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App Store Models for Enterprise Software: A Comparative Case Study of Public versus Internal Enterprise App Stores
Abstract
Mobile app stores have changed the way how consumers discover and buy private software. Employees and end users in companies expect a similar experience and flexibility from their corporate IT. Enterprise software vendors (ESVs) therefore create new modular applications and establish their own versions of app stores for companies. Two models have appeared on the market: the public and the internal enterprise app store (EAS). Public EASs are managed and operated by large ESVs serving them as sales and distribution channels for their software and the software built by their ecosystem. Internal EASs are managed and operated by corporate IT departments to distribute applications to company-internal users. We conduct a comparative case study of one public and one internal EAS and derive recommendations for corporate use to better meet the expectations of today’s business stakeholders.
... Employees as well as customers, suppliers and business partners would use the mobile apps that make most sense to them, based on which ones apply to their situation and make them most productive. Also it enhances the reach of corporate IT beyond the borders of the company [6]. Business and technology analysts (e.g., Gartner, IDC) have ranked this approach among the top strategic IT trends [7]. ...
As organizations increasingly adopt mobile technologies, the need for effective remote management of iOS devices has grown significantly. This technical article examines implementation strategies and real-world performance metrics from a study of Mobile Device Management (MDM) implementations across 12 diverse organizations, encompassing 2,500 enterprise devices during 2023-2024. The article reveals that optimized MDM solutions can achieve 99.99% uptime while reducing infrastructure costs by up to 45%. Key findings demonstrate that effective MDM implementation reduces device management costs by 64%, improves security compliance rates to 99.3%, and decreases incident response time by 73%. Through automated troubleshooting and optimization, organizations experienced a 67% reduction in security incidents and a 42% decrease in IT support overhead while achieving 85% reduction in deployment time and 82% acceleration in app deployment processes. The article comprehensively evaluates architecture design, deployment metrics, security implementation, performance analysis, and scalability considerations. Implementation of advanced security protocols resulted in a 98.7% prevention rate for common mobile security threats, while maintaining 99.99% system reliability. The article also highlights the importance of phased deployment strategies, which demonstrate 43% higher success rates compared to direct full-scale implementations, and provides strategic insights for future planning and infrastructure optimization.
The use of personal, consumer IT artifacts for business purposes, complementary to or instead of official IT infrastructure is called IT consumerization. Its impact on IT management is significant, and a prerequisite for its successful management is understanding the difficulties and potential that this phenomenon carries. They are highlighted in the paper through a systematic mapping study of current information collected from scientific and professional sources, and are also the basis for further research - a systematic literature review.
Any upcoming industrial revolution will rely on the ability to harness software as the nervous system of future production environments. This paper proposes an app ecosystem as the potential key enabler of industry digitization and argues for the need of semantic web technologies as primary enablers for app interoperability. We shortly discuss how we envision the emergence of semantically annotated apps on the manufacturing shop floor. Subsequently, we demonstrate how a loosely coupled mashup of apps can easily form a full stack internet-of-things solution that covers sensor data from its origin toward its visualization in a (mobile) web browser.
App stores in the consumer software market are omnipresent and have significantly changed the way how software is being produced, marketed, and consumed. Enterprise software customers also demand higher flexibility in buying and adopting standardized enterprise application software - and new technologies such as cloud computing and highly efficient development platforms provide new options for software vendors and the entire software value chain. This application-oriented work researches the challenge of establishing the app store model for enterprise application software as a technology-driven business model in a two-sided platform ecosystem. The author analyzes the topic comprehensively from the software buyer’s, the software provider’s and the platform provider’s perspective and uncovers detailed insights on barriers, drivers, and constraints. Moreover he proposes solutions on the level business processes and detailed requirements. His research is highly interdisciplinary and utilizes both empirical qualitative and design-oriented methods.
Corporate Use of Consumer Market TechnologyOver the last few years, innovations that originated in the consumer sector have increasingly been infiltrating the corporate environment (Ingalsbe et al. 2011, p. 3; Cummings et al. 2009, p. 259). This trend, referred to as “Consumerization”, will have a lasting impact on corporate information management, and in coming years will continuously confront IT managers with new challenges.This trend was initially observed with the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, social networks, and blogs (Cummings et al. 2009; Holtsnider and Jaffe 2012, pp. 287–303). These applications and technologies are currently used by companies to improve collaboration (e.g., via Doodle), to exchange information (e.g., via Twitter), or as a form of multilateral cooperation in conjunction with the use of social networks (e.g., via Facebook or LinkedIn).In addition to Web 2.0 technologies, mobile devices and applications from the consumer market are currently ...
Framework outlines the decision process in an industrial context.
In today's highly competitive business environments with shortened product and technology life cycle, it is critical for software industry to continuously innovate. This goal can be achieved by developing a better understanding and control of the activities and determinants of innovation. Innovation measurement initiatives assess innovation capability, output and performance to help develop such an understanding. This study explores various aspects relevant to innovation measurement ranging from definitions, measurement frameworks and metrics that have been proposed in literature and used in practice. A systematic literature review followed by an online questionnaire and interviews with practitioners and academics were employed to identify a comprehensive definition of innovation that can be used in software industry. The metrics for the evaluation of determinants, inputs, outputs and performance were also aggregated and categorised. Based on these findings, a conceptual model of the key measurable elements of innovation was constructed from the findings of the systematic review. The model was further refined after feedback from academia and industry through interviews.
Modular platforms have become the centerpiece of collaborative value creation in platform ecosystems. Platform ecosystems co-create the platform’s value proposition and support its market adoption as the more complementors join the ecosystem to supply complementarities, the more valuable the platform becomes to consumers due to a greater variety of choice. This poses new requirements on managing innovation in open platform environments. While academic research stresses the relevance of external complementary innovation for platform success, it lacks, however, a concrete understanding to guide platform owners in directing external innovational efforts in coopetive platform ecosystems to co-create and deliver value while ensuring the overall quality, reliability and consistency of the ‘whole’ solution. Based on the challenges platform ecosystems place on innovation management, this paper explores and categorizes control mechanisms leading platform owners in the ICT industry have implemented to steer external complementary innovation efforts. From that an overall platform-based innovation management process is developed.
Although industrial market research has generated large data banks on organizational buyers, very little from the existing data seems helpful to management. What is needed before more data is collected is a realistic conceptualization and understanding of the process of industrial buying decisions. This article integrates existing knowledge into a descriptive model to aid in industrial market research.
This paper focuses on the influences and characteristics of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) acquisition process (ERPAP) that were found during a multiple-case study of four organizations that had acquired ERP solutions. From organizational buying behaviour (OBB), Webster and Wind’s (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1972) served as the basis for categorizing the influences that surfaced during the study. While Webster and Wind’s model presents a broad scope of variables that might affect organizational buying without distinguishing those variables that are dependent on specific buying situations, the research herein highlights variables (influences and characteristics) specific to the buying situation for ERP software packages. Numerous influences emerged, among the most notable of which was the influence of users. Five prominent characteristics were also noted. A future study of these influences could examine the extent to which they impact the ERPAP and could serve to help organizations minimize those that are shown to hinder it.
Reviews the academic research conducted on organizational buying behavior since the publication of Sheth’s model of industrial buying behavior in 1973. Discovers an impressive amount of research primarily focused on the decision-making process, environmental influences and conflict resolution in joint decisions. Also, there is an emerging area of research on supply-chain partnering and the use of information technology such as networked computing and online data services. States that there is a surplus of empirical studies using descriptive methods and that more analytical approaches on the one hand, and conceptual constructs on the other. Focusses on future academic research in organizational buying behavior. Concludes that purchasing function is dramatically shifting from the transaction-oriented to the relational-oriented philosophy, and it is also shifting from domestic to global sourcing. This will change the role, processes and strategies of procurement and, therefore, new research opportunities will emerge for academic scholars. These include understanding suppliers as customers; cross-functional supplier teaming; economic value of supplier equity; supply experience curves; hub and spoke organization; bonding with suppliers; global sourcing processes; cross-cultural values in purchasing; cross-national rules and regulations; and service procurement.
Valid measurement scales for predicting user acceptance of computers are in short supply. Most subjective measures used in practice are unvalidated, and their relationship to system usage is unknown. The present research develops and validates new scales for two specific variables, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which are hypothesized to be fundamental determinants of user acceptance. Definitions for these two variables were used to develop scale items that were pretested for content validity and then tested for reliability and construct validity in two studies involving a total of 152 users and four application programs. The measures were refined and streamlined, resulting in two six-item scales with reliabilities of .98 for usefulness and .94 for ease of use. The scales exhibited high convergent, discriminant, and factorial validity. Perceived usefulness was significantly correlated with both self-reported current usage (r=.63, Study 1) and self-predicted future usage (r =.85, Study 2). Perceived ease of use was also significantly correlated with current usage (r=.45, Study 1) and future usage (r=.59, Study 2). In both studies, usefulness had a significantly greater correlation with usage behavior than did ease of use. Regression analyses suggest that perceived ease of use may actually be a causal antecedent to perceived usefulness, as opposed to a parallel, direct determinant of system usage. Implications are drawn for future research on user acceptance.
IT consumerization, or the adoption of consumer devices and applications in the workforce, is pervasive. Employees bring computer tablets and smartphones into the workplace and harness social media applications and special purpose apps for their work lives. But how should the IT organization respond? This article examines how organizations, facing the consumerization and consequent complexity of IT, seek to minimize security risks and redundancy of IT resources while maximizing the business benefits of IT consumerization.
Mobile devices and apps have changed the way consumers perceive and use IT. As mobile apps are easy to use and to procure, they have begun to enter the corporate world "under the radar" outside of the control of the IT unit. Employees bring their own mobile devices (BYOD) and apps to do their work - which raises various problems. As a counter-measure, firms have launched BYOD programs and set up Enterprise App Stores (EAS) where their employees can install certified and licensed apps under the firm's control. This paper aims to take a first step in scientifically exploring this new concept of EAS and exploratively develops a benefits framework which can serve as foundation for the conceptualization and empirical investigation of EAS value and adoption by future works. © (2013) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved.
Lured by the success of online sales channels in the consumer software market, enterprise software vendors have launched proprietary online channels alongside their traditional offline ones. However, it is disputable whether the online purchase of a software application is as compelling for an organizational buyer as it is for an individual consumer. Relying on a qualitative research strategy and a cross-sectional research design, we have explored the channel adoption decision made by organizational entities when they purchase business software applications. We have constructed a qualitative channel adoption model which takes into account the relevant drivers and barriers, their interdependences, and the buying process phases. Our findings suggest that offline channels will not be cannibalized unless some peculiar characteristics of enterprise software applications change. We have also derived recommendations for the design of multichannel sales systems according to the main classes of enterprise software products and services. © (2013) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office. All rights reserved.
Todays global economy migrates from vertically integrated enterprises towards specialized enterprises. In consequence, companies have to closely interoperate with partners and competitors to flexibly satisfy the customers demand for individual product and service solutions, speed and high levels of product and service quality. In order to cope with these challenges, many companies implement open modular platform concepts, enabling them to create platform ecosystems around their offerings. As a result, an increasing number of companies strives for platform leadership, which represents a companys strategic intention to provide the platform for other companies to build and deploy products and services. This process cannot be reduced to simple outsourcing decisions, but is part of renewed strategies of Open Innovation in an increasingly dynamic economic climate.
Opening up dedicated interfaces to external complementary development resources, however, changes the companys business model from formerly being single-sided to then being two-sided. Two-sided platform businesses, therefore, differ significantly in their economic rational and strategic behavior from non-platform businesses, as indirect network externalities become crucial to their success. Indirect network externalities imply that the more buyers are attracted to a platform, the more valuable the platform becomes to sellers. In reciprocity, the more sellers are attracted to it. In turn, the more sellers are offering innovative complementary products and services of suitable quality on top of the platform, the higher is the variety and the likelihood to match individual customer requirements. As a result, the broader the customer choice of complementary offerings on top of the platform is, the greater is the utility customers are able to derive from the platform and the greater the platforms profitability for the platform owner and its complementors. This requires platform owners to manage and sustain a continuous supply of external innovative complementary products and services to secure the profitability of their investments into an open modular platform concept. These insights indicate that the management of innovational efforts in open modular platform contexts is no longer confined to the legal boundaries of an organization.
Given the differences between platform and non-platform businesses, the present work argues that the peculiarities of two-sided platform business models require significant modifications to the platform owners innovation management and innovation process in order to achieve competitive advantage in dynamic platform markets. Correspondingly, the present work seeks to (a) explore the peculiarities of innovation management in two-sided platform businesses and (b) to develop a platform-based innovation management framework that guides the platform owner in holistically managing open innovation efforts within the context of its platform leadership strategy.
Business Research Methods contains new and revised chapters on quantitative methods and visual research, while cutting-edge material on inclusivity and bias in research, feminist perspectives, and decolonial and indigenous research is also introduced. The book is composed of four parts. The first part looks at the research process. It covers research strategies and designs, as well as ethics in business research and writing up business research. Part 2 looks at quantitative research and details the nature of quantitative research, sampling, structured interviewing, and questions. It also looks at secondary analysis and statistics. The next part is about qualitative research. This part examines ethnography, participant observation, interviewing, focus groups, language, and document data. The final part is about mixed methods of research.
Pioneered by Apple’s App Store, online sales channels for software applications have acquired a prominent role in the consumer software market. This success has been a catalyst for several vendors of enterprise application software, who opened their own online sales channel alongside traditional ones based on the deployment of intermediaries and sales teams. However, it is disputable whether the online purchase of a software application is as compelling for an organization as it is for an individual consumer, and whether drivers and barriers of channel adoption are the same in these different contexts. Therefore, relying on a qualitative research strategy, we explored the channel adoption decision made by organizational software buyers to uncover and categorize relevant influencing factors. In particular, solution attributes such as specificity, price, implementation/integration effort, scope, and evaluability appear to play a key role alongside contractual aspects and the existence of an established relationship with the vendor. We also investigated factors’ interdependences to sketch an online channel adoption model which, on the one hand, may allow practitioners in the enterprise software market to diagnose channel adoption issues and, on the other, may serve as foundation for further multidisciplinary research in this topical area of study.
Whereas electronic marketplaces had been established years ago to distribute different kinds of software, they have become subject of public interest given the success of "app store" models in business-to-consumer (B2C) environment, especially for mobile device software. The expectation of a consumer grade buying experience, cloud deployment models and the disaggregation of software bundles to smaller and more focused offerings are fostering the app store model also for enterprise software. In this article, a classification of buying situations for enterprise application software is introduced reflecting organizational buying processes between the transactional and the consultative sales / buying model. In that context, the article outlines the role of electronic marketplaces and Internet-based sales infrastructures detailed in a practical case example.
Discusses the ever increasing sophistication of buyers in today′s industrial market and the need for sales people who have an in‐depth knowledge of their customers′ products and are able to liaise effectively between their own manufacturing department and the purchasing agent. Considers the establishment ofsales centres and the use of salespeople as intermediaries, coordinating the company′s sales functions (e.g. R&D, sales support), with their counterparts in the buying organization. concludes that salespeople can be viewed as the “linchpin” of the selling process, before, during and after the contract is completed.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions are changing the way that software is produced, distributed, consumed, and priced. PaaS, also known as cloud platform, offer an execution environment based on software platforms. To be competitive on the market, PaaS providers have to be aware of drivers of successful platforms and design or adjust their business models accordingly. Surprisingly, prior research has made little attempt to investigate consumers’ preferences on PaaS that influence developers’ choice on PaaS solutions. This paper examines this understudied issue through a conjoint study. First a comprehensive literature analysis on PaaS has been conducted in order to build the study design on a rigorous foundation. The conducted conjoint survey contained ten attributes together with 26 corresponding attribute levels and has been completed by 103 participants. Based on the results, a prioritized list of customers’ preferences for PaaS has been created.
This paper presents a model of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software acquisition process that reflects the findings from the four cases examined in this study. This ERP acquisition process model includes six distinctive, yet interrelated, processes (planning, information search, selection, evaluation, choice, and negotiations). This paper depicts the principal processes and many of the constituent activities, issues, dynamics, and complexities that pertain to the acquisition of ERP software. The results from this study contribute to the identification of processes that are part of this type of acquisition. Further, this model also suggests complexities that are worthy of further investigation, in and of themselves, if for no other reason than that they could prove the limit of generalizability of the model.
To remain competitive and ever increasingly sophisticated in the marketplace, businesses must invest in Information Technology (IT) if they are to survive in the long-term. Advances in IT have enabled new competitors to enter existing markets more readily, which has stimulated and strengthened the paradigm of global competitiveness. At the same time, increasing economic pressures are forcing businesses to re-evaluate their IT operations. In response to the changing business environment and to remain competitive and improve organisational performance some businesses have strategically made considerable investments in IT, yet their benefits are difficult to quantify. With this in mind, this paper aims to study the justification for investment in IT projects, by examining tangible and intangible benefits such as competitive advantage and securing future business by facilitating appropriate management change. A model to determine whether or not to invest in IT for any given company is presented. The developed model is then applied to a case study to analyse the implications of implementing IT and its impact on organisations.
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) is an enterprise-wide application software package that integrates all necessary business functions into a single system with a common database. In order to implement an ERP project successfully in an organization, it is necessary to select a suitable ERP system. This paper presents a new model, which is based on linguistic information processing, for dealing with such a problem. In the study, a similarity degree based algorithm is proposed to aggregate the objective information about ERP systems from some external professional organizations, which may be expressed by different linguistic term sets. The consistency and inconsistency indices are defined by considering the subject information obtained from internal interviews with ERP vendors, and then a linear programming model is established for selecting the most suitable ERP system. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the application of the proposed method.
The organizational and social issues associated with the development, implementation and use of computer-based information systems have increasingly attracted the attention of information systems researchers. Interest in qualitative research methods such as action research, case study research and ethnography, which focus on understanding social phenomena in their natural setting, has con- sequently grown. Case study research is the most widely used qualitative research method in information systems research, and is well suited to understanding the interactions between information technology-related innovations andorganizational contexts. Although casestudyresearch is usefulasa meansof studying information systems development and use in the field, there can be practical difficulties asso- ciated with attempting to undertake case studies as a rigorous and effective method of research. This paper addresses a number of these difficulties and offers some practical guidelines for successfully completing case study research. The paper focuses on the pragmatics of conducting case study research, and draws from the discussion at a panel session conducted by the authors at the 8th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, September 1997 (ACIS 97), from the authors' practical experiences, and from the case study research literature.
To help complete the often cumbersome task of justifying costs of software purchases, health-care financial managers should follow a multi-step process. This involves determining an organization's information system needs, evaluating vendor offerings and system benefits, assessing the value of system benefits, and determining returns on investments in new systems.
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