The consumerization of enterprise is taking place at a breakneck pace, and it’s changing the face of enterprise software and business computing. While on the whole a positive, the effects of consumerization can put a lot of stress on IT departments, as they struggle to balance BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) mentality and the growing demand and requirements of applications with information security.
Consumerization means ease of use and the ability to quickly adopt always-there tools and technologies. Yet, meanwhile, some businesses have chosen to restrict their employees to enterprise-owned or developed devices, but this isn’t sustainable in the long run. AppCentral, a startup best known for its enterprise app storefront and management console, and as the new face of Ondeego (one of the first enterprise app stores), is looking to bring a real, honest-to-goodness productized offering to enterprise app distribution.
To help push its solution forward, the company is today announcing a bunch of key hires, the first is the addition of Richard Greene as President and CEO. Greene was previously the VP of Global Partners at anti-virus and security giant, McAfee, where he oversaw the adoption of SaaS-based mobile security solutions. Prior to McAfee, Greene held leadership positions at Securify (acquired by Secure Computing/McAfee), Orbital Data (acquired by Citrix) and Sanctum (acquired by Watchfire/IBM).
The second hire is Pete Buhl, who will be taking over as COO. Prior to joining AppCentral, Buhl spent over 13 years at BlueRun Ventures, where he was a co-founding partner. At BlueRun, the partner helped raise $1 billion across four funds, while focusing on enterprise and mobile investments. Buhl has served on the boards of Netli, Like.com, PayPal, and Location Labs, to name a few.
In today’s world of fragmentation in mobile OSes, businesses are hard pressed to manage and support the diverse array of mobile apps their employees use on a daily basis, so AppCentral has designed a solution that provides a cross-platform app store to let businesses continue to support the many mobile devices used by their employees, while maintaining security and control. To do this, AppCentral focuses on offering easy enterprise app distribution, in addition to secure wrapping, post-completion, and server-based administration.
In addition to Greene and Buhl, AppCentral is boosting its leadership team with a couple of former McAfee executives who have followed Greene, including John Dasher, formerly senior director of marketing, and Michael Barnes, who joins as VP of engineering, having previously led the development of enterprise firewall products at McAfee.
The new leadership team will be focused on removing the friction that is often associated with IT departments, while giving them the ability to define boundaries for apps that they need to maintain security. As new VP of Products John Dasher wrote in a recent blog post, a new generation of apps are starting to emerge that go beyond simply being desktop ports, solving problems “that are uniquely mobile.” It’s this kind of new mobile app that AppCentral is looking to accomodate, making it easy for big business to distribute and leverage those apps to push enterprise mobility forward.
For more on AppCentral, check the company out at home here.