Appdome Mobile App Integration Vendor Joins AppConfig Community

Mobile app integration vendor Appdome has joined the AppConfig Community, a move the company says will make it easier for customers to bolster their mission-critical business mobile apps.

By joining the AppConfig group, Appdome will now integrate AppConfig's best practices for configuring and securing mobile apps into the Appdome platform, which allows users to plug third-party services into enterprise mobile apps with a few mouse clicks and no coding. Appdome announced its new involvement with AppConfig in an Aug. 8 announcement.

The AppConfig development community is made up of a wide range of Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) vendors including MobileIron, BlackBerry, SAP, Jamf and Sophos, as well as dozens of ISVs, including Box, Concur, Docusign, Dropbox Business, PatientSafe, Oracle and Salesforce 1.

By implementing AppConfig mobile app standards, member vendors can build the group's best practices related to security and coding into their enterprise mobile apps while leveraging native operating system functionality in iOS, Android and Windows.   

Using Appdome's mobile integration platform, customers can now plug those AppConfig standards into their mobile applications just like they add other third-party services, rather than having to write specific code and spend months doing the implementation, according to Appdome. The transformation is performed as a codeless integration workflow in the cloud, without requiring source code, development expertise, an SDK or modifications to an app.

Tom Tovar, the CEO of Appdome, told ITPro that bringing his company's technologies together with the AppConfig development community will make it easier for companies to add AppConfig standards integration into their enterprise apps using Appdome's specialized processes.

"AppConfig was designed to make the job [of using standards] easier on developers, but it still requires some heavy lifting" in terms of coding and implementation on its own to be manually added to enterprise apps, said Tovar. By automating that process now that it has joined the AppConfig community, Appdome simplifies the overall process, he added.

Pricing for the use of the Appdome platform varies, but typically starts at about $199 per user per month, plus an integration fee.

The AppConfig standards have been developed because more and more integration is needed between third-party services and enterprise apps so they can work together seamlessly for users. Typical third-party services which require such integrations are security services, enterprise mobility, identity management, analytics and mobile engagement services.

Appdome's new Appdome for AppConfig best practices services are available immediately to customers. To use the service, Appdome users can upload a final app package in .ipa or .apk file formats to the Appdome platform, and then select the desired Appdome for AppConfig services. Once selected, the user can click the "Fuse my App" button to start the cloud-based integration process, which will be completed automatically within minutes. The process integrates the full AppConfig standard into any app, according to Appdome.

Jeffrey Hammond, an analyst with Forrester, told ITPro that the continuing growth of the AppConfig Community is something that should be watched by enterprises.

"From a developer's point of view, something like AppConfig is appealing because it eases the burden of prepping an app for enterprise mobility management (EMM) support," he said. "Being able to integrate to one standard and a single set of APIs is much better than having to do one-offs for every EMM vendor your clients might be using. Hopefully it will continue to gain traction and support as a common denominator approach."