Across enterprises today, the scale of Windows application estates has quietly exploded — and with it, a new layer of financial, operational, and people-risk that no longer sits solely with IT.
According to Juriba’s annual State Of The Windows Application Packaging Nation Report, 50% of organizations now manage more than 1,000 unique Windows applications, and over 30% manage more than 2,000. This level of application sprawl is no longer a technical challenge; it’s a structural one, impacting security, cost, workforce capacity, and the speed at which the business can respond to change.
Yet while estates are growing, packaging teams are shrinking, with over 55% of organizations operating with just 1–3 resources. The result? A widening execution gap that is delaying projects, slowing OS migrations, and constraining business agility at the exact moment organizations need to move faster, not slower.
For CEOs, CHROs, and CFOs, that gap now carries real consequences.
A modern organization can only move as fast as its supporting IT applications allow. When thousands of apps require constant updates, testing, and packaging, even a small bottleneck creates a slowdown across programs, transformation initiatives, and customer delivery.
Worse, when applications fall behind, risk accelerates. 82% of organizations struggle to keep their Windows applications updated within 3 months, meaning the majority are operating with outdated software and known vulnerabilities.
This isn’t a theoretical exposure. With unmanaged applications estimated at 48% across enterprises and the average breach now costing $4.4M, outdated software becomes a direct threat to business continuity and brand trust.
For CEOs, this is no longer an IT hygiene issue — it’s a resilience mandate.
Application ownership has shifted beyond IT. Business units increasingly “own” applications simply because they originally requested them, often without governance, training, or accountability frameworks traditionally provided to technical teams.
As application estates grow and update cycles accelerate, this creates:
With most packaging teams down to 1–3 people, talent pressure is intensifying. The organization is relying on shrinking expertise to support expanding estates, an imbalance that is neither sustainable nor scalable. With headcount challenges given current socioeconomic challenges, just increasing headcount is not a practical solution.
For CHROs, this becomes a workforce strategy issue: capability, capacity, and risk exposure now sit inside the org chart, which requires a cost-effective, sustainable solution.
Application sprawl carries a financial shadow that many organizations underestimate. More applications mean more:
Gartner estimates that enterprise IT budgets would need to rise by more than 35% for IT to assume full ownership of business-managed applications, an increase that is unrealistic when CIOs are being asked to reduce operational costs by 5–10% annually.
In other words, the current model is financially unsustainable.
Without automation, organizations will either pay more than they can justify — or accept risks they cannot afford.
The combination of:
…means traditional, manual governance models can’t keep up.
If the business can no longer scale people to match demand, it must scale the process.
Automation and structured application governance provide a path to:
✅ Full visibility across the application estate
✅ Clear ownership and accountability
✅ Faster packaging and testing cycles
✅ Reduced risk and audit exposure
✅ Controlled, predictable operating cost
Because even one unmanaged app — unowned, unknown, or unpatched — is a risk.
For CEOs: Can the business continue to operate at speed without visibility and control?
For CHROs: Do we have the people capacity and capability to sustain this model?
For CFOs: Can we afford the cost of inaction — or the cost of a breach?
The answer, increasingly, is no.
See your application estate clearly. Control stats with Visibility
Juriba Windows Application Management delivers the automation and visibility to close that gap. Juriba App Owner solution helps enterprise businesses identify which applications need owners, assign them, and track their activities. Meanwhile, Juriba App Readiness supports both IT and the business with smart workflows to automate up to 80% of packaging and testing tasks and achieve 100% application coverage — so no app is left unmanaged, unpatched, or delayed. Together, these solutions turn accidental accountability into controlled readiness.
Through smart automation and seamless workflows, Juriba App Readiness and App Owner solutions empower business and IT users alike by:
This isn’t about adding another tool; it’s about establishing a new layer of governance through visibility and automation.
Because even one unmanaged app is a risk.
Growing application estates. Shrinking teams. Rising risk.
The challenge facing today’s leaders isn’t just volume.
It’s the lack of visibility, accountability, and scalable control across thousands of Windows applications.
Our executive whitepaper, Windows Application Management: The Unquantified Risk in Your Organization, explores:
• How unmanaged and unpatched applications quietly drive security, compliance, and financial exposure
• Why shrinking teams can’t keep up with expanding estates using manual processes
• The true cost of application sprawl for CEOs, CHROs, and CFOs
• How automation and structured governance restore control without increasing headcount
Get a clear, business-level view of the risks hiding across your application estate and the practical path to eliminate them.
Download the whitepaper today
and start replacing app sprawl with visibility, accountability, and confidence.