JKH launches Sri Lanka’s first-ever corporate App Store

SGIT, the IT professional services organisation of Sri Lanka’s premier conglomerate John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH), recently launched the first-ever corporate App Store in Sri Lanka exclusively for the John Keells Group.

The App Store features a number of applications which can be used by JKH employees for tasks such as accessing business intelligence reports and dashboards, performing approval tasks, keeping up to date with group news and events, applying for leave and accessing group-wide applications, etc.

The App Store was launched by Ramesh Shanmuganathan, Executive Vice President/ Group CIO of JKH at the recently concluded CxO’s event, ‘Beyond ERP: Unleash your potential’, where JKH announced its partnership with SAP Services, India.

“The unique aspect of the App Store is that all applications available on it can run on any of the mobile platforms, currently available in the market.  This was enabled by using HTML5 technology instead of native mobile applications. Further this is the first time SAP ERP functionality has been extended to mobile platforms in Sri Lanka,” said Harsha Senanayake, Head of Enterprise Solutions of SGIT.

Through the launching of the app store, JKH has joined a growing number of businesses worldwide such as Intel and NVIDIA that have launched corporate app stores. By 2017, 25% of global enterprises will have an enterprise app store for managing corporate-sanctioned apps on PCs and mobile devices, according to Gartner, Inc.

Corporate app stores promise greater control over the apps used by employees, greater control over software expenditures and greater negotiating leverage with app vendors. They also have the potential to increase productivity and are much more affordable than third party applications.