When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he changed the very definition of a mobile device and introduced the era of BYOD, EMM and Mobile Apps in the Enteprise.
At first, people would carry around 2 devices, their company issued 
device and their new shiny iPhone. Then, they would ask IT to port their company email over to their iPhone. IT would say no, it was against company policy. However, saying no to executives turned out to be quite difficult.
With the launch of the App Store, Apple created a real headache for IT organizations. Not only were employees accessing company and personal email from their personal iPhones, they were downloading untested and unsecured apps. And they demanded access to information (both personal and corporate) from anywhere on any device, at any time.
Mobile Apps in The Enterprise
Enterprise software companies enthusiastically jumped on the app bandwagon and released mobile versions of their enterprise software.
IT organizations responded by investing heavily in EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management) solutions from companies like BlackBerry, Airwatch, MobileIron and IBM MaaS360 to better manage the proliferation of mobile apps and control how they accessed corporate data.
The Ugly Truth
Managing mobile apps in the enterprise and building enterprise apps that work in EMM environments, however, is hard, costly and time-consuming. Under pressure from sales to release mobile apps to drive productivity; product management and engineering built standard apps. Making apps work within an EMM environment became the responsibility of the IT organization.
Typically, companies had 2 options when they want to leverage EMM solutions:
- Code – Implement the EMM functionality by manually adding the EMM SDK to the app’s source code
- App Wrapping – Using a wrapping solution to enable some of the EMM functionality
Both options take time, require manual coding and are costly (i.e. money and developer resources). In addition, both are not easy to do and don’t guarantee a smooth or even successful outcome. And the dirty secret is that all this work needs to be done every time there is an update to the app, EMM SDK, and/or OS.
End the Madness Once and For All
There is a solution to all this madness. It’s called Appdome. Appdome eliminates all the manual work required for making an app work within an EMM environment. Appdome even empowers IT teams to do the integration work. Customers start with an app binary, select the EMM SDK (Blackberry, AirWatch, MobileIron, IBM MaaS360) and click “Fuse my App”. Twenty-two seconds later, the result is a fully productized app that works in their EMM environment of choice.
Appdome is a huge competitive advantage to any enterprise software company. With Appdome, they can support all mobile apps in the enterprise as well as all the different EMM use cases; in BYOD and MDM environments and for both iOS and Android. There is no more custom coding required. And the precious engineering resources can be allocated to creating new features, not maintaining old code.
Watch a video on how you can fuse an app with the BlackBerry SDK, sign it, publish it to your EMM store and roll it out to your employees within minutes.
For more information contact Appdome at info@appdome.com or start a free trial at fusion.appdome.com.
Jan Sysmans has worked for enterprise software companies such as WebEx, SugarCRM and Saba and understands the challenges that come with rolling out mobile apps to large enterprise customers. After seeing the Appdome solution he became convinced that Appdome represents a huge competitive advantage for software companies. As the Director of Appdome for App Publishers, he’s on a mission to evangelize Appdome to ISVs. Contact him at jan@appdome.com to learn more.
