LogMeIn gives BYOA visibility back to businesses with AppGuru
In a recent survey by LogMeIn, approximately 73 percent of companies in Australia and New Zealand reported that employee-introduced apps are actively being used in the workplace, but an alarming 37 percent of these organisations did not have a bring-your-own-application (BYOA) policy in place.
LogMeIn Asia Pacific vice president Andy Farquharson said these results highlight that organisations in Australia and New Zealand are putting themselves at risk of exposing important data, and therefore it's paramount to have some form of protection policy in place.
"The type of challenges we've seen a lot is around data security," he said.
"The fact that people are using utilising DropBox and Office 365 and putting corporate information into the cloud, it means IT professionals don't have a say in what and how these applications are being utilised in their workplace because often they're brought in by the staff, and not by IT, so it means they don't have any visibility of what's going in and out."
In line with this trend, LogMeIn has announced the launch of AppGuru, a cloud app management tool designed to help companies "regain a little control in the space of the consumersation of IT".
"What we've tried to create with AppGuru is a tool for these IT professionals to monitor and manage the BYOA within the organisation," Farquharson said.
"It's about helping them gain visibility of who is using apps, and set and maintain those policies to take it back to a strategic rollout, which they've been missing out on with the 'consumerisation of IT'."
The initial version of AppGuru supports 50 application policies, and will monitor in excess of 300 applications, including Basecamp, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Apps, join.me, Office 365, Trello, with Farquharson noting more will be added over time.
It has been designed with two main functions: discovery and monitoring, and identity and app management. Under discovery and monitoring, IT departments are able to have a companywide snapshot of app usage, as well as monitor cloud app activity in real-time. Meanwhile, the identity and app management function can help create a policy management, create a cloud director to ensure control of all apps, and allow the viewing and management of available licenses for purchased and managed cloud or software-as-a-service apps.
LogMeIn began testing AppGuru in May last year when the company's CEO, Michael Simon, had said at the time that the then-pilot of the service was to address IT professionals' needs.
"The feedback we have received from our IT customers is consistent: Today's IT professional isn't looking to impede the use of employee-introduced technology, and they fully appreciate the benefits of the cloud," he said.
"The challenge many of them are facing is, as their role shifts into one of the expert advisor and partner to the business, traditional approaches to user management, provisioning and security are often ill-suited for these new dynamics."