Earlier this year Infor CEO Charles Phillips claimed that enterprise apps and software “sucked” – but not so according to Hewlett Packard’s Paul Evans who is part of the company’s Application Transformation global marketing division.

“Enterprise apps can be beautiful. For us mobile apps are enterprise apps,” says Evans, who is speaking at Apps World Europe at Earls Court 2 on October 22-23. However he admits that they have evolved hugely from their more cumbersome origins.

“When enterprise apps came out they weren’t designed to be fun or intuitive. Now with a better design people can do all sorts of things without that level of training. Enterprise apps going forward can be fun and intuitive and that will be done by giving people a very design led environment,” he says.

The worry of course about the greater proliferation of enterprise apps comes from their wider adoption both in the workplace and at home – whether they are authorised for the former or not. Businesses have long seen an increasing trend of BYOD (bring your own device) and are beginning to see a greater proliferation of apps in the enterprise too – particularly as users begin on a BYOA (bring your own app) path.

Evans says businesses must be wary about how they embrace such practises in the same way they have had to be around the BYOD trend.

“There are instances where people are bringing in an app which may not be an app supported by their organisation. The challenge with apps is there is a level of tolerance that has to be given but you have got to be careful of the security angle,” says Evans.

He says companies have to make their users aware of the risks of connecting bring your own apps to vulnerable environments whilst businesses have to be aware of the strain that such practices can inflict and says this is where cloud computing comes into its own.

“Cloud computing is intrinsically linked with the mobile app but people are still coming to terms with what am I going to put in the cloud,” says Evans. “With a mobile app one thing you can’t predict is how many people are going to use it and like it and your hit rate.

“In traditional IT BYOD didn’t exist. Easy intuitive apps didn’t exist. What did exist was predictivity – you knew how many devices and how many users you would have. Now you don’t know if someone will love your app or hate it.

“A lot of organisations really appreciate that. It’s about what type of cloud environment what best suits the use. There is a high degree of correlation between what people do and want to do with mobile and what they will do with cloud,” he says.

However he says real innovation will come from increased connectivity between app and the backend environment to provide a richer experience for users. “We’ve only just started to scratch the surface with that. So yes my device knows where it is. But if you really want to start exploiting it you tie that in to that backend environment. For instance an app that can see x is walking to the hotel, can download the room key to the phone and can say it’s three minutes until the next meeting..”

“The two need each other,” says Evans. “The front end needs the backend and then all of a sudden the experience you are delivering is far more beneficial, but the two need to play with each other,” he says.

To find out more about Apps World Europe and how to register, click here.