Want a sense of where the online action is? Just look around the workplace. The graphic designer heavy into house music is streaming cuts from that underground station in Houston. The junior sales rep with a weakness for online gaming is engaged in the final assault on his unseen opponents. The account exec who wants to tweak the dinner party menu on her home computer is using a remote access application to do so. And just about everyone is using IM—to trade jokes, make weekend plans, and maybe even do some work.

It's all going on outside the "confines" of the Web browser—and thus in many cases not monitored, controlled, or secured in any way. Consider it a logical consequence of the progress developers have made in harnessing the power of the Internet as an application platform—and of the appeal and popularity these applications enjoy among users of all kinds.

• A study in October 2007 by Nielsen Media Research found that one in four Internet users had streamed full-length television episodes online in the last three months, including 39 percent of people ages 18 to 34 and 23 percent of those 35 to 54.
• In its survey of 9,000 trend-setting consumers from 17 countries, The Future Laboratory found that 17 percent take part in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs). Gary McGraw, author of the book Exploiting Online Games, says that there are as many as 12 million people worldwide who are now regularly playing MMORPGs; the game World of Warcraft by itself has 8 million subscribers. At any one time, he notes, about half a million people are playing these games together.
• P2P remains popular, with some broadband equipment makers pegging the amount of file-sharing via applications like BitTorrent at 35 percent to 45 percent of all data downloaded in the U.S.; others put it as high as 50 percent to 90 percent

Clearly, with usage patterns like this, non-browser applications are now thought of as an essential part of the online experience. And, in fact, there sometimes is a legitimate business reason for using them in the workplace, whether for collaborating with other employees in real time or streaming a sales seminar. But it's those other uses that organizations should be concerned about.

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