These are confusing times, not just because BYOD is wreaking havoc on IT, but because even the solutions that are supposed to bring about order are, apparently, no longer as relevant. Just consider what my colleague, Larry Seltzer writes over on BYTE: "MDM is dead," he says; welcome to enterprise mobility management (EMM).

And the approaches to EMM are all over the map. It's not about the device, some companies say, it's about the applications. Or it's not about the applications, it's about the data. Or it's not about any of that, it's about policy, it's about choice, it's about letting people do whatever they want, or, not letting them do anything they want. Whatever it actually is, it's definitely no longer about simplicity.

Appthority is one of the newest, hottest darlings in enterprise mobility. Indeed, you name the subcategory, they claim to work with them. It's not just about BYOD, Appthority's co-founder and CEO Anthony Bettini said on stage during our startup session at the InformationWeek 500 conference a few weeks ago, it's about BYOS (bring your own sword; or, if you like, bring your own software). After all, the problem is all of those apps coming onto the device, and onto the network, and into your corporate data environments.

Appthority screens each app, extracting its attributes--whether it's actually malware, or whether it's exhibiting particularly risky behavior (taking contact info, tracking location)--and lets administrators define fine-grained policies, which can then be enforced using MDM technology, for example. Appthority works not just with MDM technology, but also with enterprise app store technologies (like Apperian) and more.

You can watch two different versions of Appthority's elevator pitch below--the first video embedded is from our InformationWeek 500 conference. The second is a shorter pitch that the company's other co-founder and president Domingo Guerra presented on our latest episode of Valley View.

Make sure to tune into our October Valley View, on October 24 at 11 a.m. Pacific Time, where we'll have more startups--including Taptera (enterprise mobile applications), Alteryx (big data), and Hearsay (social enterprise). We'll also feature conversations with Cisco CEO John Chambers and Oracle president Mark Hurd, and feature a special report from CRN, exploring the tech companies that milked U.S. stimulus dollars. You can also register for the October Valley View show and have a chance to win some excellent gear.

Download the debut issue of InformationWeek's Must Reads, a compendium of our best recent coverage on enterprise mobility in our new easy-to-read and -navigate Web format. Included in this issue of Must Reads: 6 keys to a flexible mobile device management strategy; why you need an enterprise app store; and Google points to the future of mobile. (Free registration required.)

Fritz Nelson is the editorial director for InformationWeek and the Executive Producer of TechWebTV.

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