Using Employee-Facing Apps, Data Access Policies to Best Advantage

This slide show offers insight into how organizations will modify employee-facing apps and data policies in 2016 to make themselves more effective and secure.

Secure app delivery technology has evolved to ensure that people can access their business apps, regardless of the device they are using or where they are located. David Cearley, Gartner Research vice president and Fellow, sees an emerging post-mobile world in which the focus shifts from devices to the mobile user, surrounded by a mesh of devices extending well beyond traditional mobility.

Jesse Lipson, Citrix vice president of Workflow and Workspace Cloud, sees the management priority shifting from location and device to the person, ensuring that professionals have secure access to their apps and data wherever they are located, whenever they need it, across myriad devices.

Christian Reilly, Citrix CTO of Workspace Services, views software applications as the key driver for innovation and competiveness. Securely delivering applications to any device will continue to be a gateway to new services, products, customer experiences and revenue generation. In 2016, new software platforms will provide a way for business managers to automatically and securely deploy and deliver applications that accelerate their business. These will comprise a combination of DevOps approaches, collaborative partner ecosystems and cloud-based platforms.

A key driver for consumerization in enterprise IT is the continuous demand for apps that are easy to use, no matter what device is used to access them. The constant battle to identify and secure shadow IT (unapproved apps and devices) illustrates the fact that if executives and employees are not getting what they need from IT, they will find their own—usually less secure—alternatives. As a result, CIOs are realizing that a superior user experience is no longer a luxury, but a necessity to preserve security and boost productivity.

Enterprises will provide secure access to powerful graphics-intensive Linux applications to business managers and non-engineering employees. Until the last year, Linux applications and files used by engineers, designers, scientists and financial analysts could only be accessed and viewed on Linux workstations. Thanks to recent secure app and data-delivery advances, Linux applications and desktop environments now can be delivered virtually. Now, business managers and colleagues can securely access and view designs, blueprints, plans and other files on Windows and Mac PCs and devices from anywhere, accelerating approvals and fueling greater collaboration and productivity for any team that depends on Linux apps.

Enterprises will deliver more applications and desktop resources from the cloud-based or hybrid cloud infrastructures. The emergence of cloud-based management platforms last year offers enterprises the ability to work with multiple clouds and on-premises infrastructures, managing them as individual resource zones. With these architectures, large IT organizations can effectively manage applications and data deployed on existing on-premises infrastructure, while expanding and moving workloads to the cloud for a secure, centrally managed hybrid environment. This approach frees IT managers to migrate applications and data to the clouds of their choice, while staying in compliance with evolving regional and global regulations for protecting data privacy.

Just as DevOps is creating an automated life cycle between software development and IT operations, AppOps will emerge as a practice that creates an automated life cycle that streamlines application deployment and management, so IT can assess, secure, deliver and manage new enterprise and SaaS apps with better agility. As mainstream enterprise IT organizations embrace DevOps—and the AppOps automated approach to application management—they will become faster, more nimble, and more flexible and responsive to the demands of business managers.

According to Gartner Research, enterprises will migrate to Windows 10 at the fastest pace on record, following on the path of Windows XP and Windows 7 before it. These migrations are being driven by Microsoft’s offer of a free upgrade to Windows 7 customers, along with pent-up demand from businesses that have delayed upgrades until a better alternative to Windows 8 arrived.

As more high-profile security breaches take place, enterprises will face ongoing pressure to improve security. At the same time, executives and employees will continue to demand convenient, easy-to-use devices and apps, and will go around or outside of IT if they are not satisfied with their experience using IT-sanctioned tools provided. As a result, IT security will increasingly focus on the data transaction and on the individual, rather than on devices, protecting proprietary information with layers of security, while making the experience as seamless and intuitive as possible to prevent people from deploying their own shadow IT.

After a few years of increasing hype, fatigue with the Internet of things (IoT) is already growing. Like disruptive technologies that preceded it, IoT applications in health care, inventory management and the smart office are beginning to gain business momentum. Hospitals and health care providers are beginning to use the technology to connect devices such as Bluetooth thermometers and heart rate monitors to electronic medical record (EMR) systems; other applications in offices and manufacturing facilities are just beginning to emerge. As a result, the larger-than-life predictions will give way to the mundane but highly valuable IoT applications that deliver quantifiable business value.