BYOA spreads to two-thirds of Aussie businesses

Nearly two-thirds of Australian enterprises now have staff that use personal apps for work, with bring your own app (BYOA) set to replace bring your own device (BYOD) as a the most influential strategic IT change, according to Telsyte.

The research firm, a subsidiary of IT services company UXC Limited, has conducted a survey of around 460 CIOs and ICT decision-makers.

The results show that only 34% of Australian companies ban BYOA and actively enforce this policy with management tools and other technologies.

Around 27% allow their staff to use any personal mobile or cloud app for work, 25% allow BYOA from an approved catalogue of apps and 14% disallow BYOA but concede that staff are doing it anyway.

Among companies that allow or tolerate BYOA, 30% of staff are actively using personal apps for work purposes.

Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda said that while many businesses have become aware of the BYOD trend, they often overlook the apps entering the workforce on personal devices.

“With thousands of mobile apps, for both personal and business handsets, and the plethora of cloud services available via mobile devices and the web ... people are creating a new form of shadow-IT with BYOA,” Gedda said.

BYOA can allow employees to be more efficient, but the potential benefits need to be balanced against an organisation’s security and IT integration requirements, Telsyte said. Banning BYOA outright is not the answer, lest companies miss out on the productivity and innovation benefits.

The survey shows that only around 20% of Australian IT departments have plans to officially support BYOA further, in a result Telsyte said demonstrates that businesses are not yet ready for this emerging IT trend.

Popular categories of BYOA include data backup and storage, collaboration, voice communication, project and task management, productivity and note taking.

Image courtesy of Michael Coghlan under CC