Netskope: Most Cloud Apps Are Not 'Enterprise-Ready'

A new Netskope report revealed that nearly half of all cloud application activity now occurs on mobile devices.

The research, titled “October 2014 Netskope Cloud Report,” also showed that nearly 89 percent of cloud apps are not “enterprise-ready,” and more than one-third of all data leakage policy violations occur on smartphones and tablets.

“There’s a veritable storm of corporate activity across a wide variety of cloud apps, and it’s increasingly happening on mobile devices and often from remote locations,” Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri said in a prepared statement. “This makes it even more difficult for IT to keep tabs on sensitive corporate and customer data on user-owned devices, especially when you consider that the majority of these apps aren’t enterprise-ready.”

Netskope ranked Google Drive, Facebook and Twitter as its top three enterprise cloud apps. Dropbox, Facebook and Twitter were named the top three apps enterprise users access from their mobile devices.

Other report results included:

Netskope said its report findings were based on tens of billions of cloud app events seen across millions of users and represent usage trends from July to September.

Enterprises want cloud apps, but why?

Why do many of today’s enterprises want cloud apps?

Siki Giunta, senior vice president of cloud services for Verizon Enterprise Solutions (VZ), recently said she believes the cloud has become “an established platform for application workloads,” which has made it increasingly valuable to enterprises worldwide.

“When it comes to enterprise IT and cloud computing, the discussion has decidedly shifted from ‘if’ to ‘how’ and ‘what,'” Giunta said in a prepared statement. “Customers are now coming to us with more detailed, stringent requirements and questions about where and how to use the cloud to transform their businesses and mission-critical workloads, instead of whether or not to use it.”

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Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ “State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2014” report, which was released last month, highlighted the rising demand for enterprise cloud apps as well.

The report revealed that 65 percent of enterprises are using cloud computing, and enterprise spend on cloud is up 38 percent year over year.

Researchers also pointed out that 71 percent of enterprises said they expect to use the cloud for external-facing production apps by 2017.

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