Mobility is a must-do for today’s enterprise. But the path to mobile success isn’t always clear. What apps do we need? What devices, OSes, and experiences should we support? How will our customers and/or employees use our apps? And what’s the best way to get them built?
Organizations face a variety of answers and options to all of these questions. But increasingly, certain approaches outperform the rest. Cloud-based mobile app development is one such case. By combining the flexibility, control, and cost-effectiveness of the cloud with the latest in app design and development, cloud-based mobility solutions offer enterprises a platform on which to base an efficient, effective, scalable and ultimately successful long-term mobile strategy. This slideshow provides seven great reasons explaining why mobile enterprise app development should happen in the cloud, as identified by Abhay Parasnis, president and COO at Kony, Inc.
Why does cloud-based app development make sense for today’s enterprise? Click through for seven compelling reasons, provided by Abhay Parasnis, president and COO at Kony, Inc.
Developing apps in the cloud significantly reduces costs across the board. Local servers no longer need to hold the business logic, backend data, APIs and apps themselves that make app development possible, so the operational, maintenance and support expenses associated with those services decrease dramatically. Sure, organizations still pay for infrastructure, but it’s no longer theirs to worry about. The cloud allows for both lower up-front investment and fewer long-term costs, which result in overall lower TCO.
When you’re ready to start developing apps, the cloud is ready and waiting. With a cloud-based development platform, the hard part is done; security, integrations, backend connections, APIs, pre-packaged functions and more are already set up. That means developers can focus on building great apps more quickly, with rapid and efficient iterations from code to testing and debugging. When an app is built faster, it’s ready for market faster, which means users get their hands on it in record time.
Developing and deploying apps in the cloud allows for unprecedented levels of control. Instead of disparate tools monitoring disconnected processes, a cloud-based platform offers integrated management across the full mobile stack. From client-side to services-side, backend failsafes to frontend usage, analytics to adoption, enterprises can cohesively control every step of the app experience.
The days of the untrustworthy cloud are behind us. Today’s leading enterprises know that performing key business processes like app development in the cloud offers more reliability and the ability to scale easily and effectively. With an extensive server network of failsafes, backups and duplicates, your data is safe and up to date. Need more or less capacity? The cloud lets you add and remove instances as you go, ensuring that you always have exactly what you need.
Designing, developing and deploying apps is a team effort. With cloud-based app development, each step connects to the next for seamless collaboration. No more stand-alone tools that can’t talk to each other and engender wasted work and inefficiencies. Features like real-time reviews and in-line annotations allow for easy sharing between knowledge workers and stakeholders to guarantee that everyone is on the same page.
Developers are a social bunch. While traditional SDKs restrict users to native capabilities, the cloud supports open-ended collaboration that fosters and leverages the strong development community. With accessible code, published APIs and transparent frameworks, users can get creative, finding workarounds, solving problems and discovering tips and tricks that they can share with their tribe. That means more knowledge, more fun and a more exceptional enterprise app.
Cloud-based app development gives the enterprise the flexibility necessary to adjust to changing priorities, objectives and budgets. With the cloud, you’re never locked in. You can try before you buy, pay as you go and use what you need. If things change or the service isn’t working, no problem – you’re never stuck.