Alpha Software Blog



Build once run anywhere solution needs to include PC's and Laptops

Mobile, mobile, mobile... It's the rage and you cannot avoid reading about it  on a daily basis and listening to prognostications about how it is going to change the world of business computing. Well, we agree and that's why the next major version of Alpha is going to be very mobile oriented. In fact, here is a link to a recorded preview of some of what is coming from Alpha  However, there is a really important twist to the story - Desktops and Laptop machines are not going away. Mobile is indeed "hot," but many (if not most) business applications  will still require both mobile as well as desktop/laptop web capabilities as well.  Indeed that is what we are hearing from Alpha developers as well. With this in mind, it was with great interest that we came across this data  shown below from Mary Meeker's December 2102  Kleiner Perkins report which shows very clearly that the desktop/laptop is not going away and in fact will hold steady beyond 2015 at about 1.5 billion machines world-wide.   Capture7 So what are the implications of all this? "Build Once Run Anywhere" needs to include PC's and Laptops. Well for development tools to truly be productive and provide developers with a competitive advantage, the tool needs to be able to build not only mobile applications that run on multiple brands of devices (along with multiple form factors,) but the tool also needs to be able to build web applications that run on desktops and laptops!
Prev Post Image
Built using Alpha Five: Start Software's-Tracker system for Sportsjam
Next Post Image
Marketing a technical product to sophisticated prospects

About Author

Richard Rabins
Richard Rabins

Co-founder of Alpha Software, Richard Rabins focuses on strategy, sales, and marketing. Richard also served as CEO of SoftQuad International from 1997 to 2001, when it owned Alpha. In addition to his 30 years with the company, Richard played a key role as co-founder, and served as president and chairman of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council), the largest technology trade organization in Massachusetts. Prior to founding Alpha, Richard was a project leader and consultant with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), and a management consultant with Management Decision Systems, Inc. Richard holds a master's degree in system dynamics from the Sloan School at MIT, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and master's degree in control engineering from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served on the boards of Silent Systems, Legacy Technology and O3B Networks, and is co-founder of Tubifi www.tubifi.com.


The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

Comment