The 5 Mobile Apps You Really Need for SMB Success
Moving to extend the reach of is rapid application development (RAD) environment into the realm of mobile computing, Mendix has released an upgrade to its platform that makes it possible to build mobile applications that can run online and off using an open application programming interface (API).
Mendix CTO Johan den Haan says that while its RAD tools have been widely adopted to build Web applications, with the release of Mendix 6, both citizen and professional developers can now easily construct mobile applications.
Demand for mobile applications is far exceeding the ability of most internal IT organizations to keep pace in terms of developing applications. Mendix 6 provides a platform running on premise or in the cloud that IT organizations can use to visually construct applications in a way that doesn’t necessarily require professional developers to build them.
The open API, adds den Haan, is significant because it means the models that organizations build inside Mendix can be exported to other environments, which he says means that organizations are not locked into the Mendix RAD environment. At the same time, with this release, Mendix is fulfilling its promise to make its RAD development environment deployable on the open source Cloud Foundry platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments to give IT organizations more control over how and when Mendix 6 is deployed.
Finally, Mendix has also announced that its RAD tools are now available via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplace.
At a time when organizations of all sizes are struggling to meet demand for a wide range of applications, RAD frameworks have entered something of a Renaissance period. Organizations are looking for ways to cut their application development backlog by making it simpler for tech-savvy individuals inside the various lines of business they need to support to build their own applications within the context of a set of guardrails that, fortunately, prevent those applications from spinning too far beyond the control of the internal IT organization.
