Last year I covered the Apperian launch at the Apple WWDC conference, a company founded by ex-Apple and Motorola execs and I interviewed Chuck Goldman, CEO for iphonecto.com. After following their progress for 12 months and with their first anniversary looming I decided to catch up with Chuck and see what the team were up to.
Apperian has just launched it’s Ease Beta, which claims to usher in a new era of B2E (Business to Employee) apps.
“Apperian’s EASE (Enterprise App Services Environment) technology provides enterprises with the capability to distribute, update, manage, and provision in-house iPhone apps to a single user, group, or an entire organization.
EASE technology provides standard developers with a great way to manage ad-hoc delivery of apps to testers and others during the development process.
Enterprise IT has the control needed in large organizations, while providing users with a familiar application interface from which to choose applications, view additional application information, and access app-related training materials.
Enterprise Developers can create in-house applications for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.”
Chuck explained that with Ease it’s an enterprise App Kit that enhances Apple’s SDK by providing hooks into enterprise data which will allow it to create and push it’s own applications to employees, essentially creating the internal Enterprise App Services Environment. He said the current model is too clunky to allow enterprise adoption but with Ease it will create a framework architecture specifically designed for organisational use. Given Apple’s apparent lead in the smartphone and app-store market I asked Chuck whether he saw Android adoption as being a threat at an enterprise level. He said that 7 out of the 10 Fortune 1000 companies were actively testing the iPhone for internal adoption and that Android was at least 12 months behind in maturity, clearly giving Apple devices the advantage.
With the current iPhone versions, new v4 looming (no doubt to be announced ‘formally’ at WWDC) and iPad, I can definitely see that the mobile enterprise is really going to become big business. And with Ease currently in Beta release but promising to open new doors for the enterprise to create and push it’s own apps to employees (and customers) there’s no reason why Apple won’t continue to dominate the smartphone market, and Apperian will be right up there with them.
Apperian Update: Since this blog post was written, Apperian has shipped EASE, the product is available on both the iPhone and iPad, and it is being used by some of the world’s largest companies. The company is currently working on versions of EASE for additional mobile platforms. In addition, Apperian raised $9.5 million from top VC firms, including North Bridge, Bessemer and the KPCB iFund.