Embracing Cloud apps in the workplace

LogMeIn, Inc. has announced a preview of AppGuru, the company’s new product specifically designed to help IT professionals embrace, secure and manage the rapid influx of business and employee-introduced cloud applications in the workplace– apps that have been adopted with little or no IT involvement. Built to help IT pros redefine their strategic role in today’s cloud-centric work environment, AppGuru’s identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) features are designed to centralize the management of users in the cloud, thereby easing the on boarding and off-boarding of employees, while providing a single tool for setting and enforcing policies for business and personal productivity cloud apps. As a result, IT pros can encourage and even empower the widespread use of such apps, while mitigating potential inherent data loss and compliance risks.

As business applications move to the cloud and new, employee-introduced cloud apps take hold in the workplace, the nature of and need for identity management is changing. A December 2012 study conducted by Edge Strategies on the bring-your-own-app (BYOA) trend found nearly 70% of companies reported active use of employee-introduced cloud apps at work. According to the findings, only 22 percent of IT pros indicate they are fully prepared to handle BYOA and 43 percent are concerned with the lack of control over these apps. In addition, SaaS enterprise apps (e.g. Salesforce.com), are often controlled by line-of-business owners, thus putting traditional IT tasks such as provisioning and policy control in the hands of business users outside the IT department.

AppGuru is aimed at addressing the management challenges caused by this new dynamic by introducing an approach to cloud based identity management – or IDaaS– that centralizes management and control while providing an alternative to the disparate, ad-hoc and often error prone process of procuring, configuring and deploying cloud applications into a business environment.

“The feedback we have received from our IT customers is consistent: Today’s IT pro isn’t looking to impede the use of employee-introduced technology, and they fully appreciate the benefits of the cloud. The challenge many of them are facing is, as their role shifts into one of expert advisor and partner to the business, traditional approaches to user management, provisioning and security are often ill-suited for these new dynamics,” said Michael Simon, CEO of LogMeIn. “AppGuru is designed to help these IT professionals embrace the new app centric world, and redefine their role as business partner in a cloud-enabled workplace.”

AppGuru aims to help IT pros address:
· Time consuming application management: A centralized console provides an easier way to manage multiple cloud apps than with dozens of application-specific admin tools
· Creating and managing identities in the cloud: Creating new users, importing existing users from current cloud apps, and leveraging existing Active Directory services to provision users, onboard them, and as needed, off-board employees across all cloud apps under management
· The challenge of managing cloud app licenses: A catalog of apps simplifies subscription management in a single, unified interface
· Data privacy, compliance, and security risks: Granular policy enforcement to control app-level security and customization settings
· The complexity of traditional policy management tools: Simple policy creation and customization across apps to address varying requirements across the organization

The preview of AppGuru gives IT pros the ability to manage LogMeIn’s popular collaboration apps, join.me and Cubby, as well as 3rd party cloud offerings like Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 through a single, centralized tool. LogMeIn plans to rollout support for dozens of today’s most popular cloud apps in the coming weeks and months.

Once out of beta, LogMeIn plans to offer AppGuruboth as a standalone cloud app management solution, as well as an integrated component of new enterprise versions of Cubby, LogMeIn’s cloud file sync and share app, and join.me, LogMeIn’s online meeting and collaboration app.

Those interested in the AppGuru preview can request an invite via the AppGuru site. Preview versions of the Enterprise editions of Cubby and join.me are also available.