App Stores Are For Enterprise Users, Too

I had a chance to connect with Ojas Rege from MobileIron, a company behind one of the first enterprise app stores featured in the WIP App Store Wiki. While app stores are largely seen as a consumer-driven phenomenon, there's a lot of action growing around them in the enterprise space, too. Enterprises bring their own special set of needs and desires to app stores that are completely different from those of general consumers, and we'll be exploring this space in detail at our upcoming WIPJam at IT-Profits in Berlin on June 9.

Who is MobileIron?

MobileIron was created in 2007 and for a while went around asking enterprises about their needs around mobile. It quickly emerged that the smartphone was becoming more like a computer in terms of the activities, applications and data that was consumed and stored on the device, but with a significant exception: most phones are roaming outside the enterprise boundaries most of the time, and often do not belong to the enterprise directly, but to the end user.

In August 2009, the company launched the MobileIron Virtual Platform, a combination of an on-device application and a network appliance that enables traditional and advanced device management functions (one particularly cool function is the ability to create boundaries on the device between enterprise data and user data), mobile activity management (both for the IT department and for individual users), and finally an enterprise appstore with built-in catalog, download of enterprise specific apps or apps coming from commercial appstores, and centralized inventory.

And since then, things seem to be going well for MobileIron, with multiple awards coming its way, including "Cool Vendors in Enterprise Networking, 2010" by Gartner.

Multi-OS support in the enterprise here and now!

We all know how the story starts. The CEO of a company that supports BlackBerry or WinMo or another platform picks up an iPhone, and says he wants to access his coporate email... so then the IT department needs to develop a multi-OS strategy and the CEO is able to give them budget, awesome! And then lots of employees are bringing their own devices -- across many platforms -- and asking IT to support it.

While the mix varies from region to region, even the most dedicated BlackBerry or WinMo shops are moving multi-OS. I'm not going to go into a debate about whether the iPhone will soon become a platform of choice in the enterprise, but you have to admit that iPhone 4 is looking more and more like an enterprise beast. And in any case, MobileIron already supports the iPhone, along with BlackBerry, WinMo, Symbian and Palm.

Thus far, MobileIron hasn't supported Android, but it will be added soon as Androidn devices make inroads into the enterprise space. Up to this point, Android lacked a lot of enterprise functionality, like Exchange support and device management, but these and other features are included in the new Froyo release. In particular, device management should be greatly facilitated by the new Cloud to device API, which allows you send messages from the cloud to a registered application in the device. Looking at the spec, there are a few caveats which might not be too pleasing anyone trying to do device management such as the need to be signed in to a Google service, the non-guaranteed delivery or the "Google limits the number of messages a sender sends in aggregate, and the number of messages a sender sends to a specific device" line, but there's also good news for enterprise developers in the fact that an app does not need to be in the Android Market to use the API.

Email & Voice still number one but more is coming!

The consumerization of the enterprise place makes you think that with app usage on smartphones becoming dominant, the big battle will shift over the next 12-18 months from which platform has the best enterprise email support to which platform is the best for applications. Enterprise users are already putting apps on their "work" phones, creating support issues, so the concept of an enterprise app store that's able to list approved and supported apps and push them to employees is one that's gaining traction. So far the interesting productivity apps are mainly crowd-sourced from existing app stores rather than developed, such as Google Maps and SalesForce.com and Webex apps. A majority of them are free (or part of a cloud service subscription), but paid apps are starting to appear, though they're a small niche for the time being.

Based on Ojas observations, about 20% of enterprises developing internal mobile apps today deploy their own applications, but that's bound to change as the rest are all looking at it and want to prepare for it. Ojas believes that, as the application development environment improves and in spite of fragmentation, enterprises will start building thin clients to access and interact with corporate data, emphasizing the need for enterprises to get a better handle on application data security (see previous link about new iPhone 4 features); although HTML5 could prove an interesting alternative (see new Froyo features).

Whatever the answer, the main issue will be the time and investment required by IT departments to start mobile application development -- and the pressure by other groups in the company to do mobile apps. This will be one of the topics we'll address at the WIPJam in Berlin, with an unpanel titled IT or Marketing - who drives your mobile choices?

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