Mobile Engineers:
BUY
BUILD
buy or build?
The rise of mobile continues to shake up the
business world.
Among global IT executives surveyed by
Accenture, 73% said mobility will impact
their businesses as much or more than the
Web did.
1Strategic Analytics projects that the mobile
business app market will double from
$31 billion in 2012 to $61 billion by 2018.
2And, according to a study by Forbes
Insights, more than two-thirds of executives
said they had seen growing adoption of
internal apps over the past year, and that
apps are “facilitating sales, communication,
$31 billion
2012 2018
$61 billion
“Buying” your mobile team isn’t cheap
Clearly, apps are an important part of an enterprise business strategy. But many struggle with the question of how to get those apps built. A survey by TEKsystems, an IT staffing company, showed that 41% of companies have trouble finding and attracting the talent to handle mobility projects in-house.4
This talent shortage means high-quality Objective-C and Java developers can command rates of $100 to $200 an hour or more depending on the market. Although a relatively small part of the app market overall, Objective-C and Java developers that focus on the enterprise are among its top-earning segments.5 That
makes platform-specific mobile app development a costly proposition, whether you choose to hire or outsource.
Some companies hire external developers hoping their ready expertise in mobile platforms will save time and money. However, for enterprise apps it may be equally important to understand the needs of the business, as well as the
capabilities and limitations of existing IT systems. This means that there is a learning curve and costs associated with onboarding external developers, no matter how much expertise they have in the mobile space. This can be an especially important consideration when complex or proprietary IT infrastructure is involved. In addition, with continued growth in “bring your own device” (BYOD) mobile strategie, and a world that no longer revolves around iOS, organizations must consider how they will provide a first-class app experience for users on all devices. Creating and maintaining two or more completely separate versions of every enterprise app is costly and it slows innovation, as every new feature is coded multiple times.
Some organizations attempt to solve this
challenge by using platform-agnostic technologies such as HTML5, but it isn’t possible
to achieve the flexibility, performance, and high-quality user experience of native apps.
41% of companies have trouble finding and attracting the talent to
handle mobility projects in-house.
Building apps a better way
With Xamarin’s cross-platform capabilities, one pervasive language, C#, is used to target iOS, Android, and Windows platforms, essentially turning your .NET experts into iOS or Android developers. There are an estimated six million C# developers in the world according to Redmonk, making C# one of the top five programming languages among all software
Particularly within enterprise companies, .NET and C# experience is common among in-house developers, providing a built-in mobile
workforce through Xamarin. If the need to expand the team arises, the vast C# developer base is available to tap into instead of hiring expensive, platform-specific developers. These C# developers are productive with Xamarin almost immediately,
These scenarios assume that businesses only have two options: hire
platform-specific mobile developers or outsource development to a third
party.
What many CIOs don’t consider is that there is a third way:
with
Xamarin, you can enable your existing development teams to build
high-performance mobile apps for multiple platforms — and save time
and money in the process.
“Xamarin stood out among all
other choices because it brought this
whole alien world into our comfort
zone. Our in-house C#/.NET
expertise created a rich, native
iOS app in a short period of time
because of Xamarin.”
Karthik Mani
, Team Lead,
eGate Solutions
“With Xamarin, our developers were
able to focus on building great
features, not on learning a new
programming language. The depth
of features in our new iOS app
would not have been possible if we
had done it in Objective-C.”
Jeffrey Clay,
Dow Jones
App Shared Code
Xamarin.Forms Native UI Native UI Native UI
App Shared Code
App Shared Code
Xamarin.Forms Native UI Native UI Native UI
App Shared Code
Xamarin enables organizations to share 75% to 100% of source code across platforms, reducing the time and overhead of producing rich apps for multiple platforms, all with high-fidelity native performance, user experiences, and API access. Companies can also move existing .NET code to a mobile environment quickly and use .NET’s extensive framework of libraries for calling web services and interacting with data sources, sharing C# application logic across client and server.
Standard Xamarin Architecture
Share app logic (on average 75% of code). UI code is specific to each platform. All code is in C#.
Xamarin.Forms Architecture
Share both app logic and UI code for up to 100% code sharing across all three platforms.
Xamarin is the only cross-platform solution that exposes 100% of the UI capabilities of each device platform. Anything you can do in Objective-C or Java can be done in C# with Xamarin. This puts the power of each platform in the hands of the developer, with no compromises to the native user experience or performance. The result is great apps built quickly and cost-effectively by existing teams through code-sharing and reuse.
How Xamarin slashes mobile app
development time and costs
Training existing developers to use Xamarin instead of hiring platform-specific mobile developers can deliver faster, less expensive app development. As an example, consider the following scenario: Company X wants to create an app to give employees access to enterprise resource planning (ERP) reports. The company has a strong BYOD policy and supports a wide range of devices, so the plan has to include cross-platform development.
They first consider the scenario of hiring
platform-specific developers. They estimate that it will take two teams of three developers per platform four months each to develop the apps.7 They discover that the cost of hiring an iOS developer in their region is $150 an hour, and the cost of a Java developer is $130 an hour. Given
Then they consider Xamarin. Because of the ability to reuse code across platforms, they can use a single team of three developers to create the app instead of hiring platform-specific teams. The hourly rate is on the lower end of the scale because C# and .NET are more common skills than iOS. Additionally, because they are able to reuse some existing .NET code and leverage .NET connectors, they significantly cut their development time. The result is that developing the app with Xamarin could save the organization over 50% on development costs and time-to-market compared to platform-specific
development. As an added benefit, getting the app working on Windows Phone adds little time or effort to the process because the majority of the
480 hrs $172,800
4 months
3 months
4 months
iOS Dev
$150/hr
Java Dev
$130/hr
C# Dev
$130/hr
Cost
1,280 hrs
63%
68%
$537,600
Growing mobile expertise in-house builds
your mobile future
Training your team to build mobile apps with Xamarin keeps skills within your organization. As your developers gain experience and knowledge, they will have the ability to shape your mobile strategy more effectively and support your long-term business goals. If there is a business need to outsource or bring in additional engineers as consultants, your team will be equipped to work with and manage this external help efficiently. It’s hard to overstate the long-term value of having internal experts in mobile development.
Xamarin builds your mobile expertise quickly with Xamarin University, which is live online training from mobile experts in your timezoneon your schedule. Xamarin University offers over 50 classes, ranging from introductions to iOS and Android development to advanced topics such as memory management, data caching and synchronization, and backend integration. Class sizes are small and interactive, and instructors are available for office hours for one-on-one help. Archived recordings are available and the curriculum is always up to
“Xamarin’s platform enabled our
engineering team to become native
mobile developers almost
over-night, eliminating the expense of
hiring scarce, expensive
platform-specific developers.”
David Fuller
, VP of Software R&D,
National Instruments
date with new device platform releases and new Xamarin releases.This revolutionary approach to training combines the interactive, rich learning experience of live training with the convenience and knowledge-retention value of taking the right courses at the right time.
Xamarin Certification is offered through Xamarin University, and only available to students who take a required set of classes to gain eligibility, and then pass a rigorous certification exam.
Build your mobile dream team
The outcome is clear
Organizations that use Xamarin
develop better enterprise apps faster
and for less money.
Because
Learn more about how Xamarin can help you accelerate
your mobile success at:
xamarin.com/enterprise.
Internal developers know the organization’s business
needs and IT infrastructure.
C#
They leverage existing C# skills, code and tools, and
are able to tap into over six million C# developers.
Up to 100% of code can be shared across iOS and
Android apps.
Xamarin exposes complete platform functionality
with fully native performance and user experiences.
References
1. Accenture CIO Mobility Survey 2013, http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocu-ments/PDF/Accenture-CIO-2013-Mobility-Survey.pdf
2. “Global Mobile Enterprise Business Application Revenue, 2012-2018,” Strategic Analytics, December 2013, https://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=reportabstract-viewer&a0=9236
3. “The Connected Marketer: How Apps Are Engaging Customers, Partners and Employees” http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2014/01/08/new-study-from-forbes-insights-finds-marketers-use-of-internal-and-external-apps-on-the-rise/
4. “TEKsystems Survey Finds That Most Organizations Lack Mature Mobility Strategies,”
http://www.fiercemobileit.com/press-releases/teksystems-survey-finds-most-organi-zations-lack-mature-mobility-strategies
5. “Developer Economics Q3 2014: State of the Developer Nation”: https://www.devel-opereconomics.com/reports/developer-economics-q3-2014/
6. http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/01/14/language-rankings-1-15/
7. 75% of all companies reported a nine months or less development cycle for mobile apps.
