Cloud services company LogMeIn has launched the preview of a new product developed to help IT professionals secure and manage business and employee-introduced cloud applications in the workplace – a growing phenomenon among businesses of all sizes.
LogMeIn’s AppGuru offers IT pros with Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) features designed to centralize the management of users in the cloud in an effort to ease the onboarding and off-boarding of employees, while providing a single tool for setting and enforcing policies for business and personal productivity cloud apps, according to Michael Simon, CEO of LogMeIn.
The feedback LogMeIn has received from its IT customers has been consistent: Today’s IT pro isn’t looking to impede the use of employee-introduced technology – rather they fully appreciate the benefits of the cloud, Simon explained.
“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,” Simon said in a statement. 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.”
With AppGuru, IT pros can encourage – even empower – the widespread use of cloud 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. In fact, nearly 70 percent of companies report active use of employee-introduced cloud apps at work, according to a study conducted by Edge Strategies on the bring-your-own-app (BYOA) trend.
In addition, 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 (i.e. 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 trend by introducing an approach to cloud-based identity management – or IDaaS – that centralizes management and control, while providing an alternative to the disparate process of procuring, configuring and deploying cloud applications into a business environment.
The preview of AppGuru gives IT pros the ability to manage LogMeIn’s collaboration apps, join.me and Cubby, as well as third-party cloud offerings like Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 via a single, centralized tool. The company plans to rollout support for many of today’s most popular cloud apps in the coming months.
Once out of beta, LogMeIn plans to offer AppGuru both 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.
Edited by
Jamie Epstein
