You don’t need to purchase and install business apps individually across your fleet of iPhones and iPads. Apple makes it easy to manage them all in one place.
Managing apps on your own device is easy enough. However, life becomes more complicated when you’re asking staff to install business apps – whether on work-issued or BYOD devices. Thankfully, Apple offers business tools that take the headaches out of purchasing, deploying and managing iOS apps.
Mobile Device Management
You’ll find a range of third-party Mobile Device Management (MDM) apps for iOS. These let you remotely configure devices, enforce security policies and protect business data. Many also let you send push notifications to users directing them to install the apps you’ve selected for them – rather than expecting them to purchase the app from the iTunes store.
Once installed, these apps are flagged by the system as “managed”. This allows you to remotely wipe them from the device anytime without impacting other installed apps or the user’s personal data. This makes it much easier to manage lost or stolen devices, or to simply remove apps when employees leave your organisation.
Internal app catalogue
Another option is to create a central app catalogue. It’s like your organisation’s own private version of the app store where your staff can access business apps. The process can be as simple as setting up a web server, which is accessible by your employees and lists all available apps available to them. They can install these directly to their devices.
Your internal app catalogue can contain off-the-shelf apps as well as custom B2B apps – purchased through the Volume Purchase Program – that have been tailored for the specific needs of your business.
Business apps
Often, you’ll need apps for granting staff access to business files that aren’t stored on their device. Air Sharing, Files Connect, File Manage and FileBrowser are some of the apps for accessing files on your local office network.
Are you looking to grant access to files stored in the cloud? If so, consider Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and SugarSync. Acronis Access, SharePlus, Filamente and EMC Documentum Mobile are integrated solutions for connecting to corporate file services and cloud services.
