VDC Research, a leading authority on the connected world and the business opportunities it creates for technology vendors and their customers, issued its new mobility report this week, "The Global Market for Mobile Development Platforms" and stressed just how important back-end integration capabilities AND front-end development tools are in a mobile development platform. To effectively mobilize your workforce, mobile apps need to interface with back-end data storage. Database integration is a requirement for enterprise-quality apps. Mobile development tools that lack the means to easily add data access to corporate databases will make it difficult to meet the needs of enterprise. The report, written by VDC Research analyst Eric Klein, predicts a 17.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for mobile application platforms from 2014 to 2018. The high growth reflects the considerable investments companies are expected to make as they recognize the productivity gains and revenue opportunities that mobile applications can bring to all lines of the business, in B2B, B2E and B2C scenarios. In addition to forecasting market growth in the report, VDC Research also offers guidance for organizations ready to invest in new technologies to make mobile applications a reality for their organization. Excerpt:
| “ | While solutions that simplify the mobile application development process continue to emerge, the variety of approaches continues to evolve, making identifying the most appropriate solution difficult for prospective customers. While powerful development tools that cater to front-end developers continue to emerge, many lack the backend integration capabilities that enterprise deployment environments require. Vendors that can deliver a holistic solution that can bridge this divide will be well positioned for success in this market." |
The Need for Data Access
This is a theme we continue to see in analyst research in recent weeks. For example, Gartner's recent report on Alternative Mobile Application Development Platforms also recognized database integration as the primary factor in rapidly building mobile apps. Firms continue to advise clients to make sure their approaches are considering front-end and back-end development, as well as enterprise-grade security. These analysts are placing great value on the data access part of application development, as well as on the importance of the user experience. To address the mobile app gap, having a single development and deployment environment that can handle back-end integration and front-end user experience can be incredibly cost-effective and highly productive. This is good news to us, as Alpha Anywhere remains one of the few platforms that is equally strong on the front-end and back-end database access and management, and we remain the only platform with offline capability built-in. For additional insights from VDC Research, read this article.
Comment