Enterprise

The Top 50 Apps Employees Sneak Into Work

By Julie Bort
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Flickr/Anirudh Koul

"Shadow IT" is the latest buzzword for when employees buy their own apps and use them at work.

In a 2012 survey, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that as much as one-third of the money companies spent on technology was for these "shadow IT" apps.

Sometimes employees buy apps to get their work done faster. Sometimes the apps are really for fun, but they've loaded them on their PCs, smartphone, or tablets connected to corporate networks.

A startup that launched last week, Skyhigh Networks, helps IT departments discover these shadow apps so IT departments can stop or control them. It's been in beta with a handful of Fortune 2,000 companies like Cisco and General Electric.

Based on the scans it's done with its beta customers, Skyhigh came up with a list of the top 50 shadow IT apps that employees use at work. Most of these we've heard of, but a few surprised us.

Here they are, in order of how many people use them.

  1. Facebook
  2. Dropbox
  3. Google Mail
  4. Apple iCloud
  5. LinkedIn
  6. Disqus (an app for leaving comments on Web sites)
  7. Salesforce
  8. Amazon Web Services (Amazon's cloud that hosts files and apps)
  9. Hotmail
  10. Box
  11. Amazon S3 (Amazon's storage cloud)
  12. Google Apps
  13. Evernote (note taking app)
  14. Twitter
  15. Microsoft Office 365 (Microsoft's cloud version of MS Office)
  16. 4shared (file sharing)
  17. RightNow (Customer support app bought by Oracle in 2011)
  18. Mozy (Online backup and storage)
  19. AOL
  20. Sourceforge (a site that stores and shares open-sourced apps)
  21. Netsuite (cloud ERP app)
  22. Marketo (manages marketing campaigns)
  23. Flickr
  24. VeriSign Geotrust (security app that ensures a Web site is safe)
  25. Google Analytics
  26. YouSendIt (file sharing)
  27. New Relic (troubleshoots problems with Web apps)
  28. Taleo (HR cloud app bought by Oracle in 2012)
  29. Slideshare (Powerpoint presentations online)
  30. Workday (HR app)
  31. Carbonite (automatic, secure backup and storage)
  32. Docusign (electronic signatures for legal, business documents)
  33. Prezi (online presentations)
  34. Typekit (adds fancy fonts to a website)
  35. Skype
  36. Sliderocket (online presentation tools)
  37. Github (open-source projects and job site for developers)
  38. Cloudfiles (file sharing)
  39. SugarSync (file sharing)
  40. PagerDuty (texting app for IT emergencies)
  41. Bitbucket (stores open source projects)
  42. Intuit Quickbase (creates custom business apps)
  43. Constant Contact (email marketing)
  44. Xobni (connects your Inbox to your social networks)
  45. Snapfish (web photo printing)
  46. Spiceworks (social network for IT professionals)
  47. Olark (adds chat to your website)
  48. Symantec Brightmail (email spam/security)
  49. Addthis (adds social features/buttons to Websites)
  50. Screencast (cloud storage)

 

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Julie Bort
Julie Bort
Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.
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