Glossary
Enterprise application
An enterprise application is software built or licensed for use inside one organization, as opposed to a consumer app anyone can download from a public store. For an IT team it's the delivery app, the inspection form or the internal directory that must reach the right devices, get its settings on first launch, and stay off the public App Store or Google Play.
How it works
The term has two overlapping meanings, and they matter for distribution.
The first is business software in general: an ERP client, a CRM app, a ticketing tool. Those are usually public store apps with an enterprise license, and the management job is to buy licenses in volume and push them to the right groups through Managed Google Play or Apps and Books.
The second is the in-house app: code written for you, by your developers or a contractor, that has no reason to exist outside your company. Apple even named its distribution program after it. The Apple Developer Enterprise Program signs apps for in-house installation without App Store review, but since 2019 Apple restricts membership to organizations with 100 or more employees and asks for a justification; most new projects now go through Custom Apps in Apple Business Manager instead. On Android, the equivalent is a private app on Managed Google Play, or an APK delivered straight by the MDM.
Either way, the MDM installs the app as a managed app. That unlocks managed app configuration (server URL, tenant, feature flags shipped with the install), silent updates on company devices, and selective wipe when the device leaves the fleet.
A related technique, app wrapping, adds a policy layer to an existing binary without changing its code. It's useful when the app vendor hasn't built in the controls you need, and fragile every time the OS changes.
Why it matters for a fleet
Enterprise applications are where the business runs. The public apps on a device are replaceable; the picking app in the warehouse is not, and a version mismatch between the app and the backend stops a shift.
Distribution discipline pays off fast. One canonical build per version in the console, assignment by group, a pilot ring of 20 devices before the rest, and an install report to check the morning after. Emailing an APK link is how a company ends up with version 2.3, 2.5 and 2.6 all in the field.
Certificates deserve a named owner. An iOS enterprise-signed build stops launching the day its provisioning profile expires.
How Appaloosa handles it
Appaloosa was designed around enterprise applications: upload your APK or IPA, keep every version, assign builds per device group, and sync Custom Apps from Apple Business Manager into the same catalog as public apps from Managed Google Play and Apple VPP. Managed app configuration ships with the install, updates are a new assignment, and removal takes the app and its data with it. See the Mobile Application Management page for the mechanics.
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