10 Most Popular Enterprise Apps From Okta’s ‘Businesses @ Work Report’

Each year, security and enterprise systems provider Okta releases its Businesses @ Work Report, which examines the applications and services companies across its customer network use on a daily basis. This year’s data, which comes from thousands of data points provides insight into enterprise software trends and suggests not much has changed in enterprise application preferences from 2017 to 2018. Microsoft’s Office 365 and Salesforce are still the most popular enterprise apps, despite companies appearing increasingly willing to adopt Google’s G Suite and Amazon Web Service. Meanwhile, Slack’s growth is showing no signs of slowing down and Jira has tentatively regained its footing. This slide show will highlight Okta’s findings on the most popular enterprise apps this year. Note that the data does not include a total user count.

Microsoft’s Office 365 continues to be the most popular enterprise application, according to Okta’s study. Office 365, which provides a full range of productivity solutions to users, including Word, Excel, and others, has been in the top spot since 2015 and has only extended its lead ever since.

The popular sales and Customer Relationship Management platform Salesforce has held steady as the second-most-popular enterprise app. Salesforce, which was actually the most deployed app in 2015 before Office 365 took over, continues to grow its user base each quarter and appears to have no risk of losing its second-place standing anytime soon, the Okta report shows.

Amazon Web Services continues to soar in the enterprise, according to the Okta data. AWS, which was tied with G Suite and Box in the middle of 2017, is clearly now the third-most-popular cloud service behind Office 365 and Salesforce. AWS has also watched its popularity soar in the last couple of years and its trajectory suggests it could eventually top Salesforce if that growth continues.

Google’s G Suite, an Office 365 alternative that provides everything from email to word processing, is the fourth-most-popular corporate app, Okta revealed. Okta evaluated G Suite’s performance during the past quarter and found that its user base has grown by 49 percent in the past year, topping Office 365’s 40 percent growth.

The file-sharing and storage service Box was able to hold steady in fifth place in the Okta study. However, Box’s user base has appeared to level off, giving both AWS and G Suite the opportunity to surpass it. There’s still a large gap between Box and sixth-place finisher Concur, however, so the storage service should be able to hold on to its position for the time being.

Concur’s travel and expense management service continues to achieve steady growth, the Okta data shows. Over the past three years, Concur has grown its user base each quarter and appears on pace to continue that trajectory into 2018. However, Slack’s rapid growth could allow it to overtake Concur in the near future.

User adoption of the collaboration productivity app Slack, which has the goal of reducing the amount of time people spend on email, is soaring. In 2015, the service was far behind every other solutions provider in this roundup, but has muscled its way into seventh place. In that period, Slack has achieved fast quarter-over-quarter growth.

Atlassian’s Jira software, which provides issue tracking functions to companies in a variety of project management situations, has secured the eighth spot in Okta’s study. Although Jira use dipped a bit in mid-2017, Okta believes the service has regained those lost customers.

DocuSign, the service that allows companies to digitally sign legally binding contracts, continues to hold strong in the Okta study. DocuSign is still far behind Jira on the list and isn’t growing nearly as fast as Slack, but it’s steadily growing its customer base each quarter.

Cisco’s Meraki network management application rounds out the top ten most popular enterprise apps. Meraki, which enables IT administrators to manage a network from a centralized dashboard, was far behind its competitors in 2015, but in 2017, its growth accelerated.