There is no question Apple’s
wildly successful App Store has consumer appeal, but IT acceptance is another matter.
The App Store and other online smartphone storefronts are designed mainly for consumers
to download free and paid applications ranging from entertainment to education and
productivity.
Enter Ondeego, which says it’s come up with an enterprise-friendly App Store
alternative. The company, a developer of mobile business applications, is announcing a
beta of its cloud-based AppCentral Thursday at the GigaOm Mobilize conference in San
Francisco.
Ondeego CEO Ken Singer said the idea of
AppCentral grew out of conversations with customers. “When we talked to them about mobile
applications, everyone said they had to talk to the IT department first for approval and
IT usually put the brakes on or raised issues like hidden costs,” Singer told
InternetNews.com.
Initially for Java-enabled handsets, including the BlackBerry line, Nokia handsets and
many Windows Mobile devices, AppCentral is designed to give employees ready access to
mobile applications that meet with both manager’s and IT’s approval. He said support for
Android and the iPhone is likely to come next year.
Singer said a key point of differentiation he thinks will appeal to IT is a
securitization layer Ondeego adds to apps in its AppCentral store.
“IT managers have raised a lot of concerns about any applications that need to go on
their network and other issues like, what happens if the employee leaves the company with
the phone or its stolen? Also, IT doesn’t want to have to manage a whole new set of
applications or technology or new support work,” he said.
A layer of security for IT
Singer says Ondeego offers a layer of security software that can be added to any
application in AppCentral as part of the upload process. These protected apps are shown
with a little icon of a security lock next to them.
What the security layer does is give IT the ability to remotely deactivate any
account, denying access to the mobile apps. Or an employee who simply lost or misplaced a
phone can have IT use an AppCentral feature to lock the data so it can’t be accessed by
unauthorized users. Read the rest at InternetNews.com.
