MobileIron Buys Incapptic Connect To Speed Up App Releases

incapptic Connect can shorten the application release process from weeks to less than a day by automating and streamlining various components, MobileIron said.

MobileIron has purchased mobile app automation software provider incapptic Connect to help enterprise customers accelerate their mobile app release journey.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based mobile security vendor said Berlin, Germany-based incapptic Connect’s can shorten the application release process from weeks to less than a day by automating and streamlining various components, according to Brian Foster, MobileIron’s senior vice president of product.

“We’ve known these guys for an extended period of time and seen the success they’re having in the market with our largest customers,” MobileIron CEO Simon Biddiscombe told CRN.

[Related: MobileIron Takes The Wraps Off New IoT Solutions Division Led By A Former Wind River Exec]

incapptic Connect was founded in 2016, employs 15 people, and has been one of seven vendors in the MobileIron Marketplace Premier Partner Program since late last year, Biddiscombe said. The $6 million transaction closed Friday, and was the first acquisition in MobileIron’s 13-year history, according to Biddiscombe.

Getting apps tested by various departments, having them scanned for vulnerabilities, and having departments from operational security to infrastructure sign off on the app often ends up taking 14 days, Foster said. By reducing the need for internal handoffs and various meetings, Foster said incapptic Connect can reduce that process down to less than a day.

That is particularly true for multinational corporations looking to release publicly facing apps in as many of 20 different languages, Foster said. Without incapptic Connect, customers would have to manually upload the app to the App Store or Google Play in each respective language, which Foster said is a laborious process that leaves customers susceptible to mistakes.

incapptic Connect Is priced as a subscription on a per app, per year basis, with prices starting at $2,000 per app per year, Foster said. The technology will be sold on a standalone basis for the near-term, according to Foster.

“The more apps you have, both public and internal, the more pain you have,” Foster said.

The buyer for incapptic Connect’s product is the same as the buyer for MobileIron’s unified endpoint management technology in most cases, according to Biddiscombe. Within the infrastructure team of the CIO organization, Biddiscombe said there is a person who owns the mobile strategy and is responsible for getting the app distributed both internally, externally and through public stores, Biddiscombe said.

That person is responsible not only for choosing the unified endpoint management platform, but also for making sure that enterprise apps get published into the store in a way that’s secure, consistent from a signature basis, and doesn’t leave personal information out in the open once the app is closed, according to Biddiscombe.

Buying incapptic Connect will give MobileIron more control over the product roadmap as well as where investment dollars go, Foster said. The incapptic Connect tam will start contributing to MobileIron’s product engineering organization, and MobileIron will out of the gate focus on marketing incapptic Connect to customers with the greatest number of applications, according to Foster.

From a product roadmap perspective, Foster said MobileIron plans to make incapptic Connect available in the public cloud within a year’s time. This will further align incapptic Connect with MobileIron’s unified endpoint management product, Foster said, and give customers more flexibility in addition to on-premise and hosted deployment options.