“Ballooning infrastructure costs, rising cyberattacks, growing customer expectations for tailored digital experiences, and an increasingly dynamic workforce accelerated digital transformation in 2021,” said Graham Sowden, Okta’s general manager for APAC. “As our relationship with technology deepens, the role of identity in providing seamless access between people and technology has become critical.”
The hottest apps:
- Globally, collaboration and security tools are the two most popular categories of tools deployed through the Okta Integration Network, showing a 28% and 31% year-over-year growth respectively.
- The power trio Google Workspace, Zoom, and Slack have won many new customers across APAC. Google Workspace grew 68% YoY in terms of number of customers in the region, while Slack and Zoom grew 40% and 37%, respectively.
- In APAC specifically, network security tool Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect, workflow platform ServiceNow, email security tool Mimecast, and small business accounting software Xero were the most popular among customers.
- Globally, collaboration tools like Notion, Figma, Miro, Airtable and monday.com saw a surge in customers throughout the year, in tandem with the rise of remote working.
- Compared to the previous year’s report, 70% of the fastest-growing apps are new to the top 10. Clearly, the rapid shift to remote work drove firms to adopt new technologies to keep their workforces connected, secure and productive.
Sowden added that remote work has made content collaboration tools outright essential for corporations during the pandemic.
“In particular, we see that videos and meetings continue to connect people in a remote world, especially in APAC, where employers are arming their employees with collaboration platforms such as Zoom,” he continued.
Rise of multi-cloud platforms
Being able to access workflows and productivity tools from any location, on any device has turned into a business imperative. The study noted that cloud migration is not just increasing—it’s doubling, and complexifying, with organisations choosing to use multiple cloud platforms instead of putting all their cloud computing in one virtual basket.
AWS remains the favourite cloud platform globally, showing a 32% YoY growth last year and contributing to a total increase of 152% since 2018. Adoption of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has grown by 40% since 2020, up 365% from where it ranked in 2018.
Continued investment in security
Firms are continuing to invest in security-related applications, with Netskope (a network security tool) now the fastest growing app worldwide by the number of unique users and VMware’s Workspace ONE (an endpoint management tool) remaining high on the list.
Businesses are increasingly turning to higher assurance and adaptive forms of authentication like Okta Verify and WebAuthn to secure access to applications. Globally, SMS as a security factor dropped from 53% three years ago to 47% today, while security questions dropped 18% three years ago to 13% today.
Growing preference for best-of-breed solutions
Our research suggests that even when organisations increasingly license productivity suites, they still want to invest in best-of-breed apps that mirror some of the apps licensed under the bundle.
Of Okta’s Microsoft 365 (the most popular app) customers globally, 33% deploy four or more best-of-breed apps, up from 20% four years ago, highlighting the growing importance of flexibility and functionality as employees work remotely.
Some 38% also deploy Google Workspace, this year’s third most popular app by the number of customers. Another 43% use AWS, the second most popular app.
This year’s report clearly shows that organisations across the globe are leaning heavily into two areas: choice and collaboration,” said Sowden.
