news Australian organisations are increasingly allowing their staff to use their own software at work, in a trend being dubbed “Bring Your Own Apps” or BYOA, according to a new survey of Australian chief information officers and other senior IT staff.

In a statement released yesterday, analyst firm Telsyte said it had recently surveyed more than 800 CIOs and senior IT decision-makers on a variety of issues. “A key finding was BYOA is now becoming part of the working life of many business people, as more people use personal devices that are often tightly integrated with mobile and cloud apps,” the firm said.

Popular BYOA software used for business include: data backups and storage (Dropbox, iCloud); calendaring; collaboration (GoToMeeting, WebEx); voice communications (Skype); project and task management (Remember the Milk); productivity (Pages, QuickOffice Pro); multimedia; and note taking (Evernote).

The company found that 28 per cent of Australian businesses allow some form of BYOA (business apps), with this trend expected to rapidly grow over coming years and is closely linked to the so-called ‘BYOD’ trend for ‘Bring Your Own Device’, where employees are increasingly using their own laptops, tablets and smartphones at work. However, the unsanctioned use of BYOA is also expected to be significantly higher.

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda said the amount of apps people can bring to a work environment is being driven by software as a service and mobile offerings, with Apple’s iOS and Google Android mobile operating systems putting thousands of easy to use apps at people’s fingertips. Gedda said it was “inevitable that people would use this kind of apps for both business and personal purposes. “The challenge for enterprise IT departments is balancing the productivity gains of BYOA with the security and business continuity risks,” he said.

“The purchase of public cloud services by staff without company IT intervention is sometimes referred to as “credit card IT”, where end-users in business divisions purchase apps and services to manage their information needs unilaterally,” Telsyte said in its statement.

According to Telsyte, BYOA will become the focal point for businesses and even outstrip BYOD as cost of smartphones and media tablets decreases and the diversity of consumer cloud apps increases. “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.

BYOA benefits include a low barrier to entry as many public apps are free or low cost and generally users experience high levels of reliability and usability. Conversely, BYOA has its own set of 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 (SLA).

opinion/analysis
BYOA has a long, long, history within corporate IT departments. Wherever I have worked, I have always considered it one of my first tasks within my first month on the job to make friends with whoever is in charge of desktop PC administration in that organisation’s IT department, so I can get them to unlock my desktop PC for admin access. This allows me to install my usual set of apps — ranging from Chrome and Firefox for web access, to Winamp for listening to music at work, the GIMP for image editing, Notepad++ for text editing, Audacity for sound editing, Tweetdeck for social media monitoring and so on and so on. I have also, in the past, even brought in hardware such as my own (higher quality) keyboards and mice, a second monitor, and even better office chairs.

Without these tools, I am nowhere near as productive as I would be otherwise. And we’re talking at least an hour a day wasted as I have grappled with unwieldy corporate alternatives to these awesome (and mostly open source) tools.

Consider this. You’re going to be sitting in the same position using the same PC for years on end, 40-odd hours a week. Why should you have to use the default systems (hardware or software) which the organisation you work for provides for you? Why not set up a much more customised system with access to better tools? This approach has always saved me hundreds of hours each year on gained productivity, and I’m sure it does many others as well. Smart companies realise this factor and facilitate it; dumb companies try and block it as non-confirmity to their control scheme.

The smartphone and tablet revolutions merely add another dimension to this philosophy. Again, smart companies (safely) expose elements of their internal systems to their employees’ personal computing devices. It makes sense in 2012 for most organisations to allow staff to access calendaring, email, unified communications and even many corporate apps such as CRM or directory platforms through their employees’ personal devices. Again, those that block this access will suffer a frustrated and unproductive workforce.

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1. Adam
   Posted 31/07/2012 at 12:17 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I hope the organisations that are doing this have got a handle on the issues associated with hosting customers private data in the cloud. i.e. advice needs to be given to the employees about which apps are appropriate to use & which are not … and then, further, what specific limitations should be placed on the usage.

2. Brad
   Posted 31/07/2012 at 1:26 pm | Permalink | Reply

   The devil in the detail is the “safe” exposure to elements such as BYOA.

   Most Enterprise IT departments are so overloaded with under-resourced, poorly prioritised projects and BAU/support tasks that the necessary due diligence and verification of these apps takes a back seat, eventually leading to the IT department being lambasted for being “unresponsive”, or worse yet, a rogue BYOA slips through the net, exposes the company (or worse, the client(s)) to significant risk, then IT are again hauled over the coals for not exercising necessary control over the environment. Queue the “consultants” to “transform” the organisation….

   I’m all for making the environment as friendly and productive for users as possible – that’s why IT is in the Enterprise in the first place – , but as can be seen with the CBA debacle (9,000 seats, not out), even the most stringent of vetting processes for apps, patches, etc can come unstuck, in a very costly and unhealthy way, so how are IT departments meant to appropriately respond to every bleeding heart’s browser and text editor preference?

   I like the idea of Enterprise App stores, as they have the potential to be a balanced gatekeeper between users demanding more choice, and the assurances that IT (and their stakeholders, like Risk & Compliance) need. It’s a Catch-22 though – how do burdened IT departments get access to “gatekeepers” like that without stretching their resources (or budgets) further?

3. itgrrl
   Posted 31/07/2012 at 1:31 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I wonder how many of those BYOAs are licensed for commercial use? Perhaps we’ll soon see employees required to sign a waiver indicating that they agree that they, not the company, are liable for licensing compliance… I also wonder how many companies are prepared to reimburse their employees for the cost of providing their own tools?

   Quite apart from the (very serious) issue of data security, it seems like managers/owners mainly jump on BYOD and BYOA as a way of defraying the costs of running the business onto their employees. Companies that actually value such things as employee productivity and job satisfaction (thus retention of both staff and knowledge, with the associated cost savings) should already be providing decent quality keyboards, chairs, monitors, and software for their staff, no?

4. Marco Tapia
   Posted 01/08/2012 at 12:07 pm | Permalink | Reply

   This issue can be looked at from multiple angles and each corporation will make its own decisions.

   One aspect to consider (please do not take it as the only one) is PRODUCTIVITY. In business, productivity is everything. If BYOD and BYOA will enhance personal and corporate productivity, they should be looked at very seriously as a viable option and perhaps surrounding issues can be worked around via policy, trust, technology (MDM like Silverback), etc.

5. Ausgnome
   Posted 02/08/2012 at 11:03 am | Permalink | Reply

   They shoud all be using MS, SAP AND IBM products

   Don’t these CIO’s know anything

   Oh and Clouds lots of Clouds although I hear fields will be the next big thing

   In 30 + years I still wonder at the shear techno babble that comes out , reminds me of mission statements

6. MmC
   Posted 07/08/2012 at 9:42 am | Permalink | Reply

   I’m far more productive using Access 97. And I own a license for it.
   Oh, and Thunderbird for mail and Lynx for web browsing.
   I just carry around a USB stick with all my productivity apps and just need local Admin to make the hotdesk computer personalised to me.
   \end sarcasm.

   As a SCCM Admin / SOE designer. This hurts my soul. :\

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