"There is a strong innovation component to these devices," Rowsell-Jones says.

"They are so useful and so efficiently designed to be easy to use that even workers at the coalface can put together new apps and come up with clever ways to use them that can drive cost efficiency and improve effectiveness.

"If you put too many controls on these devices, the reality is people will bring them into the organisation anyway. If that happens, CIOs run the much greater risk of failing to seize new opportunities.

"As the CIO, you don't want to end up as the person who just runs the infrastructure or, worse, who is responsible for demoralising their own IT organisation.

"In fact, that is a much greater risk -- the risk of the CIO becoming irrelevant."