Evans Data Finds Three-Fourths of Enterprises Focus on Mobile Apps 
Mobile app development is taking off in all directions, according to Evans Data Corp.’s Mobile Development Survey released this month. The survey found nearly three-fourths of enterprise devs are working on mobile apps for customers, enterprise users and to extend mobile access to legacy apps. IDN speaks with Evans Data CEO Janel Garvin.
Mobile app development is taking off in all directions, according to Evans Data Corp.’s Mobile Development Survey released this month. The survey found nearly three-fourths of enterprise devs are working on mobile apps for customers, enterprise users and to extend mobile access to legacy apps. IDN speaks with Evans Data CEO Janel Garvin.
Mobile app development is taking off in all directions, according to Evans Data Corp.’s Mobile Development Survey released this month.
The survey found nearly three-fourths of enterprise devs are working on mobile apps for customers, enterprise users and to extend mobile access to legacy apps. IDN speaks with Evans Data CEO Janel Garvin to learn more about the explosion in mobility apps and integration.
Learn More about Evans Data Mobile Development Survey here.
Extending Legacy Apps to Mobile – “Extending enterprise applications to mobile devices is increasingly becoming a priority for organizations optimizing their workforce,” the study found.
Notably, 74% of respondents said they would be working on projects to extend existing applications to mobile users, despite challenges that remain to deliver a robust secure solution across multiple device platforms.
"Extending enterprise applications to mobile devices is becoming a priority."
Janel Garvin
CEO
Evans Data Corp.
IDN asked Garvin to share more about these enterprise mobile projects. “Of the developers who are currently extending enterprise apps for mobile development, about half are using APIs from platform vendors, and slightly less than half are using APIs from carriers,” Garvin told IDN.
“Additionally almost 60% who are currently extending enterprise apps for mobile are creating a hybrid app, which is part web app and part native app and which thus tries to marry the strengths of each technique,” she added.
Leveraging Current Dev Skills for Mobile – Evans’ survey also found “the importance of web apps vs. native apps to mobile developers, which correlates with the need to support a wide range of devices.” Given that finding, IDN asked Garvin what her survey showed about how enterprise architects and developers might be leveraging their SOA, integration and web app skills for mobility projects.
“Developers currently extending enterprise apps to mobile reported having a higher experience level with APIs and compiler switches settings, than with performance tuning or setting up OSes environments, such as Linux,” she said. “Considering this, our feeling is that [today’s mobile] developers have more experience in integrating technologies.”
New Mobile Ecosystem for Devs – “Developers are benefiting from new paradigms that are unique to the mobile ecosystems,” the survey noted. “For the first time, developers' work is largely iterative, and they are free to refine an idea until it can be easily implemented, and then add more advanced features over time with updates.”
IDN asked Garvin if enterprise devs are happy with the current state of tools, standards and templates for mobile projects. She shared an important insight – APIs, more than tools, are the key to efficient mobile development.
“Developers extending enterprise apps want tools that help and instruct them on mobile development, but APIs are key,” Garvin told IDN. “Documentation, templates, sample code and ease of install/set up are more important features of an SDK than included tools or out-of-the-box experience. But, API support in an SDK is by far more important than anything else,” she added.
While the survey didn’t specifically ask about developer satisfaction, “the overall feeling we get from this survey and others is that developers think current tooling is adequate but has much room for improvement,” Garvin added.
Agile Development Tuned for Mobile Apps – Agile development is taking on new importance in mobile, the survey found, as “developers are, in effect, in a race to deliver the best experience for a given function.” In specific, Evans found that thanks to iterative development, more than 90% of mobile devs create an app in six months or less (and 74% even deliver a mobile app in 12 weeks or less.)
“Developers’ work is largely iterative, and they are free to refine an idea until it can be easily implemented, and then add more advanced features over time with updates,” the survey found. “More importantly, consumers have…even reflected an affinity for the ongoing incremental improvement [because it avoids] longer gaps and bulkier updates.”
HTML5 or Flash is used by about half of the enterprise developers currently extending an enterprise application for mobile users, she added.
Evans Data’s Mobile Development Survey conducted in-depth interviews with more than 400 devs active in mobile projects, and addresses trends in technology and platform adoption, monetizing apps and app stores, security, tools, and APIs and more.
