Employees bringing more apps to work: Telsyte

Telsyte said 28 per cent of Australian businesses allow BYOA.

Adam Bender (Computerworld)
27 July, 2012 15:13
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It’s not only mobile devices that employees want to bring to work, it's also applications where staff seek to use Dropbox, Skype, Evernote and a variety of other apps, according to Telsyte.

Telsyte surveyed more than 800 CIOs and senior IT decision makers and found 28 per cent of Australian businesses allow bring your own application (BYOA).

“However, the unsanctioned use of BYOA is expected to be significantly higher,” Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda said. Demand for BYOA is exacerbated “as more people use personal devices that are often tightly integrated with mobile and Cloud apps,” he said.

Software as a service (Saas) and mobile devices are driving the number of apps people bring to work, said Gedda, and the Google Android and Apple iOS mobile operating systems in particular are driving adoption of apps.

“It is inevitable people will use these apps for personal and business use,” Gedda said. “The challenge for enterprise IT departments is balancing the productivity gains of BYOA with the security and business continuity risks.”

A benefit of BYOA is that many public apps are free or at low cost and users experience high reliability and usability, Telsyte said. But BYOA is also rife with risks, “including the security of the information in addition to providers not being able to guarantee the long term viability of a product, or offer enterprise level service level agreements,” the analyst firm said.

“BYOA is a significant trend in the consumerisation of IT, but IT departments can also work with many of the public apps to investigate wider corporate deployments if the apps are popular and meet company objectives,” Gedda said.

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