Alpha Software Blog



Alpha Anywhere's hybrid approach for development in sync with Gartner

It is interesting to note that our recently announced Alpha Anywhere  fits Gartner's view of the market as presented earlier this year at a summit in London.

Alpha Anywhere is an HTML5 centric platform for rapidly building and deploying extremely robust business applications 

Alpha Anywhere can also easily be wrapped to create hybrid applications (HTML5 applications that have been turned into native applications.) To understand this better, this video, filmed at the Alpha Developers Conference on May 16, 2013, gives you an overview of what PhoneGap is and how to build native iOS and Android applications with PhoneGap and Alpha Anywhere. Bob Moore on Native Mobile App Development with Alpha Anywhere and PhoneGap Two additional  related videos are shown below  

Gartner Recommends a Hybrid Approach for Business-to-Employee Mobile Apps

Egham, U.K.,, April 16, 2013 View All Press Releases Analysts to Discuss the Evolution of HTML5 and New Web Technologies at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit 2013, May 16-17 in London   Gartner, Inc. said that hybrid apps, which offer a balance between HTML5-based web apps and native apps, will be used in more than 50 percent of mobile apps by 2016. While native application development offers the ultimate user experience and performance for mobile applications, the trade-off is often a fragmented set of development tools and multiple versions of an application to serve the same user need – because different versions must be made for each type of device or operating system. However, the promise of HTML5 with offline capabilities and animation-rich tools fell short of expectations, causing developers to consider hybrid architectures to better leverage mobile device capabilities. “The BYOD trend and the increased pressure on organizations to deploy mobile applications to accommodate mobile work styles of employees will lead businesses to manage a portfolio of mobile application architectures, and hybrid architectures will be especially well-suited to business-to-employee applications,” said Van Baker, research vice president at Gartner. While mobile becomes a requirement for everything, there is no single device that will meet all needs. Gartner forecasts that by the end of 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide and by 2016, PC shipments will be less than 50 percent of combined PC and tablet shipments. “The implications for IT is that the era of PC dominance with Windows as the single platform will be replaced with a post-PC era where Windows is one of a variety of environments that IT will need to support,” said Mr. Baker. In parallel, a wide variety of devices that provide alternate methods of access will proliferate, including set-top boxes, internet TVs, appliances, and wearable personal devices. All these devices will demand support from the business, and therefore a multi-device strategy is necessary and will need to be integrated into existing applications and architectures – not added separately. “While hybrid apps will be the majority of enterprise mobile apps, web technologies like HTML5 will make up the most commonly used languages for building mobile applications by 2015,” said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow.  However, different requirements for consumer (B2C) and enterprise (B2E) scenarios will result in very different uses of native, web and hybrid approaches (see Table 1). Table 1 Consumer/Enterprise Split in 2015

Category

Native

Hybrid

Web

Consumer

40

40

20

Enterprise

10

60

30

Source: Gartner (November 2012) “We recommend organizations are open to augmentations to the Web (such as hybrid Application Development) to deploy on mobile today, with the goal that more should be done without those augmentations after 2015,” said Mr. Smith. “Organizations also need to continue to develop web technology skills, find the right uses for promising new technologies and approaches like HTML5, and deal with the uncertainty and speed of the consumer-driven mobile landscape. All the while it’s important to maintain IT governance while increasing productivity and usability.” Additional information is available in the report "Predicts 2013: Portal and Web Technologies." The report is available on Gartner's web site at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2257216. Gartner analysts will further discuss how HTML 5 and other new web technologies are evolving at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit 2013, May 16-17, in London. For more information please visitwww.gartner.com/eu/aadi. Members of the press can register by contacting laurence.goasduff@gartner.com. Additional information from the event will be shared on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc using #GartnerAADI. About Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit 2013 In 2013, it will be critical to manage the disruptive forces in how applications are designed, managed and consumed, caused by the Nexus of Forces, the convergence of cloud, mobile, big data and social. The analysts will discuss how the Nexus of Forces is radically changing the development of applications, but they will also help organizations how best to create, validate or revitalize their application strategy, and review the real cost and business value of cloud, service-oriented architecture and agile methodologies Contacts About Gartner Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner in over 13,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,500 associates, including 1,400 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.  
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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.

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