Enterprise mobile app stores saving IT admins' lifes

Smartphones and tablets have become no less important business tools than laptops and computers. And it doubled the headache of IT administrators. But the real disaster for them has become BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) - the global revolution led by employees (and most importantly, CEOs) that want to use only their own (favorite) mobile devices for business purposes. At the same time they continue to play games on their smartphones, take them to night clubs, lose them somewhere, buy new ones and bring them to office. The situation is even more complicated because of the wide variety of mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Symbian. How to ensure security and manage enterprise mobile applications in such conditions? To reduce the suicide rate among IT admins the smart vendors invented Enterprise mobile app stores.

These App Stores not only allow to create own corporate directory of (secure) applications, but also to control their installation, access, to update them and wipe them remotely if a smartphone is lost or employee resigned.



Previously, the administration of corporate mobile infrastructure was the bread and butter of RIM (Blackberry). Blackberry Enterprise Server allowed to manage only Blackberry smartphones and therefore Blackberry became the most popular mobile platform for business. But the golden age of Blackberry is over. Employees and managers prefer iOS and Android. So Blackberry is now moving from Blackberry Enterprise Server to Blackberry Mobile Fusion - the platform that allows to manage a variety of smartphones and tablets.

But Blackberry is not the only and not the first player on this new market. Other vendors also want to help companies in mobile app management. For example, the computer maker Lenovo (Lenovo Enterprise App Shop), the mobile operator Verizon (Verizon Wireless Private Applications Store for Business), while the most successfull enterprise app store vendor is startup AppCentral.

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