Bring Your Apps to the Enterprise

As the BYOD movement continues to gather steam, it brings not only a wave of sophisticated processing to the enterprise, but with it, an increasing collection of “must have” apps from the consumer and self-built space. These apps provide opportunities, but they also come with caveats. The “Bring Your Own Apps” (BYOA) movement becomes particularly important as it begins to include Cloud-based processing sites based on HTML5 that can easily incorporate company data. BYOA also includes user developed apps that can now be created much like enterprise mashups, creating an important subcategory of “Build Your Own Apps”.

The advent of the Boundary-free Enterprise™ makes it increasingly important to understand what is entering the IT environment, what vulnerabilities are exposed, and how it can be integrated into the business. BYOD, BYOA, and consumerization of IT are impacting the data center at a time of great change and reduced budgets. Control of mobile devices and their applications, usage and content is an area of growing concern. Saugatuck has been reviewing the developing issues in this area as they have emerged. Applications, whether they are built as “native” code on smartphones or provided through some form of Cloud access, have a disruptive effect based around popularity, ubiquity, and ease of use.

Common problems with enterprise BYOA infiltration include the following::

Complacency, which creates security breaches, because apps are used without thinking.
Lack of security features
Apps selected may be a poor choice for corporate needs

Understanding the impact of this new environment is essential to maintaining security and ensuring optimal usage of corporate resources. As the Boundary-free Enterprise™ continues to develop, BYOA will become an increasingly important part of this environment. It is critical for vendors who need to provide management tools and take advantage of emerging trends, and for CIOs who need to ensure that enterprise information technology meets objectives, provides cost efficient value, meets risk expectations and remains secure.

Note: Ongoing Saugatuck subscription clients can access this premium research piece (1123STR) by clicking here, and inputting your ID and password.

Brian Dooley

Brian J. Dooley is a Strategy Consultant and Associate Research Analyst with Saugatuck Technology. Originally from the US, Mr. Dooley now resides in New Zealand – providing global and regional insight and market analysis on a wide range of technologies, including business intelligence, collaboration, cloud computing, agile software development, as well as international telecommunications.

Mr. Dooley is an author, analyst, and journalist with more than 30 years' experience in analyzing and writing about trends in IT. He has written six books, numerous user manuals, hundreds of reports, and more than 1,000 magazine features. Previously, he was a Senior Analyst for Datapro (Gartner), and a Senior Product Information Specialist for Unisys Corp. As an independent analyst, he has worked with many of the top firms in the research and analysis industry, as well as for industry clients around the globe.

Mr. Dooley is a graduate of McGill University, with graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School in Cybernetics, Information Theory, Statistics and Communications. He initiated and is on the board for the Graduate Diploma of Technical Communication program at Christchurch Institute of Technology, and he was on the editorial advisory board for Faulkner Technical Reports.

Comment disabled by author.