The Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) space continues to stay hot with the increasing number of mobile devices landing in employee hands. If not managed properly, the task of tending to smartphones and tablets used in the enterprise has the potential to be as frenetic as herding cats. Antenna Software answers the challenge of the consumerization of the workplace simply and elegantly; it's new Volt app is designed to turn potential chaos into business advantage with an HTML 5-based utility that can be highly customized for individual business needs.
Lately, I've been getting swamped with updates by vendors that basically sell control of mobile devices for the good of the enterprise. The methods sometimes vary, but the song is usually somewhat the same as this market seeks to strike a balance between the new-found freedom that smartphones and tablets give users and the potential problems such freedom causes
for the folks who care about things like security, time management and staff getting work done as efficiently as possible. Despite Volt's familiar ring, the folks at Antenna Software did a good job of showing me the differentiators that their new management app brings.
For some readers, the quickest way to explain Volt is to point out that it is the technology that AT&T rebadges as its Workbench platform. For those not familiar with AT&T's Workbench, here's the skinny: Volt is the iOS/Android app that gets downloaded and installed on client devices.
After it connects to the Antenna Mobility Platform (AMP), which
is either hosted or local, the magic starts. Volt becomes a framework unto itself within the mobile device, creating a border within which enterprise apps can be run. Which enterprise apps? That would depend on the enterprise in question.
When Volt connects to AMP initially, the mobile business apps assigned to the individual user or class of users
is pushed down to the client device. Antenna's model pushes the flexibility of applications built on HTML 5 and JavaScript, so the same app works within Volt on either iOS or Android devices.
