Businesses looking for enterprise apps designed for Android devices no longer have to wade through hundreds of games and novelty apps in Google Play. Vancouver's Partnerpedia has launched a new app market just for business.
Enterprise AppZone is a cloud-based service that offers a curated marketplace featuring the top 70 business apps, such as QuickOffice, Evernote and CamCard.
Business that create their own native apps can also use Enterprise AppZone to create their own in-house app store to distribute and manage apps to own corporate users or clients through a licence management system.
"What we offer is a way for customers to procure apps in a way that's suitable for businesses, and a way for them to manage apps within the internal organization," Sam Liu, Partnerpedia's vice president of marketing, told Business in Vancouver.
"Today there's not a good place to procure business apps. Your choice is the Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) app store or Google Play, neither of which is designed for businesses."
The advantage of buying apps through Enterprise AppZone over other markets is that a business' IT department retains ownership and control over licences for distribution. When employees leave a company, for example, IT can disable any in-house apps that the employees may have downloaded onto their own devices.
The apps downloaded through Enterprise AppZone are also vetted for viruses.
All iOS apps must still be purchased through the Apple app store. However, companies that buy multiple apps using Apple's volume purchase program can use Enterprise AppZone to manage and distribute the licences.
"We have a mechanism for the publishers to create a volume discount program," Liu said.
Any company that develops its own business-based native app for iPhone or iPad can publish it and manage it through the Enterprise AppZone.
