Mobile Apps are at the Heart of Digital Engagement

Mobile is changing the way we work—and provides a tremendous opportunity for IT to help with the transformation

The rise of mobility has shifted the role of the IT Department from a business cost center back to a business innovation center. That’s an exciting place to be—not only are we tasked to support the technology that enables business operations, but we are now responsible for guiding the business in the ways technology can drive revenue, customer engagement and much, much more. Handheld and portable devices are not the future—they are already here—but they are the future of work. And at the center of this future is mobile apps. 

Delivering on Mobile

The primary opportunity available to business today is mobile—and mobile apps are at the heart of engagement with users of all kinds—customers, partners and employees. Unfortunately, we have not offered a level of engagement that imagines work in a compelling way. But we continue do this now at our own peril. Because user expectations have skyrocketed, thanks to the consumerization of technology and the growth of social applications that are dead-simple to use.

To enable more amazing apps, companies are increasingly embracing cloud, open source standards and big data connectivity to fuel their mobile transformation. But according to recent findings from a survey of IT Executives conducted for Telerik by IDG Connect, IT is still struggling with enterprise mobility.

• Mobile efforts are plagued with unrealistic expectations. Sixty-six percent of survey respondents said that meeting the requirements of the business is their top challenge, yet feel that they are unsuccessful. The highest segment reporting dissatisfaction were development managers.
• Organizations must build in-house mobile development competence. While 66 percent said they have enough app development resources, they don’t have enough mobile development experience on hand to feed the need for mobile business applications.
• Mobilizing enterprise data is challenging. Despite myriad API and cloud services, fully 50 percent of respondents said integrating data into mobile business apps is a serious challenge. This issue becomes more threatening every day as the heterogeneity of data types and sources grows.
• User experience is king, but it’s not just about design. Eighty-three percent said they fully understand that the key to user engagement is speed and reliability of task completion. Many have learned the hard way—experiencing long development cycles that are unacceptable to clients and high user adoption failure rates—that time spent on how well the app can perform its necessary tasks, and how well it can perform in the user’s environment.

Introducing the Telerik Platform Enterprise Edition

To help IT switch to a rapid, user-driven approach to building applications, the Telerik Platform was developed to remove barriers for application developers to experiment, iterate and deliver. With existing skills, developers can find the right tools within the Platform to build mobile apps that users will love.

Today, I am pleased to announce Telerik Platform Enterprise Edition, a development platform that combines the key elements of developer productivity, business engagement and data integration for enterprise mobility success. This new release adds a comprehensive set of capabilities to engage business stakeholders in the creation of business applications. In addition, industry-leading data connectivity from Progress^® DataDirect^® will enable developers to quickly integrate, access and manage enterprise data for mobile delivery.

Accelerating Mobile Innovation in the Enterprise

Continuing our commitment to open source, Platform Enterprise Edition features the integration of our new open source, native cross platform development framework, NativeScript. NativeScript is a groundbreaking project that enables developers to write cross-platform applications in JavaScript and access native device API libraries for better experiences and faster performance. Additional features include:

Low-Code, Visual Development with Screen Builder

Screen Builder is a template-driven, low code design tool that enables you to see live previews of apps you are building. Choose from a library of pre-built interactive designs, choose hybrid or native implementation and generate actual code with the click of a button. Less technical web developers can quickly use their existing skills to design and build new apps.

Enterprise Connectivity Offline with Expanded mBaaS

Telerik Platform Enterprise Edition with expanded enterprise connectivity enables mobile enterprise developers to integrate their applications into backend systems seamlessly. Telerik data connectors leverage advanced technologies from Progress DataDirect solution to provide direct links to JDBC databases, including Oracle, SQL
Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, IBM DB2 and SAP Sybase. Developers may also provision data to any REST Services. Expanded mobile Backend as a Service (mBaaS) capabilities also feature a new data sync framework that enables offline handling.

Real-Time Updates to In-Production Apps

With Telerik AppManager LiveSync, enterprises can now release updates to in-production applications without forcing the user to update the app through the app store. Your users can receive immediate updates, features and fixes in real-time without disruption. AppManager LiveSync works with applications deployed to the iOS, Google Play and Windows app stores.

Learn More About Telerik Platform Enterprise Edition

To take a deep dive into all the features and benefits of the new Telerik Platform Enterprise Edition, please register for the next Telerik webinar, “Enterprise Mobility. Unshackled.” And checkout additional product information in Todd Anglin’s blog post, “Overview of Telerik Platform Enterprise Enhancements.”