Enterprise App Distribution

Enterprise app distribution is how a company puts its own app on its staff phones without listing it publicly. The delivery driver's app. The warehouse scanner. The rota tool the nurses use. Customers never need any of them, so there is no reason for the whole world to be able to download them.

There are three normal ways to do it. Apple and Google both run business accounts, where you upload the app once and choose exactly which people or which devices receive it. The second way is a private listing, where the app sits in the ordinary store but never appears in search, and only the people you invite can install it. The third is an install link that pulls the app straight from your own server, which Apple allows only for companies accepted into its enterprise programme.

When Linkysoft builds a staff-only app, the first question is who owns the phone. A company-owned phone can be enrolled and managed, so the app arrives on its own and the office can remove it and erase the work data the day someone leaves. On a personal phone you can only invite. The member of staff has to accept, and you should expect a quarter of them not to.

The cost that catches people out is renewal. Certificates and enrolments run out once a year. When one lapses, every copy of the app stops opening on the same morning, all at once, on every phone. Put the date in a shared calendar and give the account to two people rather than one.

The risk runs the other way too. If you teach staff to install work apps from links, you have taught them that installing from links is normal, and that is exactly what a fake message counts on. Someone will send a lookalike link with your logo on it. Keep the way apps arrive dull and identical every time, and write down what staff may install on a work phone. Linkysoft handles distribution as part of the mobile app build, and where staff carry customer data we review it with the cybersecurity team before the first version goes out.