12 Mobile
Enterprise
Application
Platform
Differentiators
January 2013
Contents
Introduction ... 1
Executive Summary ... 1
12 Fundamental Differences between MEAPs ... 2
1. No Need for Native Coding ... 2
2. No Need for Native Debugging ... 2
3. Support for Traditional Enterprise Deployment Platforms ... 3
4. Native, HTML5 and Hybrid GUI Experiences ... 3
5. Broad Integration Options ... 3
6. Multilingual Global Solution ... 4
7. Cost-efficient Implementation... 4
8. Guaranteed Enterprise-grade Security ... 5
9. Staying Power You Can Count On ... 5
10. Strong Financials ... 6
11. Strongest MEAP Commitment ... 6
12. Clearest Roadmap and Completeness of Vision ... 6
Conclusion ... 7
About Magic’s Enterprise Mobility Solutions ... 7
1
Introduction
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is one of the most significant trends to affect the enterprise. According to a global survey by Ovum, 57.1% of full-time employees already participate in some form of BYOD.1
There is no use fighting the BYOD tsunami. IT would be best served by taking the lead to find solutions that enable the efficient and cost-effective development of enterprise applications for a variety of mobile operating systems and devices − rather than trying to ride out the tide.
And the BYOD force is only getting stronger with Android device sales (122.4M) already surpassing PC shipments (87.5M) in Q3 2012 and Morgan Stanley’s data showing the number of smartphone users growing by 42% a year, globally.
A mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) should give you the ability to develop and deploy cross-platform mobile apps in a straightforward and efficient manner. Use this white paper to identify the differences between MEAPs, so that you can make your own comparison.
Your IT department’s choice of a MEAP may be the most important technology decision you make in a long, long time. Your MEAP will determine how you create apps, what you develop and how expeditiously you deploy mobile applications. It could well affect your future cloud strategy, how well you leverage existing IT investments and even whether or not your CIO stays on.
Executive Summary
To succeed in the competitive, fast-changing world of enterprise mobility, you need a solution that optimizes your business processes and efficiently leverages your knowledge and assets to help you be a winner.
Choosing the right mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) will raise your level of performance to new heights. Forward-looking technology in a future-proof and highly scalable solution will enable secure access your enterprise systems in real-time from any location, while making the best use of the native smartphone and tablet capabilities.
Fast time-to-market is crucial if you are to stay ahead of the competition. Therefore, it is important that you choose a MEAP that enables you to rapidly deploy any enterprise application over any mobile operating system from a single development effort.
Operating in a mobile environment can potentially expose your back-end systems to multiple security points-of-failure. You need to be sure you are using a strong end-to-end solution with enterprise-grade security that guarantees protection of your sensitive data.
Evaluation of MEAP vendors is, therefore, a decision that requires careful attention and an awareness of the fundamental differences between MEAPs.
1 Q4 2012 Ovum Logicalis, “BYOD: an emerging market trend in more ways than one”, survey of 3796 consumers across 17 different countries.
12 Fundamental Differences between MEAPs
MEAPs are designed to make it easier for businesses to develop and deploy mobile applications that meet the needs of their customers, partners and employees. They support multiple mobile devices and platforms to ensure wider adoption. They work in a cross-platform fashion to bring to your efforts the benefit of “write once, deploy to many”. This is intended to improve speed of development and reduce programming effort. MEAPs tend to be repository based, allowing the developer to leverage existing code. In theory, they should require only one smaller development team resulting in faster time-to-market and allow multiple mobile architectures based on the expectations of the users of each device and platform.
How well each MEAP vendor achieves these goals depends on a number of factors. While we expected to find relative parity between competitors in the MEAP category, our competitive analysis has shown us that there are serious differences between MEAPs that can have far-reaching impact on the success or failure of your enterprise mobility strategy. If you are evaluating MEAPs, you must understand these differences between platforms and the companies that offer them before making your decision.
1.
No Need for Native Coding
With some MEAPs, native coding skills are required to complete projects or make changes. Surprisingly, some MEAP vendors do not complete the process of creating the mobile app for the target device. Manual programming and tweaking is required. One must carefully evaluate whether the MEAP is truly an end-to-end cross-platform solution or whether it is a code generator. If tweaking is required, will the platform handle “round-tripping” of the code, in other words, if developers tweak the code manually, will those tweaks be reflected in the IDE of the MEAP? If not, serious versioning problems ensue.
With Magic xpa Application Platform, the developer avoids the need for tweaking altogether. We believe that MEAPs that fail to prevent the need and capability for post code-generation development are not living up to the inherent purpose of application platforms.
2.
No Need for Native Debugging
With many MEAPs, native debuggers must be used to test mobile apps. When MEAPs force you to debug their deployment capabilities on a target device, then you will be forced to write code to fix the problems detected during native testing. The need for multiple native testing devices also complicates test procedures. Testing personnel have to learn several different testing tools and the likelihood for errors in testing increase due to the complexity of learning and remembering the idiosyncrasies of the native debugging tools.
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With Magic, you never need to use the native debugger. Magic xpa creates apps that are tested and debugged within the MEAP environment. Magic offers cross-platform development, testing and deployment while other MEAP vendors only have a solution for development and deployment. Magic’s application platform has only one debugger to learn and use, not four (or more).3.
Support for Traditional Enterprise Deployment Platforms
Be sure that the MEAP that you choose has the ability to create desktop, client/server, and Web applications as well. Why would you want to use and support multiple enterprise application development platforms? Most MEAPs are so immature and early in their lifecycle that they support only mobile and have no capabilities for supporting other types of application deployment. This results in duplicate coding for those environments and no chance to leverage existing application logic to create new mobile apps.
Magic xpa Application Platform offers mobile development and deployment, as well as the additional capability to create desktop, client/server, and Web applications. Magic xpa is able to composite application logic on the server side from your existing Java, .NET and SOA-enabled Web services for the highest degree of productivity.
4.
Native, HTML5 and Hybrid GUI Experiences
Native, HTML5/Web or hybrid − whether the decision is clear or you’re leaning on the edge still trying to decide the types of apps you will be developing, what is clear is that flexibility to make your own decision is important, not to let decision be made by the type of MEAP you employ.
Magic’s mobile deployment offering allows developers to control the look and feel of the mobile app so that they can develop specifically for the native look and feel of each device without ever having to engage in any native programming. User acceptance requires that BlackBerry apps look like other BlackBerry apps, that iPhone apps look and feel like popular iPhone apps, etc. Alternatively, if management wants to take a more uniform approach, Magic can be used to create HTML5 applications as an alternative to native device support. For most organizations, generic HTML5 (browser-based) apps will not achieve high levels of user acceptance and productivity, nevertheless if that is the decision made, the Magic application platform fully supports such a deployment strategy. Furthermore, Magic xpa allows the development of hybrid apps that combine use of HTML5 inside a native client container. Some parts of the app can be native while other aspects incorporate HTML5 in a manner that is completely transparent to the user.
5.
Broad Integration Options
Integration to back-end systems is a crucial component of providing B2E, B2B, and B2C applications. Make sure your MEAP has a straightforward and proven solution for integration or your development teams will spend months of unnecessary development time trying to integrate mobile apps to existing enterprise systems.
Some MEAP vendors provide only an untested library of API handlers. This is not an integration solution because it does not include true multi-threaded communication brokering and does little to facilitate data mapping, data transformation, messaging or routing.
Magic xpa Application Platform together with the companio
the same technology stack, offer a full range of integration choices to the developer. With Magic xpa, technical interoperability with messaging protocols, communication protocols, databases, Web Services, and even IBM i system resources are included. Add Magic xpi Integration Platform, and you get much more than just an API handler, you gain a full library of optimized and certified adapters to leading ERP and CRM systems including SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, IBM and Google − delivering a truly code-free approach to integration that can save hundreds or even thousands of hours of development time. You also benefit from an elegant integration broker and server architecture that includes full enterprise integration monitoring and Magic’s solid track record of fast, cost-effective and successful integration projects involving integration of multiple back-end enterprise systems, data and processes.
6.
Multilingual Global Solution
If you have any intention of creating apps in languages other than English, multilingual and multi-currency features are or will be important. Several MEAP vendors fall into the category of immature start-up companies and have severely limited global reach and international support and experience. Magic’s mobile deployment offering delivers multi-currency and multilingual support through Unicode and other built-in technologies. Magic offers local support and service in major market countries around the world and has a mature distribution network in emerging global markets. Support centers around the world offer 24x7 follow-the-sun service via electronic support systems and call centers. In addition, Magic Global Services and a network of some 2500 business partners trained in our technology are able to provide strategic consulting, custom development assistance and service level agreements as needed. Magic is the best fit for businesses that address global markets and those that aspire to.
7.
Cost-efficient Implementation
Be sure your MEAP designed for the most cost-efficient implementation. Using metadata-driven application development is an optimal method of achieving cost-efficient implementation of enterprise mobility, as it eliminates the need for heavy replication of logic, data, and processes, and for re-engineering of core architecture.
Magic’s mobile deployment offering comprises a comprehensive strategic approach ensuring minimum cost, minimum risk, and maximum efficiency when implementing enterprise mobility. The benefits of such an approach include resource optimization, high productivity, and fast turnaround. No other MEAP incorporates Magic’s paradigm for development efficiency, a paradigm proven over three decades and used by millions of people in mission-critical applications worldwide.
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8.
Guaranteed Enterprise-grade Security
Your business data and that of your customers and suppliers could be on the line. You need enterprise-grade security to make enterprise mobility a viable business strategy. Make sure your MEAP works over secure layers, has built-in features, such as encryption of transmitted and cached data, robust user authentication and roles assignment, and protection against attempts to access back-end systems. Magic’s proven Rich Internet Application (RIA) architecture ensures application security and avoids the security risks of browser-based mobile approaches. In addition, Magic’s brokered integration technology is fundamentally more secure than other MEAP approaches, which expose enterprise systems and data to direct access through the firewall.
9.
Staying Power You Can Count On
Many MEAP vendors are in startup mode with no guarantee that they will survive in these times of economic uncertainty or avoid acquisition that ends up eliminating support for their embryonic platforms. The industry is volatile, mergers and acquisitions are likely and entire platforms will disappear and be swallowed up by competing parent strategic priorities. Choosing a vendor with the most stable history will ensure that the platform you choose is more likely to be around in the future and allow you to forward-migrate your mobile applications into whatever new enterprise computing and mobile environments the future might bring.
Magic has been in business for 30 years because we are committed to the success of our customers and to providing future-proof solutions that enable them to keep on growing.
10.
Strong Financials
You want to buy your MEAP solution from a company that has the resources for continued development and support. Start-up vendors will rarely provide audited financial statements showing revenues, profitability, cash-on-hand and debt position. If a vendor is unwilling to provide financial statements, then you are at significant risk that you may be dealing with a vendor that is on the brink of imminent financial failure. If financial statements are available, look for consistent growth in revenues and profits. As a public company traded on the NASDAQ exchange and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, our audited financial statements are a matter of public record. Last year, Investor’s Business Daily placed Magic in the top 1% of public companies in terms of financial performance (for consistent growth in revenues and net income).
11.
Strongest MEAP Commitment
Look for a company that is committed to its MEAP business, not one where it is a secondary or lower product. One MEAP vendor in the market is owned by an ERP applications company, which acquired it to serve the needs of its ERP client base. This is clearly at cross-purposes with the much larger need desired by the market for custom apps on mobile devices. Employees have left the company in droves and it is widely speculated that the future of this MEAP as a general market offering is uncertain.
No such confusion and chaos exists at Magic. Enterprise Mobility is at the heart of our corporate strategy as we seek to provide IT departments with the application and integration platform technology needed to pursue a successful enterprise mobility strategy themselves.
12.
Clearest Roadmap and Completeness of Vision
Be sure you look to the future as your MEAP is not just for today. Your MEAP should be a long-term partner.
Magic has a coherent strategy for enterprise systems, mobile apps and the cloud. We offer the assurance that all of these solutions are based on a unitary service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform. Magic’s platforms are capable of compositing existing application logic from Java, .NET, COBOL, RPG and other environments. We know where we are headed in enterprise mobility in terms of support for GPS, cameras, address books and other embedded mobile capabilities found on most devices. Magic’s platform is capable of leveraging all that you have today and presents a coherent strategy for deploying solutions in all of the environments that you will need to be in tomorrow. Magic collaborates with our customers in the development of our roadmap to future-proof your efforts and ensure the availability of the smartest choice for development of mobile apps now and in the years ahead.
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Conclusion
If you have been asked to find ways to develop business apps for mobile devices, then you have an exciting decision to make. Understanding these fundamental differences will allow you to focus on the right questions that allow you to make an effective comparison and avoid falling into a programming quagmire where it is expensive to develop apps and nearly impossible to maintain them. When it comes to the fast-paced and quickly changing world of mobile app development, choosing tools that abstract the developer from the underlying technical details of the device environments is more important than ever before and that’s what Magic does.
Magic’s mobile offering implements a powerful and versatile metadata-driven approach, providing a device-independent and future-proof platform for fast, simple, and cost-effective mobile deployment.
About Magic’s Enterprise Mobility Solutions
Magic’s
Web/HTML5 or hybrid applications. Our smart,
concentrate on creating the right applications, processes and workflows to advance their business without getting bogged down in complex, costly, and resource-intensive, OS-specific coding and testing.
For apps that need connectivity to back-end enterprise systems—typically the most costly and
time-consuming aspect of
connectors to leading enterprise systems, such a
About Magic Software Enterprises
Magic Software Enterprises
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