AppDirect and Samsung Partner to Support KNOX Marketplace

San Francisco, Calif., February 25, 2014 – AppDirect, the leading cloud service marketplace and management company, announced today that it is partnering with Samsung to launch the Samsung KNOX™ Marketplace. The new enterprise mobility marketplace will serve as a comprehensive online portal offering KNOX solutions and other leading business apps, as well as tools for IT managers to provision and administer these products on employee mobile devices. The announcement coincides with Samsung’s unveiling of the new marketplace at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain. With the AppDirect-powered KNOX Marketplace, Samsung will deliver its industry-leading enterprise mobility solutions to a wide array of businesses in a quick and convenient way.

“At AppDirect, we strive to help put powerful technology into the hands of businesses so they can be more competitive. We are tremendously excited to work with a global technology leader like Samsung to do just that,” said Daniel Saks, co-CEO of AppDirect. “With the Samsung KNOX Marketplace, businesses now have a single, easy-to-use source for enterprise mobility solutions that not only keep data secure, but also give employees the freedom and flexibility they need to get the job done.”

Released in 2013, Samsung KNOX is an end-to-end secure Android solution ideal for IT departments looking to adopt and manage Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies. Samsung KNOX-enabled devices separate business apps—such as email, file sharing, and CRM—from personal apps and store them in a dedicated container, allowing for both business and personal use of the same mobile device.

Powered by AppDirect, the KNOX Marketplace provides advanced features that allow IT managers to browse and purchase KNOX solutions and other business apps—as well as product bundles—and make one payment for all of their solutions. Moreover, the Marketplace gives IT managers a user-friendly dashboard to provision and manage apps across every mobile device in their organization. In short, the Marketplace makes it easy and cost effective for businesses, especially SMBs (small and medium-sized business), to implement secure mobility solutions.

“The incredible customer demand for our powerful, yet easy to use Samsung KNOX solutions was the driving force behind our mission to develop a new, innovative way to deliver our industry-leading mobile security software to current and potential SMB users,” said Injong Rhee, Senior Vice President of KNOX Business, IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “As the recognized leader in cloud-based marketplace solutions, we knew AppDirect would be the right partner to provide the the flexibility and expertise needed to ensure that the Samsung KNOX Marketplace would launch as the ultimate destination for customers looking to access and manage new software on a fast, efficient and extremely user-friendly platform.”

The launch of the Samsung KNOX Marketplace is particularly well-timed given the rapid growth of BYOD and the consumerization of IT. According to Ovum, nearly 70 percent of employees who own a smartphone or tablet use it to access corporate data, while Gartner estimates that nearly 90 percent of companies are looking to implement a BYOD strategy. Driven by this overwhelming demand, ABI Research predicts the global enterprise mobility market will grow to $340 billion by 2017.

AppDirect’s partnership with Samsung adds a new vertical, mobile, to the range industries the company serves, a rapidly growing list that includes telecommunications, retail, PaaS, and IaaS. “Mobile plays a huge role in the larger cloud economy, driving billions in application sales around the world,” added Saks. “We’re excited to be at the forefront of powering app delivery in the mobile industry and beyond.”

About AppDirect
AppDirect is the leading cloud service marketplace and management company at the forefront of powering the global cloud economy. Its innovative platform powers the marketplaces of trusted companies around the globe—including Samsung, Staples, Deutsche Telekom, TeliaSonera, Rackspace, Swisscom, Cloud Foundry, and more—and helps connect more than 12 million users in 80-plus countries to leading solutions such as Microsoft Office 365, Box, and Google Apps. Founded in 2009, AppDirect is based in San Francisco and has presence in London, Munich, and Montreal.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in technology, opening new possibilities for people everywhere. Through relentless innovation and discovery, we are transforming the worlds of TVs, smartphones, tablets, PCs, cameras, home appliances, printers, LTE systems, medical devices, semiconductors and LED solutions. We employ 286,000 people across 80 countries with annual sales of US$216.7 billion. To discover more, please visit www.samsung.com.