Developing Mobile AppsDeveloping Mobile Apps

What if a company hasn't got the time or know-how to develop mobile applications and run a complicated mobile infrastructure? Those companies can pursue Hypothetical Business' second option: Get somebody else to do the work.

In September, Verizon Information Technologies formed a partnership with mobile software vendor XcelleNet Inc. to provide mobile outsourcing services. They'll do everything from design the applications to pick out the hardware and manage the infrastructure once it's up and running.

"We provide CIOs with a plan to get a return on their investment," says Bob Darrah, director of product marketing at Verizon IT. "It takes away the burden of trying to manage that resource and allows the CIO to focus on deploying the application and bringing back the value to their users."

Outsourcing mobile-application development is cheaper than doing it in-house, Darrah says, because businesses don't have to spend lots of money and time on training programmers, developing infrastructure, and monitoring the system.

Verizon IT uses XcelleNet's Afaria technology to drive the services; the mobile-management software lets a company manage mobile-device settings and update applications and content, all through a Web-browser interface. The technology helps companies extend their enterprise application and data to highly mobile users, says Joe Owen, XcelleNet's chief technology officer. "You can do that without it, but it'll cost you more and take longer," he says.

Ohio State University Medical Center uses Afaria to automatically install updates of an application it purchased from Siebel Medical Solutions. Without Afaria, every time Siebel updated the software, the IT department would have to recall every mobile device in the enterprise and reinstall the new version of the software, says Phil Skinner, the medical center's director of enterprise services. "Afaria helps me avoid having to handle 1,600 handhelds," he says.

Pharmaceutical supply firm PharMerica Inc. also uses Afaria to manage a custom-built application used by field representatives. Afaria automatically collects data entered into the application by remote workers and updates the program with new drug information. It's dramatically increased worker efficiency, says Max Daugherty, director of strategic clinical services information systems. But while Daugherty is happy letting someone else's software manage his custom mobile application, he's not sure he'd want to let a company like Verizon IT write the mobile app from scratch. "We already have expertise in-house, so it makes sense to write the program ourselves," he says.

If Hypothetical Business is similarly nervous about handing over mobile application development to someone else, it has at least one other option. New hardware will help businesses transform their existing enterprise applications into mobile ones, sparing them the trouble of doing any development.

These network-based appliances, known as transformation gateways, sit inside the firewall between the application and the mobile devices and act like a router, taking application data, rendering it in real time into the proper format for different devices, and then handling data flow back and forth between mobile users and enterprise.

In September, Net6 Inc. unveiled the Mobile Transformation Gateway, a network-based appliance that starts at $8,000. The company says users are able to deploy enterprise applications on mobile devices more cheaply and easily than if they had to develop new software.

Says Net6's CEO Murli Thirumale, "When you create an app, you shouldn't have to worry about how it gets delivered to a device."