Facebook, Angry Birds and Web browsers of all apps were among those blacklisted by businesses being mindful of BYOD strategies, said Zenprise.
Mobile device
management software makers continue to find interesting ways to slice and
dice information related to the burgeoning bring-your-own-device, or BYOD, trend
in the corporate workplace.
Enter
Zenprise, which found out that Facebook, Angry Birds and Web browsers were
blocked or closely monitored for malicious activity on smartphones and tablets
used by some of its customers.
These apps
were what Zenprise categorized as blacklisted apps. Meanwhile, traditional, enterprise-ready
applications, such as Citrix and Adobe, were frequently given the green light
because they were required, or whitelisted.
The mobile device management (MDM)
provider looked at applications that were the most commonly blacklisted and
whitelisted among customers using the company's Zencloud software, which lets
IT managers provision business applications and data to their employees'
smartphones and tablets.
The
report was culled data from corporate users of
iOS, Android and Windows Mobile devices for the holiday quarter.
The companies
are concerned Facebook, Angry Birds and Web browsers impinge productivity. This
is certainly possible, especially at a time when comScore said the average
Facebook user spends nearly seven hours on the social network.
Meanwhile,
survey respondents said they blacklist certain cloud applications, such as
Evernote or Dropbox, due to concerns about security risks, according to
Zenprise Chief Marketing Officer Ahmed Datoo. Indeed, Zenprise found that the
number of blacklisted applications was nearly twice that of whitelisted apps.
However, Datoo
took the progressive attitude. He noted that as consumers continued to bring
their personal devices into the workplace, advances in mobile device management
will offset these concerns. He declined to say what those advances might be.
Some companies
are proving pretty progressive with regards to MDM.
Enterproid and
VMware, for example, each provide software that
splits users' work and personal identities on smartphones, creating a dual
identity of sorts.
Some other things
to note about the report: Most of Zenprise's Web-based Zencloud customerstwo
thirdsare based in North America.
Moreover, and
perhaps no shock to anyone, Apple's iOS accounted for 57 percent of the devices
surveyed on Zencloud. Android was No. 2 at 33 percent, with Microsoft's Windows
Mobile taking 10 percent share.
What's
interesting here is how far ahead Apple, a consumer-oriented company, appears
to be in the enterprise, even though it is Android that has the 50 percent-plus
worldwide smartphone share.
This shows
that more businesses trust Apple's proprietary, more locked-down approach to
hardware and software than Google's open-source approach with Android. Google
hopes Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, will boost enterprise adoption of its
platform.
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