Office 365 continues to be the most popular cloud app used by enterprises ahead of Salesforce and Box, while Slack has jumped in workplace popularity, according to the latest figures from identity management provider Okta.
Increasingly, enterprises are using both Office 365 and Google Apps, the fourth most popular service overall. Traditionally, Okta argues, industries such as finance, biotech and construction are more likely to be Microsoft houses compared to more digital businesses which prefer Google – a conclusion which mirrors research conducted by BetterCloud last year. The reason for organisations using both ranges from how different departments operate to keeping the lights on for the desktop license. In total, 82% of financial firms use Office 365 only, compared to 50% of online companies who are Google-exclusive.
The rise of communication app Slack has also been keenly noted in the research, with usage of the product rising 77% in the second half of 2015. Data visualisation provider Tableau (65%) and software analytics service New Relic (56%) also grew strongly among Okta’s customers, the latter being listed in Slack’s app directory.
Not only is Slack one of the fastest growing enterprise apps, it also pervades the vast majority of the enterprise. Not surprisingly, Office 365 and Google Apps are the leaders in this category, with Slack being used by 75% of employees on average in any one organisation. Perhaps more surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter is far lower on the list – although the prospect of these apps being not available or blacklisted to employees is a possibility. “We believe these apps still live outside of the IT realm,” comments Okta, with Facebook in particular looking to bolster their enterprise credentials with Facebook at Work.
Elsewhere, Okta argues some traditional on-prem software providers, particularly SAP, Oracle and Adobe, are making a reasonable fist of transforming its operations to a cloudy future, mostly through an acquisitive approach. This may not be a verdict which is universally agreed; when Dell’s acquisition of EMC for $67bn, the largest deal in tech history, was announced back in October, Cade Metz described the more traditional vendors as “the walking dead.”
[Source:- Cloudcomputing]
