Design and development of an enterprise digital distribution platform for mobile applications

Nowadays most companies use mobile applications to support their work processes, manage the logistic flow and increase production efficiency. In this context, the way those applications are distributed to the final users, such as clients and partners, becomes a crucial topic. Using the public platforms provided by Apple and Google, i.e. Apple App Store and Google Play Store, is the easiest solution, but it exposes to security issues as private applications could be downloaded by anyone. The aim of the thesis is the development of an enterprise distribution platform for mobile applications, designed for a leading food company that needs to share its own applications with customers and partners in a private and secure way. The project was carried out in collaboration with Reply S.p.A., as part of a real industrial oriented project. The proposed solution overcomes the security issue by distributing the applications over-the-air via public links that are valid only for a limited amount of time. Two main actors play a role in the system: the authenticated users and the final users. The authenticated users are able to upload to the platform the installation files and to generate temporary links for the download. The final user is anyone who receives from an authenticated user a public link to download a specific application for the predetermined time window. The designed architecture allows the authorized users to upload and store different versions of the same application. Due to the cross-platform nature of the majority of the applications stored on the platform, the possibility to organize them by operating system (iOS or Android) has been included in the project. In order to identify possible malicious behaviors, statistics and analytical considerations were carried out to include security features by monitoring the downloads during the link validity time. In particular, the amount of downloads for a specific link is counted and the geographical position of the final users is evaluated, to prevent undue spread of the applications. Additionally, the downloaded data are grouped and analyzed to provide insight and average adoption of the applications. The developed platform, along with its analytic features, makes the distribution of the applications to partners and clients fast and secure.