The past decade has seen dramatic changes in the business landscape, including more sophisticated cyber threats, the rise of distributed work, and smartphone saturation.
Along the way, our Businesses at Work report has tracked how workforces have adapted and the new tools they’ve adopted. Amid all this change, two constants emerge: the importance of security and collaboration tools.
Adapting to this new reality has led many organizations to adopt increasingly advanced collaboration and business operations apps and new security solutions. This simultaneous embrace of security and productivity is a major theme in the just-released 2025 edition of Businesses at Work, Okta’s annual review of the apps and technology organizations use today.
Each year, the Businesses at Work Report carefully analyzes anonymized data across thousands of customers in the Okta Integration Network (OIN), representing enterprise software decisions across all major industries and geographies. What emerges is a clear picture of the most popular and fastest-growing apps and services at organizations around the world, plus deeply informed trends and insights.
Major themes and reveals from this year’s data include
- An alarming increase in detected threats across industries
- The slow triumph of high-assurance authentication factors
- A steady rise in workflow-powered efficiency gains
- A milestone in the number of apps deployed per customer
- This year’s fastest-growing apps
Below is a quick summary of some of the high points (or explore the full report).
A decade of data: Businesses at Work turns 10
The first Businesses at Work report, issued in 2015, reflected enterprise software choices in a world that looked very different from the one we see today. A lot has changed, but some important themes persist, as a special 10-year retrospective in this year’s report makes clear.
A standout feature of our Businesses at Work reports is the fastest-growing apps ranking, which tracks year-over-year growth in app and tool deployment among Okta customers. This ranking offers a unique lens into emerging business trends and shifting priorities across industries.
When launched in 2015, the report showcased a range of tools but lacked security products. By 2016, this changed as security apps appeared, marking a shift in priorities. Security tools now account for 40% of the fastest-growing apps, reflecting businesses' response to the evolving threat landscape.