SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AppCentral™ Inc. today announced the findings of a survey revealing that while nearly all employers allow access to company resources from employees’ personal devices, mobility management methods are often outdated. While 97 percent of employers allow employees access to corporate data on their own device, 54 percent of those companies still require employees to sign legal or policy documents before accessing corporate resources with their own smartphones or tablets. One quarter of companies require device “lockdown” software on employee-owned devices, which highlights misalignment of attitudes and policies on managing enterprise mobility.
The survey suggests that businesses are struggling to effectively manage the thousands of incoming iOS and Android devices used by their workforce. The misalignment occurs in that users want Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) smartphones and tablets, from which they access personal and corporate apps and data. Most businesses rely on command and control mobile device management (MDM) approaches that limit users’ freedom and create greater overhead and total cost of ownership burdens for IT.
“AppCentral is bringing BYOD to the enterprise with a laser focus on enterprise mobile app management that gives users the freedom they want, and IT the control they need,” said Ken Singer, chief executive officer and co-founder of AppCentral. “First-generation MDM solutions are yesterday’s solution to today’s problem. AppCentral’s mobile application management solution enables enterprises, IT, and users to capture the benefits of mobile technology while retaining the right kind of control of the apps.”
Other findings of the survey include:
- Enterprise mobility is both widely available and supported by executives. In fact, 97 percent of respondents reported allowing employees to access company resources using their personal devices. 76 percent pay for employee smartphones in some way, and 35 percent pay towards tablets in the enterprise.
- Methods for managing company applications are not up-to-speed with the employee-liable era; only 63 percent of respondents who use MDM use it on company-owned devices, while 28 percent use it for both company-owned and employee-owned devices.
- The purpose of enterprise mobility continues to be diverse within enterprises, signaling broad usage of employee-owned devices. Sixty percent of respondents reported plans to build at least one mobile app for internal use; of those, the purpose of planned custom apps are led by sales (47 percent), executives (46 percent), field services (43 percent), IT (32 percent) and other departments (30 percent).
- As the consumerization of IT continues, a majority of companies reported a need to deploy apps on at least three major platforms: iOS (57 percent), RIM (66 percent) and Android (50 percent), with 36 percent seeing a need to deploy corporate apps on Windows Mobile devices.
More information on the survey is available at http://bit.ly/k4T598
BYOD issues are particularly relevant in the nation’s hospitals, where physicians using mobile devices to help care for patients are often not direct hospital employees.
“While hospitals usually don't pay for physicians’ mobile devices, they must realize those doctors are using mHealth apps to communicate and access clinical information,” said Corey Ackerman, President of Happtique, the first mobile application store by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals. “While the device is not the hospital's to manage, the apps used by its professionals in the provision of care must be. Happtique is leveraging AppCentral to help provide medical professionals the freedom to use their own devices while enabling institutions to ensure that sensitive patient data and apps are properly managed and secured.”
AppCentral’s mobile application management (MAM) solution addresses the three major challenges facing every enterprise with mobile apps for their employees – distribution, security, and administration. By enabling these critical functions, IT departments can easily add approved apps to users’ devices, update them, control access by wiping or locking only corporate apps - separate from an employee’s personal data - and update/track app usage or permissions. AppCentral also supports all iOS and Android phones and tablets, allowing IT teams to manage a diverse set of employee-owned devices.
The survey was conducted online by AppCentral in May 2011. The respondent pool consisted of 300 IT and mobile executives.
About AppCentral
AppCentral, Inc., formerly Ondeego, was founded in 2007 as a mobile app developer. Its Mobile App Management solution emerged from the company’s need to make mobile apps “enterprise-ready” – easy to distribute, secure and manage. The company is developing distribution, management, licensing and security solutions for application and devices on all key mobile platforms. Customers include Pepsi, Huawei, Happtique, a business subsidiary of The Greater New York Hospital Association, and Intelligent Software Solutions. The company received $4 million in Series A funding from Blue Run Ventures in 2010.
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