Indian offices put restrictions for social media tools
Thursday, 25 March 2010, 15:44 IST   |    6 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Indian offices put restrictions for social media tools
Bangalore: Although social media tools have gained momentum among the Internet users, but Indian offices particularly, have restrictive policies that prevent their employees from using these to their business advantage, reports Seema Singh from Mint. According to a 10-nation study that surveyed information technology (IT) decision makers and end users in 10 countries, 52 percent of organizations prohibit the use of social media applications or similar collaboration tools at work. India, with 96 percent of its IT decision makers prohibit the use of these tools in the workplace, ranks on top in viewing these tools through the security prism, followed by the UK, Italy and Japan. The biggest reason cited by the Indian IT decision makers is security. Each employee having a specific way of working, cost, and the difficulty to actually get employees to use technology are other barriers to adoption of various collaboration technologies. Commissioned by Cisco, the study shows that globally, 50 percent of the end users ignore company policy and 27 percent admit to changing the settings on corporate devices to get access to prohibited applications, with many of them saying they need these technologies to do their jobs. Tim Stone, Head of collaboration solutions marketing, Cisco Europe, said in countries such as India, the barrier is also cultural. In India, specifically, the study found that companies are very hierarchical and decisions are made by a few people at the top, Stone said. Indian executives said it's difficult to find right information and right colleagues to connect with while solving problems. The study surveyed 2,023 end users and 1,011 information technology decision makers. And though IT decision makers were not very high on social media tools, 77 percent of them said they expect investment in audio, video and Web-based collaboration tools to increase between now and October.

siliconindia