Omnissa study finds AI surge & endpoint security gaps
Omnissa has published a global study of digital workspace conditions across enterprise endpoints, highlighting rising use of unsanctioned AI tools and uneven device security.
The report analysed anonymised telemetry from millions of endpoints managed by Omnissa across more than 17 industries in 2025. It found that IT teams are managing an increasingly fragmented mix of employee software choices, operating systems and device types while trying to maintain performance and compliance across distributed workforces.
One of the clearest findings was the pace of AI adoption in the workplace. Use of AI assistant applications rose nearly 1000% year on year across major operating systems, suggesting employees are adding tools to their workflows faster than internal oversight can keep up.
The trend appeared in both company-managed and employee-installed software. Copilot was deployed on 97.5% of enterprise-managed mobile devices across iOS and Android, while ChatGPT was installed on 91% of enterprise-managed iOS systems and Gemini on 61% of enterprise-managed Android systems.
The data suggests a widening gap between the applications IT departments formally deploy and the tools workers actually use. For companies in regulated sectors or those with stricter governance rules, that gap can make it harder to track data flows, enforce policy and identify emerging operational risk.
"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," he said.
Device Stability
The report also highlighted a sharp difference in desktop stability between Windows and macOS environments. Windows devices showed significantly higher rates of forced shutdowns, application crashes and app hangs.
Windows devices recorded 3.1 times more forced shutdowns than macOS devices. They also experienced 2.2 times more application crashes and 7.5 times more app hangs.
These issues matter because small interruptions can quickly compound into lost time. Workers can take almost 24 minutes to refocus after a disruption, making routine freezes, shutdowns and crashes a direct hit to productivity as well as IT support workloads.
The figures also inform broader procurement and lifecycle decisions. Organisations buying Macs typically invest in assets with a six-year lifespan, while those buying Windows PCs generally invest in three-year assets, reflecting different assumptions about value, refresh cycles and intended use.
Security Gaps
The study found notable weaknesses in security hygiene across regulated industries despite stricter compliance obligations. Healthcare, pharmaceutical and education organisations ranked among the lowest for maintaining device updates and ensuring endpoint encryption.
More than 50% of Windows and Android devices in regulated industries such as healthcare and pharma were five major operating system updates behind. In education, more than half of desktops and mobile devices were unencrypted.
These gaps leave IT teams with limited visibility into whether individual endpoints meet policy requirements. They also increase the risk that ageing or poorly configured devices remain connected to sensitive systems and data without basic safeguards.
Mixed Estates
Beyond software and security, the report described a workplace estate becoming more specialised by role and sector. Rather than standardising on a single device strategy, organisations are increasingly matching hardware to frontline, office-based and mobile use cases.
Retail and wholesale accounted for 34% of Android devices classed as ruggedised, while the iPad Mini represented 53% of all iPads in transportation settings. Government workplaces, meanwhile, continued to rely heavily on Windows desktop systems, with desktop growth in that segment doubling over the past year.
That variation makes endpoint management more complex because performance, support needs and lifecycle economics differ widely by platform and industry. Maintaining a single view of endpoint health is becoming harder as estates stretch across mobile, desktop and specialised field devices.
The report was based on aggregated telemetry covering device, application and system activity across supported endpoints and operating systems. The dataset spanned global enterprise environments in sectors including high tech, retail, healthcare, financial services, education and government.
For IT departments, the overall message is that employee behaviour, platform diversity and inconsistent maintenance are creating blind spots that are increasingly hard to close with separate management tools. Those pressures are pushing organisations to combine endpoint management, virtual desktop oversight, digital employee experience monitoring and security controls within a single platform.