Our library of 1700 research reports is available only to our subscribers. We occasionally release ones for our larger audience to benefit from. This is one such report. If you would like access to our entire library, please subscribe here. Subscribers will have access to our 2017 editorial calendar, archived reports and video coverage from our 2016 and 2017 events.
The cross-platform mobile app: advice for enterprise developers by Rich Morrow:
Development tools and methodologies for cross-platform mobile applications have been with us for many years, and they now claim some astounding benefits: five to ten times faster development; usage of familiar languages like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS; and development and maintenance of a single codebase.
Today’s developers now have several choices to assist with cross-platform design, ranging from options of application type, supported languages, toolkits, and delegation of logic to scalable, remote backends. Each of these comes with a set of trade-offs, and the speed with which they evolve requires examination of where each will be headed in the future.
In this report, we explore and expand on the following:
- The four avenues through which mobile cross-platform development can be achieved (mobile-styled web app, hybrid app, cross-compiled app, and MBaaS), along with the limitations, benefits, and use cases for each.
- The strict limitations of HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS applications and the specific use cases and applications for which the approach may be valid.
- The tremendous upside of solutions like Xamarin and Appcelerator, which enable developers to write code in one language and cross-compile down to native code on mobile devices.
- The fairly recent trend in offloading client-side business logic to MBaaS and remote service solutions and where this approach does and does not make sense.
- Organizational and structural challenges encountered by web and desktop development teams and how managers can best overcome those challenges.
To read the full report click here.
