Enterprise Mobility Summit 2013: Corporate mobile app development booming

Pharma firm Novartis among the big users having developed more than 50 mobile apps for staff and customers

Corporate mobile app development is booming with 80 per cent of MobileIron's customers now writing bespoke enterprise apps for their staff or customers compared to just 20 per cent a few years ago, according to developer Nigel Hawthorn, director of EMEA marketing at the enterprise mobile management software vendor.

Speaking at the Computing Enterprise Mobility Summit 2013, Hawthorn pointed out that global pharmaceuticals company Novartis has developed more than 50 apps, while corporate attitudes to mobile has shifted from a "how can we block them accessing Facebook" approach to "how can we give our users what they need to do their jobs?"

"We are seeing a massive increase in the number of enterprise applications are running. Novartis, one of our global customers, now has more than 50 internally developed apps, as well as commercially developed enterprise applications. They have got different apps for different people in different countries," says Hawthorne. "Novartis really has embraced mobility."

In many organisations, he adds, departments are building their own apps for their own use - completely bypassing the traditional IT department with its budgets and other controls.

The key to writing apps that people will want to use, says Hawthorne, is to be disciplined over functionality in order to make the app as easy to use as possible - not to let committees of marketeers and others run wild trying to cram in more than a limited screen estate can handle.

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