Mobile enterprise application platform- A critical component of Omnichannel platform- Part 1

In past few years quite often my clients face this question 

1. Should I move to omni channel platform or I am good with existing application?
2. Do I need “Mobile enterprise application platform”?
3. Should I go with Open source or paid version and what benefit I get from my paid version?
4. What are my options in Opens source for iOS( Android most of us know its free)
5. Last but least IBM Worklight vs Kony vs SAP vs PhoneGap

There is no doubt that mobile has been changing the life of people by changing the way people do their work. But it is also true that without mobile apps mobile(exception to retailers with Adaptive design) itself has no more use, it will be just like car without petrol. This is the age of apps and days are not away when it will be tough for retailers to survive without mobile apps. Demand of mobile applications is increasing day by day as number of mobile users are increasing. As per the latest report of 2015 the famous and bold predication made that by 2014, mobile internet users will overtake desktop internet (smartinsight.com) is now true. 

On top of that another complication develops is the customer behavior pattern is really forcing retailers to move to omnichannel platform. A very simple example will be variation in device preferences throughout the day , depicted in Fig.2 

Fig1: Mobile vs Desktop

Fig.2: Day Pattern for different channel

Recently, I was going through one of the Gartner survey where they tested the available mobile platforms on the various protocols to understand which are best. They came with top 6 leading mobile apps development platform. Below is some high level information for all 6 but in my next post I will give more dept analysis on open source vs paid version. Also please find some interesting trend on there popularity after they hit the market–

1)   SAP- Mobile platform

Compared with other major independent software vendors (ISVs), SAP bet early on mobility. Its latest mobile offering,Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP), has matured rapidly since its initial release in 2010, providing a flexible application development environment with plug-ins for Eclipse and Visual Studio, along with a proprietary studio. While it has a steeper learning curve than many other solutions, it is an excellent choice for broad mobile initiatives, especially in conjunction with SAP's Afaria mobile device management (MDM) solution. SAP closed its acquisition of Syclo, another leading vendor of mobile application development platforms, in June of this year. 

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2)   IBM Worklight

IBM® Worklight helps you extend your business to mobile devices. It is designed to provide an open, comprehensive platform to build, run and manage HTML5,CSS3,Dojo Mobile cross, hybrid and native mobile apps. IBM Worklight can help you reduce both app development and maintenance costs, improve time-to-market and enhance mobile app governance and security. 

Even the recent surveys shows that IBM Worklight is gradually picking the pace in the market and it is becoming favorite of developers as well as the enterprises. In the graph given below one can see the search trend of IBM Worklight. It is clearly visible that there will be a very tough competition for first position in near future.

3)   Adobe (Phone Gap)

Adobe Systems acquired Nitobi Software, maker of the PhoneGap framework, in the fourth quarter of 2011. PhoneGap is used to wrap HTML5, apps in native containers, making it a strong choice for media-rich enterprises with requirement for mobile clients, or organizations that want to wrap mobile Web applications developed with other platforms like Sencha, Dojo Mobile, jQuery Mobile and others. It's available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS platforms. More details are covered below

Search trends of Phone Gap also looks very promising. They are also being very constant since last couple of years. It will be difficult to say whether this technology will ever become number one preference of the enterprises or not?

4)   jQuery Mobile (Open source)

Part of the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy's jQuery open source project, jQuery Mobile is a good fit for organizations that need an open source mobile Web framework that will allow them to leverage existing jQuery skills. The framework provides the ability to use HTML, JavaScript and CSS to build interactive mobile Web pages for an array of smartphones, and it can be used with PhoneGap to build hybrid mobile applications.


The search trend of jQuery mobile are as follow-

 

5)   Kony

When it first debuted in 2007, Kony focused on consumer-facing applications, but has since then added B2E capabilities, through organic growth. Kony's platform is a good fit for projects that require the use of native features on an array of mobile devices. The environment can be used to build apps once for tablets, smartphones, feature phones, mobile browsers and even desktop browsers, and then deploy to all of them.

It looks like Kony was a wave of the time which has faded as soon as it came in the news. These days developers are preferring other platforms over Kony. Some statement can be supported by the screen shot given below 

6. Antenna

Antenna Mobility Platform (AMP) is a good fit for organizations that need to build multiple applications for various types of mobile devices and deploy them as a cloud service. AMP is composed of a development studio together with a scalable cloud runtime service and set of clients that run on a wide array of mobile devices. Its AMPchroma mobile software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, which was debuted in February 2012, adds more capabilities, like integration with MDM based on Antenna's acquisition of Volantis Systems.

Again the search trend of Antenna has been very constant and this technology is surviving from the last couple of years. The search trend graph of Antenna shows the following results-

Looking at each and every platform, it can be just said that each one of them has 

something very unique to offer to the app developers as well as mobile app development service providers. I would suggest my readers to discuss the desired platform and its advantages with the developer of your project before making the final call.

In my next blog post I will share information on Mobile platform Open source vs Paid version . Till then, enjoy my blogs and don’t forget to leave a comment!

Reference:

1. Gartner
2. IBM
3. CNET
4. Linked in Independent articles
5. Google analysts
6. Independent articles published by experts
7. Wikipedia
8. Omnie Solutions (http://omniesolutions.blogspot.com/)
9. Smart Insight smartinsight.com