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Gartner: The Rising Popularity of Rapid Mobile App Development

Elizabeth O'Dowd at Solutions Review recently wrote about the rising popularity of mobile app development technology that will allow organizations to speed their ability to produce enterprise-grade mobile apps: "RMAD Predictions Gartner with Alpha Software." In her article, O'Dowd reviews the results from Alpha's recent survey of developers, "Enterprise Developers Rank Critical Requirements for Success in the Coming App Explosion" and asks Alpha Software CTO Dan Bricklin for his perspective on how enterprises are reacting to these trends. Bricklin explains:

Alpha Software CT0 Dan Bricklin

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Alpha Software CT0 Dan Bricklin



"The same things keep coming up [in these surveys]: What’s important? There are many polls that end up with the same answer; there’s a desire to build, there’s an understanding that usability is important. Looking at the top things, the ones that are overwhelming in how important they are, reminds you what to look for. People need to be able to make it easier to use; it needs to be appropriate, but it has to tie into corporate data. I think that one thing that’s important to look at is, how is the list of what’s needed different than the consumer applications when people are talking about consumer development? In the business world the answers on how to build apps are different than in the consumer world; that’s important to understand and that’s why it’s important to look at surveys like this.”

O'Dowd next interviews Jason Wong, principal research analyst at Gartner, to discuss the rise of Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD) as a method for companies to increase the speed and scope of their mobile app development. Wong details the RMAD trend from Gartner's perspective:

 



“We’re definitely seeing a sprawling demand for RMAD tools by businesses...RMAD tools are becoming very popular because these tools allow enterprises to use and train their existing resources, business analysts, and folks that are maybe designers, that use Photoshop or InDesign or have worked on Microsoft Access building macros and things like that. They don’t know coding, but they can put together a user interface, they can use modeling to create work flows and model some of the business logic, so they’re able to ramp up these resources faster to deliver applications. We’re seeing that the demand for mobile apps is five times that of Its ability to deliver on it. These RMAD tools allow IT to decentralize some of that work so IT’s not a bottleneck and these “citizen developers” and this self-service development can happen within the lines of business as well as IT users that may not be programmers.”

According to Wong, Gartner predicts that organizations will need approximately 1,000 mobile apps. These enterprise mobile apps will be much smaller that larger desktop apps because they will allow a user to quickly get into an app, do a specific task quickly and get out of the app. These apps will be built to each users's "profile and your persona." Alpha Software agrees with this assessment and has developed it's mobile optimized forms capability as a clear example of apps targeted for a specific user and use.

O'Dowd concludes the article by saying that RMAD technology will "kickstart and enhance the inevitable and rapid growth of enterprise mobile apps." We couldn't agree more!

Read the full article on the Solutions Review website.

Read about a related Solutions Review article that Alpha Software CEO Richard Rabins wrote on using RMAD to develop mobile apps quickly meet business needs.
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About Author

Amy Groden-Morrison
Amy Groden-Morrison

Amy Groden-Morrison has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security and Ziff-Davis. Most recently she was responsible for developing marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth rate for analytics products at a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration Software Company. Her past accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, launching an events company on the NYSE, rebranding a NASDAQ-listed company amid a crisis, and positioning and marketing a Boston-area startup for successful acquisition. Amy currently serves as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Launch Smart Clinics, and on the organizing team for Boston TechJam. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.


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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