The report starts out by noting that the pandemic created a great deal of upheaval and change, both at home and in the business community. "Families scrambled to get equipped, companies rushed to support their remote workforces, and organizations quickly developed new online experiences for customers," the report said. "And as the pandemic accelerated, tech solutions once preferred only by 'early adopters' became survival tools for companies across all industries, and the population as a whole."

The report tracks the changes in business-related apps and platforms, as well as the security needs created by these changes.

The appetite for apps slacked off at the beginning of the pandemic

Business applications are popular among employers—the average number of apps used by Okta customers is 88; larger employers use an average of 175 apps, with tech companies tending to lead the way in app usage. ("No surprise there," the report observed.)

The sector with the most growth in app use recently has been the government sector; it saw a 43% increase in app use over the past year. The report suggests that the government sector moved more quickly to remote work; based on labor statistics, the report noted that in May, a higher percentage of public-sector employees were working remotely (57%) when compared to the entire economy, where only 35% of employees were working remotely.

By comparison, the business world's use of apps dropped as shutdowns were put in place and unemployment jumped. The report found a noticeable dip in user activity among top business apps after March 31, 2020, followed by a rebound in use that began in May. By September, many apps were seeing normal numbers when it came to user activity.

Zooming up the charts

The report noted that Zoom, which has been one of the top video conferencing apps since early 2018, really took off as the pandemic set in. "For the first time, the app became part of many people's daily lives. Days of Zoom meetings and Zoom classes were capped by evenings of Zoom cocktail hours and Zoom dinners, until 'video conferencing fatigue' became a thing," the report said.

But Zoom was not the fastest-growing app, according to Okta's numbers—that honor belonged to Amazon Business, which saw a 341% year-over-year growth. And Microsoft 365, with its suite of functions, was by far the most popular app by number of monthly active users.

Among HR apps, Workday was the most popular and saw strong growth (23%), followed by BambooHR (38% growth) and UltiPro. "While HR tools have grown again across the board, employee engagement tools have made especially large gains," the report said. "With 75% growth in the past year, Culture Amp jumped two spots to pass SAP SuccessFactors and claim fourth place. Lattice, our sixth fastest-growing app overall with 109% year-over-year growth, joined the top HR tools for the first time and rose quickly to seventh place."

Remote work apps also see strong growth

The Okta report included this rundown on remote work apps:

• Deployment of project management app Smartsheet has grown 170% over the past three years. It boasts around 1.5 times as many Okta customers as its nearest competitor, Asana.
• Box is the top filesharing app, with 59% more Okta customers than its nearest competitor, Dropbox.
• DocuSign is far and away the most popular option for electronic signatures. Deployment has grown 208% in the past three years, and nearly 49% in the past year alone as digital signatures became critical to completing all kinds of transactions. DocuSign has more than seven times as many Okta customers as second-place Adobe Document Cloud.
• Top surveying tool SurveyMonkey has seen nearly 13% growth since February 2020, as companies rushed to understand what their employees needed to work remotely. SurveyMonkey has more than three times as many Okta customers as second-place Typeform.
• Slack ranks clearly as the top messaging tool, with nearly 190% growth in the past three years. Slack has more than ten times as many Okta customers as the second most popular messaging app, Workplace by Facebook.

Read more: 

• Work-from-home apps are on the rise; can you guess which is on top?
• How to manage employee burnout in the remote era
• High-performing companies turn to technology to recruit