Flexera Software's Universal Enterprise App Store Offers New Cloud Based Functionality

Flexera Software’s universal enterprise app store, App Portal, has been updated to provide new upport for companies who are delivering cloud apps to their employees.  This new functionality includes enhanced Apple Mac environments, tracking of time and cost savings associated with implementing a self-service enterprise app store, and more.

App Portal is a universal enterprise app store that offers back-end governance, such as software license management, approvals and workflow, which can be implemented stand-alone or within an organization’s IT Service Management system such as ServiceNow or BMC Remedy.

App Portal is a universal app store that simplifies the user experience, automatically provisioning cloud employee accounts and ensuring the same level of automation and control as already provided for desktop and mobile apps. App Portal enforces continual software license compliance and controls software deployment, to help employee satisfaction and the efficiency of application service delivery. The enterprise app store ensures that governance is in place to check software license availability, obtain proper approvals on software requests, and reclaim unused licenses. 

Among the recent updates to App Portal are the ability to self-service provisioning of Salesforce.com, Microsoft Office 365, Box, and other cloud applications from the same app store where employees can request desktop and mobile apps. 

New support of Mac environments reflects the reality that Macs can be supported differently than other devices in many companies, including for IT service automation. App Portal addresses this potential problem by now supporting deployment of applications to Macs via JAMF Software’s Casper Suite. 

With App Portal’s intelligent display Mac users will only be able to choose Mac applications when they use the app store – and delivery of requested Mac apps is automated. If a mobile version of that app is available – App Portal will also recommend it to the user during checkout. So employees can visit App Portal’s universal enterprise app store from any device and access any application type, while administrators can simultaneously manage the app store configuration.

App Portal also now supports governance and IT service management through a new dashboard which provides a view into the time and cost savings associated with software and OS requests, as well as usage and product adoption information.

By automating one-time software requests and enabling self-service operating system deployments, companies can save hundreds of hours of IT staff time. App Portal does this by;

- Automatically check availability and reserve software licenses at the time of employee request to eliminate deploying unlicensed desktop software.

- Enforce accurate license positions at a global level for compliance and at the group level to support cost assignment to lines of business.

- Report on software requests, approvals, installations and purchases to measure success and make sound decisions regarding software licensing and usage across the enterprise.

- Leverage FlexNet Manager Platform usage data to avoid overbuying of costly enterprise licenses by reclaiming software that is installed, but not used.

- Enlist the help of employees with the Software Policy Score informing them of the cost of applications installed on their devices, how often those applications are used, and encouraging them to remove and return the licenses of unneeded applications.

- Utilize application downloads and user feedback and ratings to increase efficiency of the enterprise procurement process, optimize vendor contracts, and maintain control of budgets.

- Automatically populate the store with IT approved and packaged applications and operating systems directly from Flexera Software AdminStudio.

- Enable users to spend their budget on the apps they deem most beneficial to their productivity.

- Reduce time spent manually responding to one-off software requests and cut delivery time to users from weeks to hours or even minutes.

- Simplify employee access, maintain control, and enable automated self-service access to applications they need to be productive.

- Enable proactive support with automatic incident creation whenever an application installation fails.

- Leverage established approval workflows in existing ServiceNow or BMC Remedy ITSM implementations.