The Importance of Apps

Lawrence Garvin wrote an opinion piece for InformationWeek that boldly states the importance of prioritizing application development / support for employees. “It's All About The Applications, Stupid” notes that application performance and uptime should be top priority, since these apps are now not just ‘optional’ but essential to many employees to perform their jobs.

Lawrence stipulates that employees have high expectations when it comes to mobility:

1. Employees expect to be able to use mobile devices for work
2. With longer work hours, higher work loads and higher expected productivity, employees are now dependent upon apps, including “after hours” work. These could range from word processing to custom-designed apps.
3. Employees only care about performance, not about the complexities of app delivery (number of end-user devices, services, service providers and connectivity methods)
4. Employees demand 100% availability and instant fixes
5. Poor-performing apps or unavailable apps are productivity drains that cost thousands to millions of dollars per year

Our survey shows that 63% of respondents indicating their work phone doubles as a personal phone, with work functions ranging from work email, work contacts, login details for corporate accounts, work files and work-related apps. Many employees also believe the corporate data on their phone is worth very little: 59% of enterprise mobile users estimated their corporate data to be worth less than $500, when in fact a breach could result in fines in the millions of dollars. As Lawrence notes, employees only care about being productive - not about data security.

Aside from changing employee perceptions of the value of corporate data, organizations should seek a solution to manage all devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones, computers) and their apps from a single management console. Absolute Manage offers this comprehensive approach to device management. Absolute Manage puts control back in the hands of the organization, ensuring only properly configured devices are permitted to access corporate networks and data. Moreover, Absolute Manage allows for application and license management, allowing IT to remove unauthorized software, host / deploy / distribute in-house apps, and provide users with a list of recommended apps. If you have developed an in-house app, Absolute Manage can ease the complexities of managing it.