Why Enterprise App Development Needs Cross Platform Code

You read a lot today from experts, pundits and others (like yours truly) who talk about how to choose a mobile app development approach - do you go native, HTML5 or go the hybrid route? From an enterprise standpoint, unless you’re the local neighborhood pizza joint, it’s really not a matter of choosing which way to go, it’s about how to have it all – and for every device and user you need to reach.

For huge mobile players like Uber, dedicate the millions of dollars it will take to effectively reach every user and every device is just part of doing business. We’re talking big time developer teams, with the big time infrastructure to deploy for mobile in a big time way.

If your revenue is in the tens of billions, by all means set it all up, but for the vast majority of companies, it’s about the reality of maximizing the available investment allocated to IT departments to create a sustainable mobile strategy.

Fortunately for companies today, there are platforms that provide the opportunity to write code once and deploy virtually anywhere. It’s the perfect solution right? And it is - if you choose a real enterprise grade platform, because the actuality is that not all platforms are the same. Remember the neighborhood pizza joint? Many platforms are tailored for mom and pops like them. Ok for the local pizza guy, not so super for enterprise-class deployment. 

For a real enterprise grade platform that is bulletproof, fits with the infrastructure you have today, is server OS and language agnostic, available on private server or public cloud, and can be the mobile and tablet front end to legacy applications or the foundation for the next generation of development - you should consider Nexaweb’s Nexacro platform.

Nexaweb has been in existence since 2000, offering tools and enterprise solutions to develop for the web and later, for mobile applications for the enterprise. Working with Nexaweb means you don’t have to worry about risking your mobile future on a beta platform from a company that has been in existence for all of 6 months. The company’s mobile and web application development platform offers a single code base and comprehensive IDE that has been battle tested, proven and relied on by a host of companies around the world.

Don’t let the easy to use common source code, WYSIWYG screen design capability, and drag-and-drop automation of common tasks fool you. The platform was created to be robust, flexible and dependable for the long term. Whatever you’re current situation, the Nexacro platform is designed to facilitate integration with your existing enterprise applications and data repositories. It can be the mobile and tablet front end to legacy applications or the foundation for the next generation of development.

As Nexaweb’s Francisco Anes explained in a recent chat with me, “Companies are experiencing extreme pressure for mobilization. They face a number of issues including: 1 - The high cost of maintaining an application portfolio that is aging with tens or hundreds of applications that have redundancies or bad code picked up throughout the years; 2 - The decreasing number of IT professionals that have expertise in more traditional applications and compounded by the lack of available developers for today’s enterprise mobile needs; 3 - The growing interest in updating existing applications and bridging the old with the newer technologies.”

Nexaweb provides a variety of tools and techniques for connecting data in existing enterprise data stores to mobile applications. The Nexacro platform offers extensive API capabilities to connect applications to enterprise level data offering packet compression technology that reduces client memory and accelerates processing. It offers API support for multiple datatypes and integrations are available for XML, JSON, web services and extraction from legacy systems.

The platform comes with strong security features which allow comprehensive protection during development as well as post deployment of an application. There are available integrations with 3rd party modules which allow for a wide range of security possibilities when deciding the best approach.

I could go on and on about advantages the platform offers, but perhaps the biggest one is speed. You’ll be able to get projects done quickly, on time and with the functionality and usability enterprise-class mobile projects require. 

In closing, I’d like to share an analogy that may hit home. I am an amateur astronomy aficionado and when choosing a telescope, for $1k you can buy a package that provides really amazing views, is simple to use, and will keep you happy for the rest of your life scanning the nighttime skies.

Or for $10k you can buy a telescope that will provide a 5% increase in viewing capacity. For 99% of us, the $1k scope does everything we need to do, but for 1% of people, it’s worth paying 10 times the price for a 5% increase in functionality. Oh, and I didn’t mention the $10K telescope is more difficult to use, takes more time to use, and is more prone to malfunction.

For me it’s an easy choice. And for choosing a mobile strategy, Nexaweb’s Nexacro platform is also an easy choice. Sure, you may be able to do a little more with a strategy of writing code individually for every platform and every device (we didn’t even talk about the device testing headaches) or you can use the Nexacro platform to code once and deploy away.

If you want to learn more about using a single source code platform, Nexaweb has created the publication “Understanding the Need for a Single Code Base in Rapid Mobile App Development” which digs deep into the rationale for using their platform.