Samsung boss tells businesses to prepare for “consumerisation” of business IT

A senior executive from electronics giant Samsung has warned businesses to prepare for the second wave of the “consumerisation” of business IT.

In a keynote speech at the CeBIT 2014 tech show in Hanover, Germany, the executive vice president of Samsung’s global B2B centre, SP Kim, says consumer devices will have to increasingly be ready for business.

Meanwhile, businesses will increasingly have to adopt leading-edge consumer technologies.

Kim says the two trends will mean consumer devices will need to increasingly be professional, with enterprise-strength security and reliability out of the box, while business IT will increasingly need to be focused around the needs of the end user.

According to Kim, the two trends are central to Samsung’s ambitions in the business-to-business solutions and enterprise IT sectors.

“[Samsung] is one of the few companies capable of combining its track record as a global leader in consumer electronics with a focus on relentless innovation and technology excellence in the B2B sector.

“Samsung is bringing its three core values to the B2B sector: Technology convergence, trusted partnerships and speed to market.

“We are bringing a sense of urgency to the B2B sector, because we want to succeed, and – more importantly – we want our customers to succeed.”

The Korean tech giant says it wants to focus on growth in the retail, education, healthcare, financial services and government sectors.

As SmartCompany reported in December last year, Samsung is looking to make major investments in data centres this year, with the conglomerate keen to position its products as competitors to Cisco and IBM.