Businesses considering the bring your own' (BYO) trend must look beyond "the shiny new device" and focus on software management, according to Dell.
This point was hammered home to attendees at Dell World 2012, which is taking place this week in Austin, Texas.
Roger Bjork, director of enterprise mobility solutions at Dell, said thinking about BYO just in terms of devices was "doing it a disservice".
Bjork said people born in 1990, who are just now graduating from university, have grown up with internet access their entire lives and this will affect the way they work.
"These Millenials will be half the workforce in the next eight years...[and] the way they collaborate and the tools they use, [and] the devices they want to [bring into] the workplace to be productive...[are] very different from how it used to be," said Bjork.
"So if we limit our discussion to BYO as just the device, we are far too limited. This is a far larger topic of how the workplace is evolving," he added.
However, there are risks associated with BYO in the workplace, particularly with regard to mobile workers' attitude to security, Bjork claimed.
"Three out of five of these mobile workers do not think it is their responsibility to protect the IP that is on their mobile device," Bjork said.
"This is not malicious they are not intending to do something wrong...they are just trying to be the best and brightest in a competitive environment.
"This, coupled with the fact, there is about $7 million worth of mobile phones lost in New York every day...[which means] there is a lot of IP out there to deal with," he added.
Dell has been trying to help businesses manage this issue through its recent run of software acquisitions, including KACE, Wyse, and SonicWall, said Bjork.
These technologies will allow companies to better manage the data on employee-owned devices, and help Dell transform itself from a hardware specialist to a vendor that offers a full spectrum of services, he added.
