Is BYOA tomorrow’s BYOD?

New Year predictions are made earlier and earlier each year, but I think internet analyst Mary Meeker has probably already won the race this year by releasing her 2015 forecasts at the end of May. Among her thoughts about ‘shareable data troves’ and mobile sensors, she has an interesting point about mobile apps – believing that they will become increasingly specialised and single purpose.

This fits in well with my own prediction: that from BYOD will evolve a necessary new trend, BYOA. This time, the acronym stands for ‘Build Your Own Apps’, as organisations look for ways to retain control over data access whilst allowing users to become increasingly mobile.

Indeed the app culture is starting already in the office. Employees now able to use their own mobile devices in the office also want to use the familiar apps they use in their personal lives – especially if it helps them get their work done quickly.

Yet this creates a headache for the IT department. Many popular apps such as Dropbox, Skype, Evernote and Google Docs are not appropriate for the corporate environment because their use involves transferring data and often storing it in a public cloud. Whilst innocently employed by staff who are just keen to improve their own productivity, their use of these apps means the organisation effectively loses control of their own data, with the IT department unable to track what data is stored where, never mind protect it.

Some larger businesses have got round this by creating an enterprise apps store, offering their staff corporate-approved apps that enable easy interaction with business systems and facilitate the access to, and movement of data in a controlled way. This is proving so successful that Gartner has predicted that by 2017, one of four organisations will have deployed such a store, holding a selection of apps approved by use by the IT department.

And from there, it’s a small step to start building bespoke apps. If businesses can engage with their staff and harness the knowledge of those who are actually carrying out the day to day tasks involved, then they can design apps that are tailored to their individual business needs. And because they are customised to a company’s individual workflow and processes they can help significantly enhance productivity, efficiency and customer service.

Naturally, developing company-specific apps will need some upfront investment. However, this will still be more affordable than buying a new server-based application. But is it really possible to run an entire company on bespoke apps?

As Mary Meeker suggests, apps are ideal for straightforward tasks rather than complex processes. But this is what also makes them ideal for addressing some of the security risks of BYOD. Single task-style apps enable organisations to limit access. For example, an HR department might provide apps for requesting holiday to all staff, but the apps to approve this would only be supplied to appropriate managers. Access to functionality within a systems could be restricted too, where necessary.

During the next few years, it’s likely that successful businesses are going to need to be as nimble on their feet. In this case using apps could be the answer to the increasing concerns around mobility vs security. They provide a new flexibility to enable a fast response to evolving market conditions as they can be tweaked far more easily and economically than a large enterprise system.

Some large corporates are already adopting this approach, creating customised app stores for easy download to help with a complete range of tasks from monitoring industrial plant to providing business intelligence. However, inevitably most mid-range and smaller companies are some years away from considering BYOA.

But there are still ways that all businesses can lay strong foundations for any future developments in this direction and be prepared when the time comes. They need to consider their LAN and WAN requirements around security, bandwidth and resilience. For a start they need to be sure that their internal enterprise applications can port to a mobile strategy and also that the applications and data can be de-coupled into a modular format that enables app-based working.

If there’s one prediction that I know will come true, it’s that the future is never quite how we think it will be. However, to me the rise in business apps seems to be the next logical chapter in the mobile story and it always pays to be prepared.