Several flights, six time zone changes, lots of handshakes, and a handful of presentations later, the App47 team is back from the 2014 Enterprise Mobility Exchange. And we have to say, we certainly learned a lot. We promised a few weeks ago that we’d come back with some insights from this great conference, and today, we’re here to do just that.
Let’s start with the surveys. In person, we surveyed 8 businesses supporting anywhere from 500-70,000 users. (We know we’re dealing with a small sample size here, but remember—this was a show about enterprise mobility. At EME 2014, we had access to a very powerful sampling area.) Here’s what we asked and what we found:
- 100% of the businesses we surveyed currently use an app store
- 63% of businesses used 0-25 public apps, and 37% of businesses used 75-125
- 37% of businesses didn’t use any private apps, but of those who did, 40% used 75 or more private apps
- 75% of all the businesses we surveyed developed their own apps in-house
- 25% of businesses supported both iOS and Android; the other 75% only supported iOS
- 25% of businesses surveyed supported 500 users or less, 25% supported 500-5,000, 13% supported 5,000-10,000, and 37% supported 10,000 or more users
- Only 2 respondents currently have a strong focus on mobile analytics; the other 75% either didn’t use them or had plans to use them, but hadn’t yet done so
Meanwhile, we ran a brief online survey and had a few (5) of our readers respond. (Thanks to all of you who did!) Here’s what we found with our online survey:
- 60% of respondents are currently investigating an enterprise app store solution; the other 40% already have enterprise app stores
- 100% of respondents currently use 5 public apps or less
- 60% use 0-5 private apps, and the other 40% all use 5-10
- 80% don’t currently develop their own apps
- Online respondents had a much better mix of platform support; 80% support both Android and iOS, while 1 respondent supports Android, iOS, and Windows apps
- Employees were the most widely-supported group at 100% support, followed by partners (60%) and consultants (40%)
- Only 1 respondent believed mobile analytics for enterprise apps to be mandatory; the other 80% believed they’d be relevant 6 months-1 year from now
Interestingly, our online respondents were much smaller businesses supporting less users, but they supported more platforms—possibly because their businesses can be more flexible. That said, from our in-person surveys and other conversations we had at EME 2014, we found much more support for mobile device management (MDM) than enterprise mobility management (EMM). Many businesses are still coming out of the fog of MDM and still trying to get their feet on the ground in deploying a viable EMM solution.
Another interesting observation we had was just how security-centric many businesses are headed into 2015. In asking businesses what they’d most like to have in 2014—a predictive app store, an enterprise mobile analytics platform, or an app store with fine-grain access controls and data security built in—the overwhelming majority said they’d most like to have the security-focused app store over everything else. This makes sense as our world seems to see more and more security threats every day, but it was still surprising to see just how greatly businesses prioritized security over other factors in an enterprise app store.
All-in-all, we had an excellent time at the 2014 Enterprise Mobility Exchange, and learned a lot about our customers and our market. We’re heading into exciting times for enterprise mobility, and if the businesses we talked to at EME 2014 are any indication, there’s nowhere to go but up with mobility through 2015 and beyond.
