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.
