We’re at the beginning of the most technologically-advanced decade in human history. Today’s technology not only introduces efficiencies in productivity and profitability as well as ensuring our digital lives are more secure, it allows businesses to project digital experiences in-house and externally and perhaps most importantly, it enables choice and flexibility.
Okta’s annual Business @ Work report (the full version of which you can read here), the world’s leading cloud-based Identity as a Service provider paints a very clear picture of the technological evolution of businesses and this year the trend line curves upwards in the direction of greater adoption of apps – up 6% from the 2019 report – and one in ten of Okta’s customer base uses a staggering 200 or more apps to power productive, secure collaboration.
What Apps Are People Using?
According to Todd McKinnon, CEO and co-founder of Okta, ‘We saw a shakeup of new apps dominating the workforce, with Snowflake, Atlassian Opsgenie, and Splunk all making the list of fastest-growing apps for the first time. Best-of-breed collaboration tools like Zoom and Slack, absent six years ago, joined the ranks with long-standing collaboration suites like Office 365 and G Suite, illustrating that workers now favour flexibility and functionality across the board.’
Every business strategy – regardless of the business you’re in – relies on technology as a core component and apps and integrations are the fuel that keep today’s workforce motoring.
In True Koncise Fashion, Let’s Look At The Stats
Security (unsurprisingly), data and app development tools are the new kids on the block. Todd McKinnon says ‘Staying at the forefront of innovation means creating new ways to collaborate and welcoming fresh technologies into existing workflows.’
Fastest Growing Apps
- Snowflake – up 275% year-on-year
- Opsgenie – up 190% year-on-year
- Google Cloud Platform – up 110% year-on-year
- Splunk – up 100% year-on-year
- KnowBe4 – up 90% year-on-year
- Looker – up 85% year-on-year
- Jamf – up 80% year-on-year
- Envoy – up 78% year-on-year
- Freshservice – up 75% year-on-year
- Zoom – up 75% year-on-year
In terms of popularity, developer tools lead the way with Atlassian Product Suite jumping up to fifth on the Most Popular Apps list, Github joined at 13th and Lucidchart was a new entry.
Interestingly, there are a number of long-term stayers keeping their places on the list including Slack, Zoom, Office 365, Salesforce, AWS and G Suite.
App FOMO
Teen-speak, it seems, also works in the tech world. What seems to be happening more and more is that Okta’s customers are ‘double-dipping’ – buying best-of-breed apps in addition to bundles. For example, 78% (up from 76% last year) of their customers who have Office 365 have adopted one or more apps that have the same functionality as 365 and they say that ‘When it comes to the trade-off between a centralized provider and individual solutions, functionality, ease of use, and employee needs come first.’
Security
Dominating the security stack are what’s now known as ‘people’ layers. As we mentioned in last week’s blog post, attackers are targeting individuals via phishing emails and impersonation attacks to gain access to accounts and the protection of people has jumped front and centre in corporate cybersecurity strategies.
As recently as 2017, only 24% of companies deployed a security tool at the people layer. This year it’s up to 42% (still not high enough as far as we’re concerned. Now, when companies adopt their first security tool, over a third start with protecting employees as opposed to devices, infrastructure and network.
By that logic, it’s no great shock that KnowBe4 and Mimecast are high on the most-adopted security tools list. Additionally, despite ‘123456’ keeping its place at the top of the ‘most popular password’ list, more users are taking security into their own hands and deploying multiple factors in addition to, or instead of, passwords.
The era of ‘fewer but stronger factors’ opens up a path of a potentially stronger and simpler factor experience.
Convenience
The report also took into account the personal apps and tools adopted through Okta that we incorporate into our daily lives. It suggests that digitisation has swept over all over us, whether we’re paying bills, going on holiday, even ordering food – we’re accessing digital versions of almost every service we use. Learning has become a top priority and leading the way are LinkedIn Learning and Grammarly; paying bills and taking the grief out of managing money are headed up by PayPal and Venmo and for travel, Airbnb and Marriot Bonvoy hit the top spots. Efficiency is king.
To Conclude…
Over the past six years, Okta has seen the promise of technology enable their customers and workforce to thrive. In the future, they expect to see more tailored apps drive even more efficiency. No two companies are alike, and the plethora of new apps on the scene will mean more choice and customisation for businesses to do their best work.
Contact us today on info@koncisesolutions.com or call 020 7078 0789 and we’ll talk cloud and email security, communications platforms, cutting-edge IT solutions or what’s the better superpower, x-ray vision or invisibility?
Koncise Solutions
Go Back