly, a notification on your smart watch alerts all available emergency personnel to report for duty due to a major car accident on the local Interstate.
I’ve been thinking about how the increasingly-hyped consumer trend of wearables will play out in the corporate environment and impact the enterprise mobility Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, so I caught up with best-selling author Dave Evans, vice president of social strategy at Lithium Technologies. Lithium is currently working with global brands on the leading-edge of embracing wearables for the enterprise.

Evans notes that despite the fact that adoption for mobile devices was led by corporate IT departments in its initial stages, today BYOD decisions are largely driven by employees who continue to raise the bar on expectations for technologies that they would like to use at their workplace.

“Unlike, laptops, smartphones and tablets which were really an extension of the company, wearables are an extension of how individuals choose to interact with the world around them including their workplace. On a mass scale, enterprises and other organizations need to be thinking about wearables as a core part of their BYOD strategy right now.”

When will BYOD Wearables Hit Mass Adoption in the Enterprise?

Evans estimates that employee-driven mass adoption for BYOD wearables is 12 months away, and that wearable lenses as a central component to that is less than 5 years away.

“As wearables gain wider momentum by individuals and as the business case for smart lenses shifts from preventative medicine to enhanced employee productivity and access, we’ll see an even greater disintermediation of corporate IT in the workplace. This is why it’s so important for organizations – particularly their human resources and corporate legal departments in addition to IT – to get out in front of this growing trend from a policy and security standpoint,” said Evans.

Evans says that security implications of BYOD wearables are particularly noteworthy. Imagine that you’re running a highly-confidential meeting at a global manufacturing company or financial institution. Without your knowledge, one of the attendees records the meeting through a wearable device.

Join the conversation: Let us know what you think

Do you envision bringing wearable technology to your workplace? If so, in what time frame? The next 12 months? In three years or more than five years? What impact would wearable technology have on your day-to-day work life? What should the corporate policy be for that? Submit your response on Twitter to @Verizonmarie.

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