Building mobile applications is always a complex endeavor. Many pieces typically have to be pulled together and then tested on multiple platforms. To help simplify that process, at least in the context of Android applications, Genymobile has created Genymotion Cloud, a service that provides access to Android emulation software that makes it simpler to build applications that have to run on top of multiple distributions of Android.
The Android platform itself is fairly fractured. Genymobile co-CEO Arnaud Dupuis says Genymotion Cloud, available now as a private beta, is designed to not only make it easier to build applications across multiple Android platforms, but also enable developers to more easily collaborate with one another and then support those applications once they are deployed.
By deploying a full stack underneath Android, Dupuis says the only thing a developer needs in order to build and manage Android applications is access to a Web browser. Genymotion Cloud is also compatible with a variety of standard integrated development environments, including Android Studio and Eclipse.
For all the hype surrounding mobile computing, most enterprise IT organizations have been slow to roll out custom mobile applications. The reason ranges from lack of internal expertise to the quality of the tools they can access.
Of course, while Android may not be the dominant mobile computing platform in the market today, it’s big enough to be a force to be reckoned with. In addition, IT organizations that don’t want to pay licensing fees to Apple to build a mobile application for a single use case tend to favor Android. But without access to a cloud development platform, many of those same organizations might never attempt to build those applications in the first place.