According to a new report from analysts at Ovum, future employees will face a very different work life from today – never tethered to one location and able to share and access knowledge more easily. This is all due to the acceleration of consumerisation and the influx of devices and platforms entering the workplace.

Ovum predicts that a wide range of interconnected, social, mobile and cloud-based collaboration platforms on multiple devices will enable employees to participate in the “shareconomy”. Businesses must act now to adapt to this changing landscape or risk being left behind by both their markets and their employees, warns the global analyst firm. Writing in a report called ‘Enterprise 2020,’ Ovum claims that the likes of Citrix, Google, VMware and Yammer were the disruptive players leading the charge in this transformation.

“These companies offer their own unique vision of how continued growth in enterprise mobility, the cloud enterprise application ecosystem, and the behavioural impact of social networks can enable businesses to function more efficiently and creatively in the future,” the report said.

Richard Edwards, principal analyst at Ovum said that for people to be successful in this brave new world there will have to be significant change in operations, systems and cultural levels.

“By 2020, knowledge workers will need and want a set of tools far different to those of today, so for the CIO, the important choice will be which vendor to follow,” he said.