Good Technology, an enterprise mobility specialist, is acquiring AppCentral, a privately held innovator in mobile application management (MAM) and application “wrapping” technology.
The two companies officially announced the deal Oct. 1. Although financial terms were not disclosed, all AppCentral personnel become full-time employees of Good Technology. The AppCentral headquarters in San Francisco will become a Good Technology office, according to a company release.
AppCentral products are designed to help enterprises distribute, manage and secure mobile enterprise applications.
The combination of AppCentral’s enterprise app storefront and “app wrapping” capabilities with the Good Dynamics platform is designed to deliver scalability and control for the management of mobile apps across multiple mobile operating systems, including Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone devices.
The deal will also extend the capabilities of the Good Dynamics platform with AppCentral’s AppGuardian application wrapping and AppCentral Mobile Application Management solutions.
In a world of bring- your-own-device (BYOD) policies, enterprises and their IT departments are looking for more ways to secure company data, while allowing employees to bring their own tablets, smartphones and laptops into the corporate network. In order to secure data, Good Technology works at the application level and the acquisition of AppCentral gives the company another layer of security to offer and makes it easier for developers to create apps that can pass muster with a company’s BYOD policies.
“Our goal is to help make it easy for our customers to securely mobilize and empower their workforces with a wide range of devices and productivity applications,” Good Technology CEO King Lee wrote in a statement. “Our acquisition of AppCentral will accelerate and enhance our ability to provide enterprises, ISVs and systems integrators with the ability to secure and manage mobile apps, helping them maximize the power of mobility.”
Through a cloud-based, customized app storefront, AppCentral makes mobile apps and data available to authorized members of the extended enterprise, such as employees, contractors and ecosystem partners, as well as to devices beyond enterprise control. AppCentral’s “app wrapping” capability builds upon the application security framework, libraries and services currently available through Good Dynamics’ platform.
With the addition of AppCentral, Good Dynamics will begin providing developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) with the option to either add an application security “wrapper” without code integration, or integrate Good Dynamics security libraries directly into their application code. Code integration delivers additional security benefits, such as enabling developers to define app-specific policies, including controlling file access in collaboration apps based on size, type or other attributes, and to publish app services that multiple apps can use without having to duplicate code across every app.
“Good has a long history of innovating and integrating cutting-edge enterprise mobility technologies, and we are excited to help extend Good’s leadership in what will shortly be a multibillion dollar addressable market2,” AppCentral CEO Richard Greene wrote in a statement. “The AppCentral solution with AppGuardian will complement the Good Dynamics platform and further enable enterprises to deploy and manage high-value business applications without compromising security or control.”
