Alpha Software Launches Alpha Anywhere™, First Complete Environment to Rapidly Build and Deploy Business Applications for Mobile Devices and Personal Computers

BURLINGTON, MA. June 19, 2013 – Alpha Software Corporation today announced Alpha Anywhere, the first complete environment for rapid development and deployment of robust business applications for mobile devices and personal computers, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, Ultrabooks, and touch-enabled computers.

Alpha Anywhere is a standards-based environment that dramatically reduces the cost, time and complexity of developing and deploying scalable, data-driven business applications for today's mobile + personal computing era. These applications can take advantage of hardware-specific features and support all display sizes on all platforms. 

Developers with a wide range of skills can build business applications with Alpha Anywhere. Complete applications can be rapidly assembled using Alpha Anywhere's rich set of simple, intuitive, standards-based components that allow extensive customization. Developers also can build their own objects, methods, components and event handlers in standard programming languages on the client or server side of an application. 

The efficient and timely acquisition of mobile skills is critical for developers to stay current, and Alpha Anywhere is the fastest way to gain proficiency and become productive in mobile and touch computing. With Alpha Anywhere, IT organizations, systems integrators and custom software developers can take advantage of existing development skills to build and deploy new mobile applications or mobile-enable existing applications. Developers who have used Microsoft Access, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, FoxPro, Delphi and similar environments will feel right at home with Alpha Anywhere. 

"Mobile capability is becoming a crucial requirement for business applications, and Alpha Anywhere has removed the barriers to cost-effectively create and deploy them," said Richard Rabins, Alpha Software CEO. "But, mobile doesn't exist in a vacuum. With personal computers and laptops continuing to play an important role in business, and with the growth of Ultrabooks and Chromebooks, applications must run on and be optimized for all mobile and personal computer platforms. Alpha Anywhere addresses these needs." 

Developers using Alpha Anywhere can build complete business applications utilizing HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript components. If a native, mobile application is required, Alpha Anywhere supports Cordova/PhoneGap to take full advantage of native platform features, such as the camera, media capture, native notifications, network status, local file system, and the accelerometer. Alpha is adding custom plug-ins including bar code scanning, credit card reading/processing, audio recording with compression, and SMS.

Alpha Anywhere: A Complete Development and Deployment Environment

• Client and Server -- One environment to develop all three tiers of a business application: user experience, business logic and database access;
• Mobile Devices and Personal Computer -- Applications written once will run anywhere;
• Standards Based, Open and Extensible -- utilizing HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript;
• Wide and Deep Functionality -- Enterprise reporting, charting, mapping, video, images, sound, scheduling, geography and geospatial functionality, security and more, all easily incorporated into applications;
• Powerful Connectivity -- Connects to data from all major SQL databases, stored procedures, and web services;
• Touch UX -- Supports touch-enabled user experiences on screens from 4 inches to 4 feet;
• Flexible, scalable deployment -- Applications can be self-hosted, hosted by third-party ISPs and cloud services, or the AlphaCloud, when it is released.

"Mobile makes the developer's job much harder. End users expect a myriad of task-specific applications on short notice, all tuned to a highly productive touch-and-swipe interface that is tremendously challenging for developers," said Dan Bricklin, Chief Technology Officer at Alpha Software. "At the same time, users require full power on the desktop for heavy duty data analysis, data entry, and to view reports on large screen monitors controlled by a keyboard and mouse. Alpha Anywhere empowers developers to meet these expectations." 

Alpha Anywhere combines full mobile capabilities with core technology from Alpha Five, an environment in which tens of thousands of scalable, data-driven business applications have been built. This assures developers that Alpha Anywhere has the maturity, maintainability, scalability and security needed to create and deploy feature-rich applications for mobile devices and personal computers. 

Alpha Anywhere is available immediately. Pricing is subscription based: For development, $99 per month per developer; for deployment, starting at $99 per month for a 4-core server, which can handle between 50-200 concurrent users depending upon the application. A special, upgrade program is available for existing Alpha Software customers. A 30 day free trial is also available.