"Application sprawl" is the term Kris Wood uses to describe it. The practice, common in most business environments, of using numerous different software platforms and tools for a variety of different tasks and purposes.
You want to send an email, you open your email client, or log in to your webmail account on your browser. You want to message a member of your team, you open up a chat application. You want to make a call, you open up the softphone app, or else use a telephone. You want to schedule a meeting, you check your calendar, then message around contacts with suggested dates.
This is how huge numbers of people are used to working. But according to Kris Wood, who is Fuze's EMEA vice president, business and IT leaders are starting to wake up to the fact that this piecemeal approach to software deployment does not necessarily do much for efficiency and streamlining. And he argues that the evolution of UC towards team collaboration is playing a key role in opening up minds to the fact that there is a different way.
"To avoid complexity, businesses need a single application that covers multiple interaction modes rather than individual software clients for different ways of communicating," he said. "Application sprawl, where employees switch between tools and devices to share, connect, and communicate at work, is a stark reality in most enterprises and IT leaders must focus on removing clutter from the user's overall application estate."
User benefits
This 'clutter' is, according to Kris, a major culprit when it comes to businesses struggling to get employee buy-in for new technology. The sheer rate at which new tools are introduced leads to a kind of application fatigue, where the burden of different technologies actually starts to make work feel harder, rather than easier.
"User experience is the driver for any successful IT and communications deployment," said Kris. "When investing in collaboration solutions, or any IT for that matter, it's important to shift the focus from the platform and infrastructure and instead focus on the user benefits and broader collaboration opportunities in the cloud.
"As you'd expect, I'd recommend Fuze when it comes to collaboration and communications, but whatever platforms businesses choose to work with, the important thing is that they incorporate everything under one roof. Employees can't be expected to carry around a work phone, and install a softphone, and a chat app, and a cloud-storage app, and a video conferencing system.
"To maximise productivity in the long run, employees need tools that can do everything in one place, from voice, to video, to chat. The whole process needs to be as simple as possible - both for IT departments to manage and the employees to adopt."
Security requires buy-in
Kris also makes the important point that the complexity caused by running many different applications raises a number of security concerns. The most significant of these revolve around the practice of employees downloading their own preferred apps to use at work.
"Shadow IT is becoming more prevalent, with employees increasingly using devices and software that are outside of IT's control," said Kris. "Fuze's research reveals that 32 per cent of employees are using their personal mobile messaging apps for work purposes, whilst 25 per cent are using video calling and 28 per cent are using social media."
Centralised control and oversight of what applications are being used on the network is essential if businesses are to successfully defend themselves against the growing threat from cyber crime. For Kris, however, wresting back control of what platforms are used in the workplace needs to be accompanied by an understanding of why employees want to use their own solutions in the first place. If businesses want to tighten up infrastructure security, they must have buy in from the people who use it.
