A few days ago, I read and commented on Shane O’Neill’s article in CIO.com/InfoWorld prioritizing the five must-avoid mistakes of enterprise app store deployment. Admittedly, I’m an advocate of app stores, especially when they can be easily implemented, with no need to self build. But as a quick comment exchange in the article revealed, there is some understandable concern about what you might give up if you use a solution like the App47 app store, rather than building it yourself — namely, as noted by one contributor — in terms of cost and control.
I was working up a reply to continue the conversation, but my thoughts grew beyond a few quick lines, so I’m compelled to elaborate here.
App Store Cost
If you do the math on the cost side, in a precise comparison of all the expenses that constitute a scratch app-store build vs. implementing a ready-made solution, the ROI is pretty hard to dispute. If you implement our app store solution, for example, you’re going to pay less than $20 per year per user to get a full app management suite. And it’s less than $10 per year per user if you just want the app store alone. Plus, those numbers are discounted at very high volume, so even a large-scale implementation can come in under six figures.
Compare that to a scratch or even a toolkit build. At best, an offshore developer might run you $30k; a pro onshore could push $200K. Then you add testers, support, servers, databases . . . those costs are going to compound fast. I won’t argue with anyone bound and determined to do it themselves, but when you stack the expenses side by side, going with the existing app store platform is tough to beat (to say nothing of faster speed to market).
App Store Control
Granted, this one is harder to argue, and using any app store service demands good evaluation by the enterprise, but again the headaches it saves can’t be ignored. While some people might do a double-take at the idea of using a cloud-based solution, for example, remember that while you may not control the servers themselves, you always control your data. It’s not repurposed or reused, and it’s arguably in a much more robust, reliable environment.
Ultimately, I find the app store implementation analogous to using an email or file exchange server, or a CMS. You find partners or vendors to do just that because it’s proven, it’s reliable, it’s comparatively headache free. If someone in your organization came to you today offering to build an email server, they’d probably earn a pretty good laugh.
Applying that same sense of obvious effectiveness to enterprise app stores just makes sense to me. Your job isn’t to build app stores any more than it is to manage content, share files, or send emails. Your job is to concentrate on the expertise of your enterprise. If a mobile enterprise app is part of what’s going to drive the success of your enterprise, and a ready-to-roll enterprise app store can energize its implementation, why struggle with your own app store build? The proverbial wheel has already been invented. Get rolling!
