Partner Article

Why organizations are implementing a corporate app store

The issues that organizations are facing in the area of software lifecycle management that are causing them to consider a corporate app store to help them better manage and control their software assets include:

Increasing diversity of devices connecting to the corporate network

The diversifying IT landscape, whilst great news for end users presents organizations, and in particular the IT department, with new problems. From coping with corporate owned mobile devices through to controlling a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, the impact this can have on managing software is immense.

The ideal of a standard endpoint device has now completely disappeared from the IT radar. Rather than trying to shoehorn their users into a one-size-fits-all approach, IT departments should seek to embrace this diversity and look to move towards unified end point management. This will enable them to more effectively control and manage their software deployment as well as improving the end user experience.

People going round the IT department to get software

Shadow IT – where users go round the IT department to gain access to software and other resources they want – is an increasing effect of the diversity mentioned above. If you are using a tablet or other touch screen device you want the software you are using to be optimized for touch, not for the desktop. If all that IT offers you is the desktop version, you will look at other ways of getting what you want.

While this might solve the user’s problem. Using such unauthorized software can lead to all sorts of support problems, not to mention generating potential security threats, which could leave your organization open to malware attacks.

Controlling software licensing and compliance

The increase in the incidence of software vendor audits (and the resulting extra license costs, plus in some cases, fines) is a problem that all organizations are having to manage. Like most things in life, prevention is better than cure, and so having an accurate understanding of your license position will prevent nasty surprises when the auditors come knocking at your door.

Software being deployed across different devices is notoriously difficult to manage and can quickly lead to over licensing and under licensing – both of which cost money. The software vendors make it easy for corporate users to download software to their corporate-owned devices, but accounting for this without the right tools is difficult and costly. Similarly, if a person leaves the organization, their software license needs to be re-harvested to ensure wastage is prevented.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Samantha Green .