New Omnissa 2026 Study Finds Shadow AI, Security Gaps, and Device Instability Expose Need for End-to-End IT Observability

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 24, 2026--

Omnissa®, a leading digital work platform company, today released its State of Digital Workspace 2026 report, a global study of telemetry data analyzed across millions of Omnissa-managed enterprise endpoints between January and December 2025. The findings reveal a fragmented IT landscape where AI adoption, device diversity and uneven security posture are making enterprise environments more difficult for IT teams to fully manage and secure.

“The central question becomes how you close blind spots fast enough to keep pace with AI, platform diversity, and distributed work,” said Hemant Sahani, Vice President of Product Management at Omnissa. “Converging DEX, security, and management telemetry provides essential context that helps teams close the gap between what they assume about the workspace and what telemetry shows is really occurring.”

The Omnissa State of Digital Workspace 2026 report identified four major trends shaping the modern digital workplace and reinforcing the need for granular, real-time observability.

Shadow perimeter: The rise of shadow AI

AI adoption inside the enterprise is accelerating faster than organizations can govern, as employees introduce new tools into their daily workflows, often outside IT governance. The report indicated that usage of AI assistant apps grewnearly 1000% in 2025 across all major operating systems, revealing a growing gap between the tools IT deploys and the ones employees actually use, and reinforcing the need for broader visibility across platforms. Key findings also included:

• Copilot was deployed on 97.5% of enterprise-managed mobile devices across both iOS and Android.
• Employee-installed alternatives were also highly prevalent, with ChatGPT installed on 91% of enterprise-managed iOS systems and Gemini installed on 61% of enterprise-managed Android systems.

Productivity gaps: The hidden cost of poor digital employee experience (DEX)

Employee productivity is tied directly to the digital employee experience — even small disruptions to an employee’s workflow can accumulate as workers require almost 24 minutes to refocus after a disruption. Omnissa telemetry brings the sources of these disruptions, including device stability and performance, to light so organizations can optimize productivity and improve employee experience. The Omnissa study analyzed the two most prevalent desktop platforms our customers rely on, Windows and macOS, and the data reveals key areas where Windows devices are more likely to impact employee workflow:

• Windows devices exhibited 3.1 times more total forced shutdowns than macOS
• Windows experienced 2.2 times more total application crashes than macOS
• Windows experienced 7.5 times more app hangs than macOS

Security hygiene: A blind spot across regulated industries

Organizations in highly regulated industries operate under some of the strictest compliance requirements, yet maintaining consistent security compliance across devices remains a challenge. The Omnissa study found industries like healthcare, pharma and education ranked lowest in maintaining device updates and ensuring data on those devices are encrypted. These compliance gaps create a high-stakes blind spot for IT teams and underscore the need for a granular view into the security hygiene of every endpoint. Key findings include:

• More than 50% of the Windows and Android devices in regulated industries such as healthcare and pharma were five major OS updates behind.
• More than 50% of education desktops and mobile devices are unencrypted.

Device lifecycles and total cost of ownership (TCO): No one-size-fits-all approach

As workforce roles and operational requirements vary across industries, organizations are moving from a one-size-fits-all device strategy toward a persona-based approach. To align devices to the employee role and needs, IT teams require granular data around device performance and lifecycle value across a mix of environments to make informed procurement decisions.

For example, the Omnissa study found organizations purchasing Macs are investing in six-year assets, while those purchasing Windows PCs are investing in three-year assets— a critical insight making clear why IT teams need deeper visibility to align device investments with lifecycle value and employee needs. Other key findings show how device usage and performance vary across platforms and industries:

• There is a clear concentration of ruggedized Android devices in frontline-leaning verticals such as retail & wholesale (34% of Android devices) or iPad Mini at 53% of all iPads in transportation.
• Government environments continue to rely heavily on Windows desktop platforms, seeing 2x desktop growth over the last year.

The Omnissa State of Digital Workspace 2026 report confirms a growing set of challenges across modern digital work environments. As AI adoption accelerates, device ecosystems diversify and security hygiene varies across platforms, organizations increasingly need deeper observability into device and application behavior to understand how work actually happens across environments and how those conditions impact the employee experience. In response, organizations are shifting towards a unified platform approach — integrating end user computing, virtual desktops and applications, digital employee experience and security into a single platform to gain greater end-to-end visibility and control of their complex digital environments.

Methodology

The research is based on anonymized and aggregated telemetry data collected from millions of endpoints between January and December 2025. The dataset includes enterprise environments across the globe and 17+ industries, including high tech, retail, healthcare, financial services, education, and government.

Telemetry signals were derived from device, application, and system activity across supported endpoints and operating systems. All data was analyzed in aggregate to identify trends across the digital workspace environment.

To explore the full findings and how these trends are shaping the digital workplace, visit the State of Digital Workspace 2026 report page.

About Omnissa

Omnissa is the leading digital work platform company, empowering the world’s dynamic workforces to do their best work from anywhere. The company’s AI-driven platform helps organizations and their people unlock exponential business value with industry-leading solutions that include Unified Endpoint Management, Virtual Apps and Desktops, Digital Employee Experience and Security & Compliance. Trusted by 26,000 customers worldwide, Omnissa has a 20-year track record in defining digital workspaces. Omnissa was previously the End User Computing business unit of VMware and became an independent company in 2024. For more information, visit www.omnissa.com.

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CONTACT: David Rodriguez

Omnissa Corporate Communications

[email protected]

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: SOFTWARE MOBILE/WIRELESS PROFESSIONAL SERVICES DATA MANAGEMENT CONSUMER ELECTRONICS APPS/APPLICATIONS TECHNOLOGY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SECURITY DATA ANALYTICS HUMAN RESOURCES OTHER TECHNOLOGY

SOURCE: Omnissa

Copyright Business Wire 2026.

PUB: 03/24/2026 09:05 AM/DISC: 03/24/2026 09:05 AM

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