App deployment

With about more than 600 million apps on the play store it becomes an increasingly complex task to manage all the apps. Management employees deployment of the app to the app cloud by the developers, enable downloads via an app catalogue, developers push updates to the store and the end users gets push notifications about the update. Play store also offers beta testing of apps by letting users join communities on Google plus and in turn directing them to the play store for the beta testing app.

However if we look at it critically, it is a bit restrictive in terms of app access policies and the procedure for deployment. Imagine an entrepreneurial startup in app development trying to deploy about 10 apps every day for beta testing. It would be a pain to go through Google’s guidelines and following the Google plus chain of command.

The only solution for this is the existence of local app catalogues which can be installed as a regular app on the device and hence can be used to deploy a number of apps at any frequency at any time. This would also save the pain and time of uploading the app to the play store and then waiting for the update to go live. Access issues however can be a minor constraint in this scenario.

One of the more exiting alternative for testing beta apps is Test flight. It is a very smooth platform for testing apps under development. One can have differential access for different testing or development teams or even handpicking certain testers or developers. It makes sure very tight access control, as well as efficient defect log record and reporting. App updates are extremely simple triggered by a push notification.

In addition to these we have the famous Amazon store which is still struggling to go popular. Some local app stores which offer jailbroken /cracked apps are not worth mentioning here as they are merely to deny a developer his basic rights and credits. App deployment may be made popular by Google’s play store however there is still a lot of room for improvement and making it easy for developers. Hope Google takes some clues as it has always taken and made the experience amazing.