A recent survey asked 330 professionals who work in the IT industry about the top tech tools and office equipment that they most needed to get their jobs done. The hypothetical survey question: "As corporate budgets have tightened, your company has asked you to choose a maximum of four office items from the list below to support your work. You will only be provided with these items. Which four will you choose?"
The list choose from included these eight options: laptop, desktop PC, VPN access, mobile phone, BlackBerry, desk phone, videoconferencing and an assigned desk.
Respondents said that these four tech devices were most essential to their productivity: Laptops garnered 88 percent of respondents' votes. Next, nearly three-quarters (74 percent) selected the mobile phone, which was followed by VPN access (68 percent).
Rounding out the top four was the BlackBerry, with nearly half (46 percent) of respondents saying that they had to have their BlackBerry devices.
What did the respondents say they needed the least? The desk phone garnered only 18 percent, the desktop PC received 20 percent, followed by videoconferencing (23 percent) and an assigned desk (37 percent).
Another interesting piece of the survey results: While 87 percent of respondents currently had an office desk phone, if given the choice, 88 percent stated that they would choose a mobile device as their one business phone.
The survey was conducted by OnRelay, a United Kingdom-based unified communications software maker.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.