Are You Ready for Appageddon?

John Yung is CEO of Appcara.

There’s no doubt about it — enterprises are moving applications to the cloud in greater numbers than ever before. According to a recent Cloud Business Summit prediction, more than 60 percent of business infrastructure will reside on cloud-based platforms by 2018. CIOs and IT team leaders are scrambling to find new ways to accommodate the fast growth of enterprise applications for an increasingly mobile-first workforce.

To succeed in this rapidly evolving environment, enterprises need an advanced software platform for provisioning and managing applications in public and private cloud ecosystems. Companies require a scalable, enterprise-class app management system that enables the launch of apps on a standalone basis or as components of more complex workloads.

So how do you get your business ready for the influx of mobile spending and proliferation of mobile applications? Here are three strategies to help you make it happen.

Improve Agility With On-demand App Provisioning Capabilities

One of the top business challenges today is that users demand app access via mobile devices, but IT has to bridge the gap across platforms and enable central data storage. Virtualization can provide on-demand app provisioning for content management, development, databases, CRM, ERP, life sciences, collaboration, big data and much more. With the right solution, CIOs and IT leaders can make their organizations more agile by supporting full Office 365 functions on mobile devices via the cloud.

Use Automation to Cut Costs and Eliminate Manual Deployment

To meet the rising demand for mobile capabilities, companies must find a more efficient way to deploy enterprise apps, such as Microsoft Exchange. With an advanced software platform, it’s possible to reduce an Exchange deployment process that used to take two weeks to a single click. A platform can eliminate the need for an onsite consultant — at the cost of about $20,000 for a two-week deployment process — and enable simplified backup customization as well as user interfaces for direct task completion.

Access a Control Panel to Manage Apps in Real Time

In addition to cutting costs via automation, businesses need a way to improve deployment accuracy and more tightly control app automation. A single-interface solution is ideal, with a control panel that enables the IT team to control app automation in real time. The solution should also automate system documentation. In order to enhance scalability, the solution should enable portability so that developers can drag and drop applications from private to public clouds.

As mobility becomes a must-have and key differentiator for enterprises across all sectors, CIOs and IT leaders will face increasing demand to get applications to production faster, manage apps across multiple platforms in a BYOD environment, improve app deployment accuracy; and manage, document and automate the entire application lifecycle. The ability to effectively manage apps is rapidly becoming a critical success factor.

Appageddon is coming, but deploying enterprise apps is only part of it. Enterprises must also effectively update, scale and monitor apps. CIOs and IT leaders can confidently meet these challenges and even turn Appageddon into a growth opportunity with an advanced software platform that allows them to efficiently provision and manage applications in public and private cloud environments. With an enterprise-class app management system, your company can compete for customers in this rapidly changing marketplace and win.

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