AppCentral announced what it claimed is “the first multi-platform mobile application management solution designed to help companies manage corporate apps on both company and employee owned smartphones and tablets.” The company noted that “because the Android Market and the iTunes App Store were designed for consumer apps, they are not the right solution for distributing, securing and managing corporate mobile apps inside the enterprise.” AppCentral’s solution is delivered either as a service or as an on-premises deployment, with access via native Android or iOS apps.

The company’s Mobile App Management solution is designed to address “the three major challenges facing every enterprise hoping to harness the power of mobile apps” – distribution, to get apps to users; security, to control access, lock and wipe corporate apps and data without interfering with personal information; and administration, allowing apps to be updated, usage tracked and permissions managed. According to Ken Singer, CEO of AppCentral: “research shows that 90 percent of enterprises plan to implement in-house, customer mobile apps this year – with many expecting to deliver and support more than 20 internal apps.”

In addition to supporting native enterprise apps, the AppCentral service can be used to demonstrate HTML5 apps or links to consumer marketplace apps. It supports role-based distribution, so that the right app is delivered to the right employee, and scales from small pilots to large, distributed private or public sector organisations.