DEVOPSdigest

At Mobile World Congress, AirWatch, IBM, JAMF and MobileIron announced the formation of the AppConfig Community.

The Community's mission is to establish a common approach for enterprise app configuration and security based on OS native standards, including the extensive frameworks available in iOS. Working together, the members of the AppConfig Community will create tools, best practices and educational forums to enable developers and organizations to simplify app development and deployment and accelerate the adoption of transformational business apps.

Historically, developers used proprietary software development kits (SDKs) to enable configuration and security features of their apps through EMM. This required app developers to build different versions of their apps for each EMM vendor. Now, with AppConfig Community tools and best practices, developers will not require EMM-specific integrations for many enterprise use cases. End users can also benefit from automated features such as an out-of-the-box experience to give the users instant app access with no setup or user credentials necessary.

AppConfig Community best practices are supported by Apple's mobility partners. More than 60 companies have committed to AppConfig Community tools and best practices, including leading software vendors Box, Cisco, Oracle, Salesforce and Workday.

The AppConfig Community also announced an open XML schema for iOS enterprise app configurations. The schema streamlines app deployment by making it easy for developers to define app configurations across all of their apps and for businesses to consistently deploy these app configurations. Apps built using native frameworks in iOS and this new AppConfig XML schema will work consistently across participating EMM providers. The AppConfig Community also provides best practices for enterprise developers based on OS-native features such as single sign-on, per-app VPN, security policies and access controls.

With the AppConfig Community, the industry leading EMM solutions IBM MaaS360, JAMF Casper Suite, MobileIron and VMware AirWatch have come together to make it easier for developers and customers to drive mobility in business. Additionally, all App Configuration for Enterprise (ACE) members are now members of the new AppConfig Community. To learn more about the AppConfig Community and to download the AppConfig XML schema, visit appconfig.org.