back to article The irresistible rise of the corporate app

The rise of the corporate app is due to both fashion and user demand. Once upon a time there were programs. Today they are called apps. The big difference is that apps are fashionable, and fashion drives a lot of what even sane IT types do. So much so that even the Windows Phone has settings in the control panel for “company …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No need to apologise for saying you wrote an 'app' for the CBM since app is short for 'application' and a program that fulfils a need is an application.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Couple of points

      Who exactly are the "corporates" that have "apps. I know that mines doesn't .

      In my book "apps" are what you find on a smartphone, they are not synonymous with programs. Apps are for un/pleasure/leisure. Programs are about "work" and corporations want you to work not play.

      BYOD, pull the other one, it is and still remains a marketing wet dream... It is what is commonly known as a fad..... Would you care to provide some real world figures and I dont mean on the same level as MS with their W8 licences ( Sold against shipped).

      I work in Geneva, and cutting edge gadgets are common to see on the streets but in business, in the offices on users desktops, ie the "real world", I am not convinced that BYOD is making any impact at all...... Corporate Email (Exchange, BES) does not count, we already had that for years.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Couple of points

        Who are the corporates that have apps you ask?

        British Airways is one, for starters.

        1. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: Couple of points

          Kindly care to share the usage if it is not confidential. ie What kind of application, environment, is it really BYOD or do BA provide everything.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Couple of points

        Mine, for one, particularly large and not in the technology sector.

    2. cortland
      Big Brother

      The miscreants

      Were disciplined by vigourous application of the lash.

      "Until morale improves", heh.

  2. Pen-y-gors

    It's a fashion statement

    I admit I'm not a massive smartphone user, but they have their uses.

    But I am seriously bemused by this craze for having an 'app' for everything, even when a mobile website would be a lot simpler and more appropriate. Surely it' should be simple - if in 'the old days' (pre 2008-ish) you would have had a desktop executable of some sort to perform a task, then it's appropriate to have an equivalent app, even if it's only for internal use in a company. And there may be some new applications that can make use of extra smartphone functionality (location etc). But I really cannot see why people would download an 'app' that they will use once. I was at a meeting recently where some dodgy developer was boasting that he'd developed apps (at a couple of grand a throw) for b&b establishments - he was quite proud of it. Why on earth would anyone want/need a desktop program about an individual B&B? - ditto an app. Apps should be for tasks that need to be done regularly, and possibly without a live connection.

    </ grumpy old fart mode>

    1. tirk

      Re: It's a fashion statement

      HTML5 may provide convergence between the app and the web site you refer to.

      1. Irongut

        Re: It's a fashion statement

        Ah HTML5, the ultimate in vapourware.

        I hear it will make you more attractive to women, wash your clothes whiter than white and taste like chocolate!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Re: It's a fashion statement

      Apps for Apps sake.

      1. cortland

        Re: It's a fashion statement

        Per'aps!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'craze for having an 'app' for everything, even when a mobile website'....

      Isn't that the truth! Never mind the privacy implications.... Just about every app downloaded is an exercise in Privacy Russian Roulette. F*ck that!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There's a hideous amount of angle in this article - the most misleading of which are the implications that employees want BYOD (they don't) and that they choose it (they don't).

  4. Irongut

    How is this any different to the apps that I used to write for Windows Mobile based PDTs and before that DOS based models? Other than the employee being told to pay for the tools required to do their job.

  5. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Have to say I smell a rat here

    All that nonsense about employees wanting corporate access on their personal phones/laptops is, in my opinion, bollocks. I don't know ANYONE who wants to recieve application alerts on their phone during off hours or, worse, weekends.

    Furthermore, I fail to see just how it is sooo important to have one's work mail on one's personal phone when employees are generally sitting in front of a PC with all required access during the day.

    Also, I really don't see how management is going to trust the people on the bottom rungs of the latter with corporate-sensitive data on their personal equipment when they barely have access to it on their PCs.

    Now, of course, if we are not talking about the 99% of drones but of the few high-flyers who are intent on building their careers and impressing the management, in other words, those with high-level diplomas and overbearing personalities who simply cannot live an instant without total and complete access to eveything they need to impress the upper echelon, then yes, I totally can see BYOD being an indispensable part of the landscape. For the chosen few.

    Which still means that it's just another status symbol.

    For the rest of us, we couldn't care less that our work PC is lagging like a dead horse. On the contrary, it gives us the perfect excuse when things start piling up and we're asked "why is this not finished yet ?".

    Personally, I would be quite miffed if my work PC were more powerful than my personal PC. I'm quite happy that it is not.

    Finally, that reference to the cloud - "it is far better not to have the data on the device in the first place, nor on someone else’s servers, let alone something as nebulous as the cloud" - well sorry but that just about clinches it. The cloud is just as much a fad right now than BYOD is. Everybody has a cloud, every cloud wants you to climb on board, the cloud is computing paradise (that is what we hear).

    Dissing the cloud while touting BYOD is the mark of pure marketing drivel.

    1. Mr Spock

      Re: Have to say I smell a rat here

      Now, of course, if we are not talking about the 99% of drones but of the few high-flyers who are intent on building their careers and impressing the management, in other words, those with high-level diplomas and overbearing personalities who simply cannot live an instant without total and complete access to eveything they need to impress the upper echelon, then yes, I totally can see BYOD being an indispensable part of the landscape. For the chosen few.

      These sort of people should all be provided with a Nokia N93; it's the device which would cause the most pain and discomfort when rammed up their (OK, that's enough - Ed.)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bandwagons then and now

    In the mid nineties there was a great deal of noise when corporates discovered their competitors had this new interweb thingy, and decided they needed it too, now. The people doing the fist banging invariably had no clear idea what it was or what the benefit was, but they knew someone else thought it was worthwhile and didn't want to have a painful conversation with someone with a nicer office and a shinier suit than theirs, so they threw money at the problem, ending up with sites that delivered nothing their shiny corporate brochures didn't already do rather more elegantly.

    Fast forward to now and much the same thing is happening with apps. While I'm sure some are doing the right thing for the right reasons, a lot of overpriced code will be banged out on demand for people with no clear idea of what they want (or what an app actually is) or why, except that others have it and they want it too, now, just in case it's actually important.

    Summed up best by Viv Stanshall; "I don't know what I want, but I want it now!"

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