By now most IT organizations have come to appreciate just how difficult mobile applications can be to manage. In addition to what occurs on the platform the mobile application is running on, its performance is dependent on everything from the quality of the application programming interfaces (APIs) used to access backend services to the amount of bandwidth that is available on the network on any given time.
To give IT organizations a better handle on application performance in general and mobile applications in particular, Mendix, a provider of a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment for creating applications using visual programming tools, announced today that is has partnered with SIG, a consulting firm that specializes in application development, to create a cloud service through which IT organizations can monitor the quality of their applications on an ongoing basis.
Hans de Visser, vice president of product and solution marketing for Mendix, says the Mendix Application Quality Monitor service, running on a cloud platform managed by Mendix, provides static analysis of Mendix application models covering issues such as the transparency and modularity of the applications. It also rates the application for parameters such as volume, duplication, unit complexity and dependencies. A dashboard is used to rate the application on a scale of one to five in order to better highlight areas worthy of further investigation, says de Visser.
As a provider of rapid application development (RAD) tools that are used to create these applications, Mendix clearly has a vested interest in the quality of the applications being developed using its tools. Running these tests, adds de Visser, is not only critical at the time the application is initially deployed, but also over an extended period of time. Mobile applications in particular, says de Visser, are subject to all kinds of variables that can change every time a mobile application is updated.
IT organizations are clearly building more applications than ever. While the rate at which those applications are being developed is of critical importance, many IT organizations would be well advised to give much thought to how they are going to live with all those applications once they are all up and running.