Citrix released its Enterprise mobility cloud report, revealing key trends that are shaping the enterprise mobility market. The report is based on aggregate data from Citrix customers who have deployed enterprise mobility in the cloud.


The report also details trends in how enterprises are dealing with apps and security policies, with a rise in mobile app blacklisting, including Facebook and Dropbox.

iOS continued to lead in the enterprise as the mobile platform of choice with 58 percent of all global devices enrolled. Android lost two percentage points globally and Windows Mobile remained the same at 7 percent of devices.

Android was the fastest growing platform for enrolled devices in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa with an 11 percent gain from the prior quarter to 36 percent of the region. Apple saw its iOS penetration drop from 56 percent to 43 percent share of enrolled devices in the same region, and Windows Mobile gained 2 percent share to 21 percent.

iOS was the preferred platform for enrolled devices in vertical industries in which mobile users engage their customers one-on-one, such as in retail and restaurants. Android was the preferred platform for those with mobile field service organisations, such as in transportation and utilities. The largest adopters of Android were healthcare (a preponderance of which are home healthcare organisations who have deployed cloud-based enterprise mobility), and transportation. The largest adopters of iOS include the legal and insurance industries.

Organisations have become more aggressive on app blacklisting, with 18 percent of customers deploying this policy, an increase of 11 percent from the prior quarter. Often associated with corporate-issued line-of-business use cases, a rise in blacklisting indicates an increase in such deployments.

Typically, organisations blacklist apps they feel pose a threat to data or network security, such as apps that synchronise and share files outside of the corporate network. Some also blacklist apps that are considered a drain on productivity, such as games and social media. This is especially true for devices used for workers doing task-based activities.

The most commonly blacklisted apps were Angry Birds, Facebook, Dropbox, and YouTube, while the most commonly whitelisted apps were Evernote, NitroDesk TouchDown, Google Chrome and Adobe Reader. Skype was the only app that made both the blacklist and whitelist.

James Stevenson, area vice-president, Northern Europe at Citrix, said of the findings: “2012 saw a rise in the number of business applications available on alternative platforms, with the large developer following of Android and iOS leading the charge. Consumers have become accustomed to downloading apps like Evernote and Skype - as well as tools for collaboration, social networking and storage - onto their smart phones and tablets with ease, and then using them at work.”

“This report underlines the growing pressure on IT departments to monitor the complexity of all these proprietary platforms to ensure the business still has some measure of control, or risk complexity, confusion and opening their network to the threat of malicious attack.”

The complete report is available here.