About 40% of mobile app development projects are anticipated to leverage cloud back-end services by 2016, according to a new report from Gartner.
The report revealed that the move would cause development leaders to lose control of the pace and path of cloud adoption within their enterprises.
Gartner research director Gordon Van Huizen said cloud mobile back-end services stand to become a key component of the application development ecosystem.
"As a result, a given organisation may begin using them without first developing the requisite understanding of the issues and risks associated with employing cloud services for application infrastructure," Huizen said.
"What’s needed, then, is something of a crash course in the fundamental concerns of deploying application functionality in the cloud."
Cloud mobile back-end services are aimed at offering a particular form of platform as a service (PaaS) that supports mobile application development.
Mobile back-end services would allow using the cloud capabilities, such as data storage in a possible natural form to the mobile application developer.
The rise in cloud services by mobile applications would lead to rise in the challenge of governing the security and use of sensitive corporate data and if they are ungoverned, it would lead to the secret transfer of sensitive data to the cloud, and would lack security.
"Governance technology can only be effective, though, if it is used," Van Huizen said.
"Clear policies must be established and communicated to developers prior to the use of cloud mobile back-end services by applications that may access corporate or customer data."
Additionally, the report revealed that majority of enterprise application development occurs outside the scope of IT as business unit application development, end-user application development and development outsourced by business units to third parties.
Traditionally, most mobile application development, which could not be performed by IT, has been outsourced, further changing with the emergence of visual app builders and other forms of rapid mobile application development tools.
The rise in demand for mobile applications would allow non-IT developers to increasingly seek ways to offer mobile applications that suit their business requirements, and begin developing own mobile applications.
"This presents a risk much greater than in the past," Huizen said.
"The advent of more sophisticated rapid mobile application development environments, the availability of cloud services and increased access to enterprise systems will expand the potential for non-IT developers to build applications that commingle sensitive corporate data with cloud-based services and storage.
"It is, therefore, necessary to extend awareness of the issues to the broader organisation, as well as the organisation’s policies for cloud services, so that mobile applications built outside IT are subject to the same oversight and governance as those built within IT."
