Bring-Your-Own-Apps – new headache for the IT department

SOFTWARE

A global survey commissioned by Citrix has revealed applications being used on Bring Your Own (BYO) devices is one of the fastest growing issues to manage in line with the consumerisation of IT trend.

Across the BRIC countries the research highlighted more than 9 in 10 organisations are seeing employees download their own applications on BYO devices for business use. In light of this, over half of respondents (54%) worry IT departments are losing control over application procurement within their organisation.

Reinforcing this viewpoint, 43% of organisations cited ‘managing applications on mobile devices’ as ‘difficult’ when introducing a BYO policy at their organisation, a very close correlation to the global average of 44%, indicating that Bring Your Own Apps is a rising concern.

Further concerns were also noted in relation to unmanaged app usage in the workplace:

·         64% of BRIC businesses have concerns over maintaining data privacy mandates

·         48% have concerns over maintaining compliance mandates

·         51% have concerns over managing access control

Despite these fears however, less than half (42%) of BRIC organisations have thoroughly evaluated the impact of employees using their own apps in a business environment. With 72% of BRIC organisations already supporting staff mobility, and a further 20% planning to do so in the next 24 months, the ‘app issue’ is only set to persist.

Popular apps used by employees on their BYO devices beyond the traditional Office suite include tools to support with data backups and storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud); calendaring; voice communications (Skype); mail (Mail+ for Outlook); documents (Prezi, Documents To Go) and note taking (Evernote).

“The line between work and play is blurring more than ever before,” said Sean Wainer, country manager for South Africa at Citrix. “As consumerisation drives fuels a different approach to work, it is inevitable that employees will seek to personalise their working experience as much as possible – through choice of device and through choice of apps.”

“As a consequence, organisations need to instil policies to closely manage the apps being introduced by employees and then introduce technology that allows those apps to follow them, safely, to any device, wherever they are. Adopting ‘follow me data’ solutions, for example, that provide IT departments with complete control over employee data and apps is an integral step to take as it becomes the norm for employees to access the network anywhere, on any device,” he concludes.