As we mentioned in our post about what’s ahead for App47 in 2020, group containers are on our mind this year. We’ve gotten a lot of questions about–and seen lots of interest in–this feature, so we thought we’d spend some more time over the next few weeks talking about it.
We’ll start where all good discussions should: the “why.” When App47 started almost 10 years ago, the companies that were already deploying mobile apps at scale were typically technologically advanced. Put another way, because they were already at the cutting edge, their employees had no problems onboarding their devices with a simple email and a few clicks.
But as always happens in life, times change, people change–really, everything changes.
Since we launched, Apple has introduced more security mechanisms to verify that applications and web clips installed onto an iOS device are, in fact, what users want. This is a very good thing from a security standpoint. The unintended consequence is that these new security features are horrible from an end user standpoint.
We want to be clear that we are not faulting Apple here. That said, we know from experience that it’s hard for users, especially those who are not well-versed in technology, to learn how to accept the app or web clip they just downloaded onto their devices. (The more steps you add to the onboarding process, the harder it will be for your average user to figure out.)
Compounding this problem is the fact that enterprise mobile apps are becoming more mainstream, so companies that are not traditionally technology-heavy are using apps to accelerate their businesses. In addition, many of those companies are working with third parties that run their own MDM or MAM platform, so coordination within the organization is increasingly important.
Our goal has always been to make the App47 product easier to use over time, and to guard against changes in the ecosystem that make things more difficult for our end users. In the MAM landscape, because of the confluence of factors we listed above, onboarding devices has become a sticking point.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at group containers and explain why we think they’re the solution to all the problems we described above. Tune in to our blog for more information about what group containers are, how they work, and why they’re so effective at getting your users onto the App47 platform (and therefore into your enterprise mobile app ecosystem). And if you have questions in the meantime, don’t hesitate to contact us–we’d love to hear from you!
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Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
