Forrester said 64% of firms were expanding their mobility support in response to the demands of their staff.

The commitment to support greater mobility is perhaps not surprising as it can potentially lead to greater productivity.

According to recent research from enterprise WiFi provider iPass many employees are working up to 20 additional hours per week unpaid as a result of bring your own device (BYOD) policies adopted by their firms. 

Drawing from recent surveys of over 2,300 IT mobility decision-makers and nearly 5,000 end user workers in North America and Europe, Forrester found that 66 percent of employees use two or more devices for work activities each day. This included desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets.

In addition, 67% of employees choose the smartphone they use for work, and 70% choose the tablet they use on the job.

"The increasing diversity of end user mobile devices and mobile applications in the workplace is driving IT executives to pursue a variety of different corporate initiatives," said Forrester.

There were however some European country-specific findings in the Forrester research. For instance, 60% of firms in the UK and 56% in Germany are focused on developing a comprehensive corporate policy to support employees who bring their own smartphones and tablets to work, but only 33% of companies are doing so in France.

But in France 60 percent of IT executives are increasing their central IT budgets to support employees with more mobility support, device access, and mobile applications, which compares to only 49% in the UK and 44% in Germany.

IT executives are also looking for budgets to support corporate mobility initiatives from outside their own organisation. In the UK, 55% of firms are getting additional funding from business units to pay for mobility support, access and applications. The numbers are 34% in France and 33% in Germany.

In the UK 28% of enterprises are implementing corporate application stores, compared to 16% in France and 14% in Germany.