News
Flexera Software Launches App Portal 2016
September 2016 by Marc Jacob
Flexera Software unveiled the latest release of its universal enterprise app store for desktop, mobile and cloud applications, App Portal. The new release further extends Software Asset Management (SAM) capabilities within the enterprise app store environment to reduce software cost and license compliance risk, and improve the employee self-service experience. Enhanced governance now automatically checks license requirements and availability to optimise license consumption, reducing software costs and audit risk by enforcing continual compliance with licenses and corporate policies, and by controlling the distribution of approved and authorised software.
Substantial IT Savings
Because organisations are not always aware of the software licenses they already own and the specific terms of their contracts, they routinely and unnecessarily spend money on additional licenses for software they already have. To solve this problem, when an employee requests a new app with App Portal 2016, it automatically scans contract terms and product use rights housed in FlexNet Manager Suite, Flexera Software’s market-leading Software Asset Management solution, to determine if a new license is actually needed to fulfill that request. App Portal ensures companies take full advantage of the software rights they have purchased – such as upgrade, downgrade, exemptions and rights of second use, before an existing license is consumed or a new software license is purchased. So, for instance, if an employee requests a new application to be installed on both a laptop and a tablet, App Portal will know if only one license is needed or two.
Wider Adoption
Access to enterprise app stores is often limited to those connected to the network directly or via VPN, which considerably restricts where employees can get access. By providing support for most Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions available in the industry (including Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0, Open Standard Authentication (OAuth) 2.0 and Open ID authentication), organisations can now make App Portal accessible to employees wherever they work – whether in the office, on the road from their mobile devices or from home – further reducing barriers to adoption.
Faster Check Out
Frustration mounts when employees face time-consuming, multi-page checkout for applications they are requesting. This problem plagues many enterprise app stores – leading to employee dissatisfaction and the use of faster but riskier public options, also known as Shadow IT. App Portal 2016 reduces friction in service delivery and improves the user experience. By selecting the Install Now button, users auto-generate a request for a single catalog item, bypassing the checkout experience. Express check-out brings an iTunes-like consumer-store feel to enterprise App Portal, minimising application delivery time from weeks to hours or even minutes, while minimising conflicts between IT and employees.
