What is BYOA? (Bring Your Own Application)

Exploring the latest BYO Trend

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Unified Communications

Published: October 15, 2018

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

The world of work is changing. A decade ago, the only digital tools an employee could use were the ones pre-sanctioned by their employers. There was no cloud solution available to work remotely on the go, and very few options available to use the devices you preferred in the office. However, as smartphones and tablets have become more pervasive in our daily lives, and trends in working have transformed the way employees access new technology, we’re beginning to see new possibilities.

The move towards flexibility in staff resources began with the revolution of “BYOD” – bring your own device. Now, the next stage of that phenomenon has emerged, in the form of Bring your Own Application, or BYOA.

Bring Your Own Application allows employees to forgo the software offered by their employers, in favour of their own apps for file sharing, instant messaging, conferencing and more.

What are the Issues with BYOA In the Enterprise?

On the surface, BYOA seems like a fantastic way to give employees the freedom and versatility they need to work at their own pace, using the apps that they’re most productive with. Unfortunately, just like the BYOD trend that came before it, BYOA also delivers a range of challenges for today’s companies to address.

First, BYOA may well deliver flexibility, but that flexibility also means that IT teams could have employees working with countless different apps in the same environment. Some experts predict that the average employee uses around 36 cloud services a day at work to share files or collaborate. A BYOA environment could mean that staff members are working on hundreds of applications a day, meaning that there are more opportunities for information to end up lost or locked in a silo somewhere.

Beyond the threat of simply losing access to data, BYOA also presents a danger for general security too. Ultimately, in a BYOA environment, IT departments will have a hard time controlling the way that business data is stored, used, and accessed. Businesses can’t be sure whether the apps their employees are using are secure enough to comply with regulatory standards, or whether they offer the right tools required to keep personal data private.

A poorly planned implementation of BYOA could mean that today’s businesses end up with a chaotic landscape of applications strewn throughout the enterprise, each packed with sensitive data that IT teams can’t find, manage, or secure effectively.

Should Companies Invest in BYOA?

You’re probably wondering, with all the threats that BYOA brings to the environment, why companies wouldn’t simply throw the concept out of the enterprise altogether. The simple answer is that it’s incredibly difficult to stop employees from using the applications they prefer in your business space.

When the Bring Your Own Device trend emerged, organisations faced similar concerns regarding security and the management of information. However, many found that they couldn’t simply prevent people from logging into their work applications on the device of their choosing. The only way to ensure that BYOD could be a secure strategy for the workforce was to implement a focused approach, and that’s precisely what needs to be done with BYOA today.

Whether businesses like it or not, employees are increasingly bringing the cloud applications that they use on their own smartphones, laptops, and tablets into the work environment. Whether it’s sharing documents on DropBox, collaborating over Google Docs, or communicating through Slack, everyone seems to have their own preference for digital applications, and they’re reluctant to give those applications up at work.

Securing the BYOA Environment

Perhaps the easiest way to protect against the problems that the BYOA trend can bring is to make sure that your employees already have access to the applications they need within the enterprise. In today’s increasingly millennial marketplace, employees are unwilling to settle for less when it comes to using the right technology. Around 85% of working millennials say that if they can’t find what they need in the business, they’ll turn to non-approved apps instead.

Evaluating your workforce and finding out what they need to thrive in your current environment could be an excellent way to eliminate some of the growing problems with Shadow IT and BYOA. Alternatively, some enterprises are beginning to develop their own in-house app directories of approved apps to help employees make informed decisions about the secure software they can use at work.

An app directory may be a good half-way point between giving your staff free-reign over the apps that they use and attempting to eliminate their freedom entirely.

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