Published on the 10/12/2014 | Written by Beverley Head

A pair of recent reports from analyst Gartner provides useful pointers to the direction that enterprise IT spending is headed.

One of the key drivers of change is individuals’ continued appetite for mobility; Gartner predicts that by 2018 more than half of all users will use a tablet or smartphone first for all online activities. By then 40 percent of enterprises will specify wi-fi as the default connection for even non-mobile devices, such as desktops, desk phones and projectors.

This delivers flexibility to the worker in a BYOD scenario, and also agility to the enterprise.

At the back end of IT consumers’ preference for mobility also suggests that more enterprises will roll out cloud-based solutions and particularly software-as-a-service to support employees’ need for anytime anywhere access.

A Gartner survey conducted earlier this year across ten countries (which included Australia) uncovered a transition away from early pilots of SaaS and use of cloud for test and dev applications toward more mission critical production-grade cloud solutions. According to Gartner businesses are increasingly comfortable using the cloud to run applications well beyond the early email and sales force automation deployments.

However the survey also noted that for many business executives – apart from CIOs – cloud’s perceived lower cost base was still the main driver of adoption rather than the flexibility and agility cloud and SaaS could confer.

According to Gartner; “The conclusion is that CIOs are focused on using the cloud to establish a modern, innovative IT environment with operational agility and business advantage as key outcomes whereas business leaders (non-IT) still see the cloud as a means to save costs and may not yet have full appreciation for the business benefits or strategic opportunity of using cloud services.”