Will the Mobile Web Kill Enterprise Apps?

The proliferation of mobile web browsers – along with the expanding deployment of responsive design techniques by enterprises – continues to bring into question whether the mobile web may be sounding the death knell for enterprise apps. Although the mobile web and HTML5 capabilities continue to become more sophisticated and deliver an improving user experience, there continue to be shortcomings with the mobile web that continue to favor the use of enterprise mobile apps. For instance, employees don’t always have fast or reliable WiFi or Internet connections.

Until connectivity issues improve – and that may be a long time coming – enterprise apps continue to offer employees the most dependable approach to accessing corporate data and various productivity capabilities, even while using low-speed connections to download the most essential information needed by workers. Another challenge facing organizations that rely on mobile websites is functionality. As Tim Gray notes in a post for Blue Fountain Media, companies that fail to optimize the functionality of a mobile website “and end up making visitors work too hard and wait too long for information” will abandon. Meanwhile, even as responsive design continues to gain traction in enterprises that want to optimize the user experience regardless of the type of device they’re using, the methodology also poses its share of challenges for enterprise IT.

According to a recent study on the topic by Forrester Consulting, more than 70% of the time and cost associated with responsive design is spent on the back end re-coding APIs, middleware, DBMS, integration, and infrastructure. Moreover, a survey of 146 U.S. mobile decision-makers by Forrester finds that 63% believe that responsive design isn’t suitable for long-term use. Regardless of how the battle between mobile websites, native apps, hybrid apps, and mobile web apps shakes out, Apperian is positioned to help enterprises protect corporate data that’s downloaded and used on employees’ mobile devices. Our enterprise mobility management solution can also protect apps from malware through data encryption, corporate authentication, and app wrapping tied to security and business policies based on each user’s role and location.

Meanwhile, Apperian also supports hybrid web apps which enables mobile administrators to offer a native-like experience for both internal and external websites. Using our hybrid app capabilities, administrators can be created and deployed to mobile users in less than a minute.