Mobile Apps Turn IT Departments into Purveyors of Productivity

Guest Room

Mobile Apps Turn IT Departments into Purveyors of Productivity

By TMCnet Special Guest
Jonathan Dale , Director of Marketing at Fiberlink, an IBM Company
  |  September 23, 2014

IT staffs were rocked in years past trying to play catch up with technology decisions being made directly by line of business. SaaS (News - Alert) solutions and apps for smartphones and tablets were being adopted without their opinion or consent. For years, IT thought their influence and needs were steadily declining. Luckily, enterprise mobility and applications have changed their outlook.

Twenty-four months ago, most mobile employees were granted access to e-mail on their device of choice; however, access to resources beyond that were not common. Users were forced to find new ways to gain access to corporate data that proved problematic to internal security policies and industry regulations. A classic example of this was the unauthorized use of applications such as Dropbox (News - Alert). Over this period, IT was viewed as allowing basic access, and not much help beyond that.

IT finally got back into the driver’s seat by taking the lead in implementing enterprise mobility management solutions. Practically overnight, EMM went from helping IT simply secure a device to providing a complete solution for employee enablement and productivity. IT is now fully onboard with mobile productivity, and is working directly with line of business to make impactful changes.

To understand how this is happening, we recently looked at the apps IT is directly distributing to end users devices. The data was obtained from IBM MaaS360 (News - Alert) in a 14- month period, across 15,000 individual applications.

Here’s what we found:

• 62 percent of organizations are distributing apps from public app stores and 38 percent are creating their own custom apps.

• Looking at just public apps, we found that 77 percent are iOS, 22 percent are Android, and 1 percent are Windows.

• Looking at just custom apps, we found that 69 percent are iOS, 31 percent are Android, and less than 1 percent are Windows.

• When it comes to verticals, we found the following industries accounting for app distribution: education, 33 percent; public sector, 15 percent; manufacturing, 14 percent; health care, 11 percent; retail, 10 percent; financial services, 10 percent; and others, 7 percent.

The data proves that IT is leveraging free apps, buying apps, and most importantly, building custom apps. Building apps is critical, as they can specifically access sensitive corporate information and impact business workflows the most. In addition, when building apps, IT is working to ensure it meets the usability users expect, while meeting compliance requirements.

We also see this in the different public apps they are distributing. Cisco AnyConnect is a clear example of IT enabling users to gain access to resources that sit behind the firewall; access to things like SharePoint, Intranet sites, and legacy application servers. In that same vain, we are seeing the rise of secure browsers and secure web gateways, which allow access to internal resources without the need for the user to manually launch and connect to a VPN.

We also see where IT has not allowed or encouraged specific apps. In health care and financial services where compliance and data security requirements are high, Dropbox does not make the top 10 list.

IT professionals are the driving force behind enterprise mobility, and apps have given them yet another tool to enable the workforce. The data provides an interesting snapshot of a trend that will continue to expand over the next several years, and have a profound impact on the way business is conducted. IT is at the front and center of mobility, and has become the true purveyor of productivity in the enterprise.

Jonathan Dale is director of marketing at Fiberlink, an IBM Company (www.maas360.com).

Education

Public Sector

Manufacturing

Healthcare

Retail

Financial Services

iBooks

Adobe (News - Alert) Reader

Adobe Reader

Cisco AnyConnect

Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader

Google Drive

Google Maps

Cisco AnyConnect

Webex

Google Maps

Cisco AnyConnect

Pages

Google Earth

Google Maps

Google Maps

Evernote (News - Alert)

Google Maps

Evernote

Cisco AnyConnect

iBooks

Concur

Dropbox

Secure ID

iMovie

iBooks

Concur

Adobe Reader

Cisco AnyConnect

Google Chrome

Dropbox

Dropbox

Dropbox

Nitrodesk

iBooks

QuickOffice

Google Earth

Evernote

Webex

iBooks

Calculator for iPad

Pages

Educreations

Quick Office

Microsoft Lync 2013

Numbers

Google Chrome

Nitrodesk

Notability

Pages

Skype

Google Chrome

Quick Office

Sales Force Chatter

Numbers

Facebook

Evernote

Epocrates

Skype

iBooks




Edited by Maurice Nagle