Thursday morning, Hewlett-Packard unveiled an enterprise app store designed to give today’s increasingly mobile workforce unhindered access to company data across multiple devices while enabling CIOs to minimize the additional risk exposure. The solution supports both Android and iOS through native clients and includes a web interface for traditional desktops.

HP Access Catalog is built on the same platform that powers the newly introduced Vertica Marketplace, which was announced earlier this week alongside a number of other self-service solutions for processing information. It allows end-users to download applications and content on-demand instead of having to ask permission from IT each time, an incredibly inefficient process that adds up to a lot of wasted person-hours in large organizations.

“As organizations embrace mobility, they need a simple, secure and reliable mechanism to manage the delivery of apps to their employees,” said Dragan Milanovich, the vice president of Web Services at HP Software. “The HP Access Catalog provides enterprises with a robust, flexible and easy-to-use solution, making it easier for users to be productive on their device of choice.”

In addition to improving user experience, the store streamlines updating and features a built-in identity management tool that lets admins ensure workers only install the right applications for their respective roles, simplifying compliance and helping to mitigate insider threats. Organizations that need more functionality can plug the software into their existing backends systems, although HP didn’t specify which third party offerings are supported.

Access Catalog will be available starting in March with the HP Anywhere application lifecycle platform or as a standalone service. That’s potentially worrisome for cloud partners that host the company’s Enterprise Mobility Platform, an application lifecycle management toolkit with a similar app store that launched in early 2012.

Image source HP