These Are the Fastest-Growing Business Apps
(Bloomberg) -- Snowflake Inc.’s database software has emerged in an annual report as the fastest-growing cloud-based software program, signaling strong corporate demand for modern tools to help analyze data.
Snowflake’s use among clients more than tripled in 2019, software maker Okta Inc. said Tuesday in its annual Businesses @ Work report, which tracks the popularity of corporate software. Atlassian Corp.’s Opsgenie tool took the No. 2 spot as fastest-growing, with a gain of 194%. Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud came in third place and Splunk Inc. in fourth.
The cloud applications market generated $121 billion of revenue in 2018, according to research firm IDC. The infrastructure market, where Google Cloud competes, produced $36 billion in annual revenue, the firm said.
Snowflake makes cloud-based data warehouses, a type of database that compiles information from various sources so it can be analyzed. The company competes against Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud division and database stalwarts such as Oracle Corp. The San Mateo, California-based startup is considering going public, although the chief executive officer has said the the earliest the company could be ready for such a move would be this summer.
Opsgenie makes incident management software that notifies workers about critical issues to reduce or avoid service downtime. Todd McKinnon, the chief executive officer of Okta, said the types of software on the list represent a departure from the traditional business applications that topped the survey in previous years, such as office communications platform Slack Technologies Inc. and videoconferencing company Zoom Video Communications Inc.
“This was the first year where the fastest-growing things were infrastructure tools or security tools,” McKinnon said in an interview. “It’s a natural coming of age. We’ve put a bunch of apps in place. Now you have to make sure they’re secure, that users aren’t being phished, that you’re using the data in those apps for insights.”
The most popular corporate apps overall, by unique monthly active users, are Microsoft Corp.’s Office 365, Workday Inc. and ServiceNow Inc. Google’s G Suite and Salesforce.com Inc. round out the top five.
Increasingly, corporate developer teams are buying work tools independent of their IT organizations. The most popular developer software is the Atlassian Product Suite, Okta said. It was followed by Microsoft Corp.’s GitHub, PagerDuty Inc., New Relic Inc., and the newly public Datadog Inc.
Okta crunches these numbers based on data from its 7,500 customers, which use the software to securely log into various tech systems. The report presents and analyzes data from Nov. 1, 2018, to Oct. 31, 2019.
(Updates with additional details in eighth paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the full name of Snowflake Inc. in the first paragraph.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Nico Grant in San Francisco at ngrant20@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Molly Schuetz
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Okta ranks the most popular and fastest-growing apps in the enterprise
Okta's annual study shows companies investing in apps and tools focused on security, data, and app development; favorites include GitHub and Zoom.
The newest list of Okta's fastest growing apps in the enterprise include those that everyone seems to use, such as G Suite and Zoom, but it also includes some surprising newcomers. For the first time since Okta began reporting on the fastest growing apps in the enterprise six years ago, the list of growing apps and integrations in the Businesses@Work report features six data- or security-focused tools. Okta's report confirms what anyone in tech knows: G Suite has gained traction on Microsoft Office 365 and Atlassian Product Suite also gained ground; two of the evolving customer-app preferences. On the number of customers list, Lucidchart and GitHub made the top 15 this year. For active unique users, Zoo and UltiPro joined the list. "The most popular apps list itself has also evolved, featuring new contenders mixed with some of the same companies year after year," said Ming Wu, vice president of data and analytics at Okta. SEE: Cheat sheet: Google Pixel phone (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Image: Okta
The most popular apps, based on the number of customers:
Microsoft Office 365
Salesforce
Amazon AWS
G Suite
Atlassian Product Suite
Slack
Zoom
Box
SAP Concur
Cisco Meraki
DocuSign
Zendesk
GitHub
Dropbox
Lucidchart
In 2018, business priorities focused on security and collaboration apps, with six of 10 apps falling into those categories. However, in 2019, the fastest growing apps plus percent growth, focused on big tech and security. Five apps which made the list make a first appearance.
Snowflake, developer-favorite Atlassian, Opsgenie, and Splunk make first appearances on the fastest-growing app list. Okta's report assesses if making the "fastest growing app" list correlates to the company's success and it cites the number one apps of the last five years have "gone on to do big things, securing growth equity or going public: Slack (which held the number one position twice), Zoom, Jamf and KnowBe4.
The fastest-growing apps:
Snowflake (273%) - new to the list in 2019
Opsgenie (194%) - new to the list in 2019
Google Cloud Platform (108%) - new to the list in 2019
Splunk (102%) - new to the list in 2019
KnowBe4 (89%)
Looker (86%)
Jamf Pro (82%)
Envoy (80%) - new to the list in 2019
Freshservice (77%)
Zoom (76%)

Image: Okta
The most popular developer tools:
Atlassian Product Suite
GitHub
PagerDuty
New Relic
Datadog
Statuspage
Splunk
Jenkins
Sumo Logic
Pingdom
The report also looks at and ranks apps for hotel and lodging, online learning, HR tools, on-ground transportation ( Uber tops the list, Lyft isn't on it, most are rental car companies), travel planning, banking and finance, and video conferencing apps. "The report really highlights just how dependent on technology the modern business is," Wu said. Last year the average number of apps per customer was 83. This year, it's 88, and the report notes that 10% of customers deploy a substantial 200 or more apps.
Cybersecurity apps
Cybersecurity changes rapidly, "it's a cloud and mobile world," the report declares, adding that the traditional perimeter is gone, and that "people are the new perimeter." With new apps comes new ways for company security teams to protect customers.

Image: Okta
According to International Data Corporation, "worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services is forecasted to reach $106.6 billion in 2019, an increase of 10.7% over 2018." The average company deploys more than 150-security focused tools, and Okta concludes, based on findings of the past four years, there is a new modern security stack consisting of four layers of security, which it designates as:
people (not only focusing on accounts and credentials, but physical security solution)
devices (includes tools for security analytics, endpoint management and security and certificate management)
network ( secure web gateway tools, VPNs and firewalls, and proxies)
Infrastructure (content delivery network providers, server access, and infrastructure monitoring tools)
Using the most popular tool in each of the four security layers, the report presents what it would look like:
Okta's report noted that companies are more focused on deploying security measures other than passwords (23 million victim accounts were hacked worldwide, and the fact that the top two passwords were "12345," and "qwerty" probably didn't help; 69% share passwords with colleagues, and 55% don't use two-step notification at work). There's a potential crippling financial concern, with data breaches costing an average of $3.9 million (up from 2018). In 2019 an average 25,575 records were compromised and it took 279 days to identify and contain the breach.
"[I]t's clear there's a shift towards data gathering, analytics, and visualization tools as well as security tools rather than collaboration apps when it comes to the fastest growing technologies," Wu said. "This rise in cloud and data security app adoption is another proof point of how SaaS apps offer enterprises new opportunities to leverage the scale and management advantages of the cloud with SaaS security apps offering new opportunities."
Collaboration software
There's a shakeup in collaboration space: businesses are turning away from collaboration suites and moving towards relative newcomers like Slack and Zoom to work efficiently and productively. C# and Java rank the most popular tools used to build customer identity solutions. Okta polled 100 customers and 89% reported building custom apps and 81% reported having an application-development team on staff. The report found companies are baking apps for good into social impact strategies, and a surprising 70% said volunteer activities are likely to boost company morale more than company-sponsored happy hours.
The future of apps
Okta's report concludes, "The script is changing. Data management tools are taking center stage. Developer tools are moving out from the wings and into the spotlight. Security tools are like bouncers popping up at every door and window. App adoption is growing across the board as customers become best-of-breed apps' biggest fans. Behind the scenes, users are relying on corporate and personal apps to get their jobs done. It's a crowded stage for apps and tools, and the show has a long run ahead of it."
Okta used data from 7,400 customers and more than 6,500 cloud, mobile and web app integrations to compile the report.
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Image: Okta
These 10 Stocks Have the Fastest Dividend Growth–and Can Beat the Stock Market in 2020
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Photograph by Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
The Dogs of the Dow beat stock market averages during the decade just ended. What’s more, Barron’s found that “small dogs” offer investors superior dividend yields without sacrificing too much return. How do fast dogs—the stocks with the fastest dividend growth—perform? As it turns out, pretty well. That’s a good boy.
We’re a little obsessed with dogs. There is good reason though. The Dogs of the Dow is a time-tested strategy that buys the 10 highest dividend yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average each year. It’s a simple, repeatable strategy and it has worked. A strategy like that is the Holy Grail for investors.
The success of the Dow Dogs is also what led Barron’s to dive into other simple, repeatable—and potentially winning—investment strategies.
The Small Dogs are the 10 highest yielding stocks in the Russell 2000 small capitalization index with market values over $1 billion. Small-cap stocks are typically more volatile than larger companies. We showed investors cut some of the risk of owing small stocks while receiving much higher than average dividend yields.
Now for the greyhounds. The Fast Dogs strategy looks at companies growing dividend payouts at the fastest rate. The S&P 500 was our sample set.
Fast Dogs just nosed out the S&P 500 over the past three years. Outperforming in 2017, underperforming in 2018 and, essentially, matching the market in 2019.
A longer historic look would be helpful, but dividend growth data is harder to come by than just dividend yields. Barron’s suspects two fundamental reasons Fast Dogs might work over the long run. First, dividend growth demonstrates to investors the future looks bright. Higher payouts are a powerful signal to investors. What’s more, investors like dividends and more money attracts more investors.
The Fast Dogs for 2020 are: Pioneer Natural Resources (ticker: PXD), TechnipFMC (FTI), Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO), Newmont (NEM), Cimarex Energy (XEC), NetApp (NTAP), Juniper Networks (JNPR), Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH), Lam Research (LRCX) and Progressive (PGR).
That’s a nice mix of stocks across several sectors.
Deciding what stocks to buy can be hard. Learning to construct a portfolio of stocks can be hard too. But looking at different factors, such as dividend growth, can help investors screen in, or screen out, various stocks and strategies.
Finding a unique strategy is entertaining—and rewarding too.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
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