We are on the cusp of a sea change in how IT professionals view consumer technologies.

As recently as two years ago, incorporating personal IT into an organisation’s infrastructure was universally considered a serious security threat. There was a clear demarcation between personal and business use of IT – and in some extreme cases, employees who crossed that line were severely reprimanded or even dismissed, such was the perceived compromise to business security.

Today, however, forward-thinking IT practitioners have identified consumer technology as a valuable opportunity and one that, if managed correctly, can drive down costs and improve flexibility. They recognise that consumer IT will revolutionise the workplace – the key is understanding how to exploit it.

Increasingly the distinction between home and work technology is blurring. Many employees’ home IT systems are more sophisticated than those they use in the workplace.

Improvements in processing power and downward-spiralling high-street costs have made technology ubiquitous, leading some forward-looking IT professionals to predict that organisations able to harness the rich pool of untapped technology stand to save up to 20 per cent of their IT infrastructure costs within three to five years.

The modern consumer has access to more exciting, increasingly sophisticated and cheaper technologies than ever before.

There has also been a huge shift in work culture. One in 10 people regularly work from home, with the trend set to increase.

A new breed of tech-savvy employees, prepared to buy the latest laptop, PDA or portable hard drive for their personal use, compounds this demographic shift.

Chief information officers (CIOs) recognise that the emerging generation is extremely knowledgeable and intelligent regarding IT, so their attitudes towards technical control are changing.

Such alterations pose a number of questions for IT professionals over how home and corporate IT fit together – after all, neither exists in isolation. If employees have remote access, should we allow them to use their personal broadband connections or insist on a corporate arrangement?

With public infrastructure far more reliable than it used to be, and with consumer products in some cases more advanced, organisations are rethinking the rationale behind investing in costly corporate wide area networks and email systems.

One consideration is the use of public services, such as Google mail, to send and receive email at a fraction of the normal cost. In short, there is a growing recognition that it is no longer necessary for organisations to own IT.

Such a realisation has led some IT executives to suggest that employees should be permitted, even encouraged, to use personal laptops and mobile phones for business. And just as firms have car allowances, they should consider granting employees IT allowances to cover computer, software, telephone and services requirements.

Of course, the one area that must be addressed when incorporating personal IT within an organisation is security.

For the past decade, organisations have spent millions building complex, intricate IT infrastructures in the quest to achieve the nearest thing they can to a risk-free environment. Companies will not willingly throw that away, and no one would seriously suggest that they do.

However, in-house security does not mean that consumer IT cannot play a business role with the correct encryption software and policies in place.

There is a growing recognition that IT professionals should determine areas of acceptable operational risk and implement new practices.

It is important that IT teams work with employees to help develop secure domestic systems and so negate the risk to corporate systems. And some are already exploring how best to manage consumer products as employees bring them into different workflows and processes.

Consumer IT is not an issue that can be ignored. Rather it presents technology practitioners with an opportunity to rethink their roles and how they can enable staff.

Corporate IT departments are evolving to meet tomorrow’s challenges. It is not simply a question of cost reduction, although the opportunity for an IT department to reduce its spend by a fifth is quite a compelling business case.

Using consumer technology is also about addressing the issues, with regard to the convergence of work and home IT – and engaging with the emerging generation.

David Roberts is chief executive of The Corporate IT Forum, an independent body representing IT users.