Latest Trends, Tactics and Tools in Cross-Platform Mobile App Development

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Withso many mobile devices multiplying within the enterprise,organizations that need to make applications to boost their workers'efficiency can discover the assignment challenging. Curatingcross-platform portable advancement for any number of frameworks isno treat for a company's cadre of developers.

 Curatingcross-platform portable advancement for any number of frameworks isno treat for a company's cadre of developers

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That'swhy the market is developing development tools that can make appsable of running over mobile platforms. Request for those tools isanticipated to jump within the coming years. Forrester estimates thatmore than 60 percent of enterprises are as of now locked in incross-platform development, and IDC estimates that the market forcross-platform development tools will increase at a compound annualgrowth rate of more than 38 percent, reaching $4.8 billion by 2017.Meanwhile, Gartner expects more than 20 million enterprise apps to bedeveloped by 2018.

DeviceProliferation

Convenienceisn't the only reason companies are cozying up to cross-platformmobile development tools. "Given the exponential increase withinthe cost of per platform development and the need for fast time tomarket, cross-platform development is the way to go for theenterprise," famous Gautam Agrawal, senior director of productmanagement at Sencha, maker of a web application development platform

EnterpriseCoders Need Only Apply

Asengaging as cross-platform development tools are to enterprisedevelopers, they're less so to code warriors working on consumerapps. That's because cross-platform tools do not permit a developerto take advantage of the native nuances found in modern mobileoperating systems. "Consumer developers want to take advantageof each garish capability on a platform," said Morgan Reed,executive director of ACT|The App Association, which represents 5,000app and information technology companies around the world.





PerformanceMatters

Inaddition, cross-platform apps confront execution challenges. "There'sa consistent battle to induce the execution as near as possible tonative," Reed observed.

ParashuramNarasimhan, a senior program manager for Microsoft Open Technologiesadditionally involved in Apache Cordova—an open source softwareproject used as the basis for a number of cross-platform developmentproducts—acknowledges the limitations of the cross-platformapproach. "Cross-platform development is good for certain sortsof apps," he said. "Writing games is pretty hard, but ifyou're writing applications for displaying content or calendar apps,mail apps or to-do records, they're good for that."

Inaddition, cross-platform apps share unsettling problems with theirnative cousins. "One thing that developers who are using this'write-once run-everywhere approach' have to be be mindful of is thatit doesn't essentially apply to security," cautioned KevinWatkins, chief architect and founder of Appthority, a mobileapplication risk management company. "We've foundvulnerabilities within the underlying platforms that translate theircode, which means insecure programming practices will carry over toall the stages as well."

Companiesgetting into cross-platform mobile app development range from ancienthands to newcomers. Here are 10 standouts within the field, in noparticular order.

1.Adobe

Adobe'scross-platform development offerings include PhoneGap Build, which isbased in the cloud, and PhoneGap, an open source arrangement.PhoneGap is based on Apache Cordova.

Cordovais an open source set of device APIs that allow developedapplications to access specific, native device functions across avariety of device platforms. Using Cordova's APIs, as well ascross-platform plug-ins, developers can build and code applicationsusing CSS3, HTML5, and Java Web languages. Those languages are hostedlocally within the app and are presented in different deviceplatforms.

Theconclusion result is that instead of using multiple native softwaredevelopment kits (SDKs), such as Android SDK, Windows SDK, and Xcodefor iOS, developers can use a single codebase to form an app thatfunctions over different platforms.

"Thethought behind Cordova is lovely simple," Microsoft's Narasimhansaid. "You write an app once and you will be able to run it onall your devices, like Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and a whole suite ofdevices."

Notas it were does that simplify the rollout of enterprise mobile apps,but it's a great resource saver, too. "Enterprises have investeda lot of effort in development skills, and those skills can bequickly transferred to Cordova," Narasimhan explained.

2. Xamarin

Xamarinis another cross-platform development tool that lets developers buildnative iOS, Android, and Windows apps, using a single shared C#codebase. Apps created with the platform can be tested on hundreds ofdevices through the company's cloud service. Xamarin offers itspossess interface development tool and online classes through itsXamarin University program.

Afew features of Xamarin's offerings include native API access, formsinterfaces for sharing code, ability to add components directly froman interface, and integration with backends, such as Microsoft Azure,Parse, and SAP.





3.Appcelerator

Appceleratorfocuses on speeding the time-to-market for cross-platform apps. Itsoffering uses a single JavaScript codebase for its apps and supportsreal-time mobile analytics. The Appcelerator environment is open andextensible, and can deliver apps for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry, aswell as HTML5 and hybrid apps. It includes an open-source SDK withsupport for more than 5,000 devices and OS APIs, the Eclipse-basedIDE Studio, and the MVC framework Alloy.

4.iFactr

iFactris additionally outlined for speedy delivery of apps. The solutioncan be learned with minimal spending of sweat equity. Developers canstart hammering out apps after just two or three days of training,according to iFactr. Prototypes can too be quickly made for fastfeedback from employees. iFactr uses Xamarin to create iOS andAndroid apps, and the solution too supports Adobe PhoneGap.

5.Kony

Kony'sproducts sprawl across the entire software development life cycle.The platform's services can be delivered through an on-premisesolution, in a hosted private cloud, or in the open cloud. Cloudservices are scalable and can be adjusted on demand. Testing toolsand analytics are implanted within the platform.

Offeringsinclude Kony Visualizer, which integrates design capabilities intothe development environment; Kony Studio, which has visualdevelopment tools and allows developers to add cross-platformJavaScript code and to connect to backend APIs; and Kony Managementfor deploying and administering mobile device apps.

Konycan be a great fit for organizations managing with large populationsof diverse devices and needing apps that integrate with SAP andOracle backends.

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