Why the Open Source Stars Must Align To make it simpler for organizations to embrace an open source framework for rapid application development (RAD), IBM has thrown its weight behind the Ionic open source RAD platform. Mike Gilfix, vice president of the IBM MobileFirst platform, says organizations are embracing RAD tools to not only reduce […]
Why the Open Source Stars Must Align
To make it simpler for organizations to embrace an open source framework for rapid application development (RAD), IBM has thrown its weight behind the Ionic open source RAD platform.
Mike Gilfix, vice president of the IBM MobileFirst platform, says organizations are embracing RAD tools to not only reduce the time it takes to create applications but to also allow business users to participate directly in the development.
Gilfix says a million developers are already working within the Ionic open source community. With most IT organizations now looking at application development backlogs of 20 or more applications, Gilfix says Ionic Creator gives organizations a way to reduce that backlog using a set of tools that are inherently cross platform.
In the case of IBM, Gilfix says developers can then run those applications against instances of the IBM MobileFirst platform on premise, hosted in the cloud or invoked as a multi-tenant service running in the IBM Bluemix platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment.
In the last two years, we’ve witnessed the emergence of new classes of “citizen developers” that are making use of everything from RAD to Node.js to build applications without a professional developer. Gilfix says IBM is now clearly endorsing that idea.
The one caveat IBM has is that the output from a truly open RAD tool should by definition be able to run anywhere. Of course, there are a lot of options when it comes to RAD tools. But the one thing that can be said for an open source approach to RAD is that IT organizations will never have to worry about where a piece of code may need to run in the future.
Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.
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