The world has changed

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for organisations around the world. With millions of people suddenly working from home for the first time, companies need ways to ensure productivity, connectivity, and security—quickly. 

This mid-year update to Businesses @ Work looks at the data from the Okta Integration Network (OIN) to understand how organisations are employing new apps and increasing adoption of existing technology to improve productivity and secure their remote workforce during this unique crisis. Our network now includes nearly 8,000 customers and over 6,500 integrations with cloud, mobile and web apps, and IT infrastructure providers. 

Dig into the data by industry:

- Education
- Finance and Banking
- Healthcare

WFH: More apps and tools, more comfy pants

Each month we see an overall uptick in the number of apps deployed as companies adopt more tools to get work done. Other than a typical dip in December around the holidays, our total number of unique users tends to uptick steadily as well. Between this February and March, that uptick grew substantially as more users adopted new functionality. We see growth in two major areas: collaboration tools, especially video conferencing apps, and network security tools such as VPNs that extend secure access to remote workers.

Our fastest growing apps were determined by the percentage increase in the number of unique users who logged in at least once during a 30-day period ending March 31 compared to a 30-day period ending February 29. Note that our data looks primarily at workforce usage.

Video conferencing has suddenly become pervasive in our lives: not only do home-based workforces need it to be productive, but families are using video conferencing to stay in touch, friends are scheduling get-togethers, and both educational and extra-curricular classes are moving online. So it will probably come as no surprise that three of our top seven fastest growing apps are video conferencing tools. Zoom was the fastest growing app in the OIN with an amazing 110% growth in unique workforce users in March over February, 2020. (For comparison, Zoom grew only 6% during that same time period in 2019.) RingCentral ranks at #6 with 39% growth, and Cisco Webex takes #7 with 37% growth in that same month-over-month period.

Network security and performance tools share the spotlight. Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect showed 94% growth in March over February, compared to 20% for that same period in 2019. Cisco AnyConnect was close behind with 86% growth. These VPN tools provide security and ensure business continuity as organisations move workforces to the cloud at scale. Citrix ADC, which accelerates application performance and secures apps from attacks, had 56% month-over-month growth in that same period.

Proofpoint Security Awareness Training was the fifth fastest growing app, with 40% growth in March over February, indicating that companies aren’t just scrambling to get everyone up and running remotely—they are taking the extra step to protect the organisations’ notoriously weakest link, human error. Proofpoint also appeared at #10 with 22% growth, representing the increased usage of their Proofpoint Protection Server, Proofpoint Secure Share, and ProofPoint Threat Insight Dashboard products.

An unexpected transition to working from home often requires a new set of problem-solving skills. Many users are turning to Freshservice for their cloud-based IT service desk solution: between February and March of 2020, the number of unique users grew 25%. And LinkedIn Learning experienced 23% month-over-month growth, showing us that users are expanding their skill sets and possibly using this time to invest in themselves.

We took a closer look at our fastest growing apps and tools to see how the percentage growth of unique users changed day by day from late February through March, looking for a correlation between the growing impact of the pandemic and users’ behaviour. We used a 28-day comparison to ensure weekdays are always compared to weekdays.

Looking at typical weekday login cycles, we estimate that Friday, March 6, 2020 was the last day of “normal” app usage, before user activity was affected by the pandemic. We see an upward trend beginning on Monday, March 9, 2020 for many apps, especially the six featured above.

AnyConnect and GlobalProtect had the biggest peaks in increases in unique users when compared to 28 days prior. AnyConnect had peak days of growth on March 23 with 224% growth, and on March 30 with 238% growth. GlobalProtect showed peaks of 232% and 233% growth on those same days, respectively. Zoom’s largest increase came on March 23 with 238% growth, with a second peak of 211% on March 30.

Many factors have impacted the number of logins during this period of time, but we noticed that specific moments in time, such as government-issued social distancing directives, correlated to jumps in usage. By Monday, March 16, many European countries had announced lockdowns; we saw a sharp increase in unique user logins, especially for AnyConnect, GlobalProtect, and Zoom, compared to the previous Monday. On Friday, March 20, California began a shelter-in-place directive, and New York asked nonessential businesses to close. By the time the UK announced lockdowns on Monday, March 23, AnyConnect had seen a 161% increase in unique users over March 9, GlobalProtect had seen a 168% increase, and Zoom had seen a 152% increase.

After