The Rising Popularity of Rapid Mobile App Development

Elizabeth O’Dowd at Solutions Review recently wrote about the rising popularity of mobile app development technology that will allow organizations to speed their ability to produce enterprise-grade mobile apps: “RMAD Predictions Gartner with Alpha Software.” In her article, O’Dowd reviews the results from Alpha’s recent survey of developers, “Enterprise Developers Rank Critical Requirements for Success in the Coming App Explosion” and asks Alpha Software CTO Dan Bricklin for his perspective on how enterprises are reacting to these trends. Bricklin explains:

Alpha Software CTO Dan Bricklin

“The same things keep coming up [in these surveys]: What’s important? There are many polls that end up with the same answer; there’s a desire to build, there’s an understanding that usability is important. Looking at the top things, the ones that are overwhelming in how important they are, reminds you what to look for. People need to be able to make it easier to use; it needs to be appropriate, but it has to tie into corporate data. I think that one thing that’s important to look at is, how is the list of what’s needed different than the consumer applications when people are talking about consumer development? In the business world the answers on how to build apps are different than in the consumer world; that’s important to understand and that’s why it’s important to look at surveys like this.”

O’Dowd next interviews Jason Wong, principal research analyst at Gartner, to discuss the rise of Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD) as a method for companies to increase the speed and scope of their mobile app development. Wong details the RMAD trend from Gartner’s perspective:

Jason Wong, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner

“We’re definitely seeing a sprawling demand for RMAD tools by businesses…RMAD tools are becoming very popular because these tools allow enterprises to use and train their existing resources, business analysts, and folks that are maybe designers, that use Photoshop or InDesign or have worked on Microsoft Access building macros and things like that. They don’t know coding, but they can put together a user interface, they can use modeling to create workflows and model some of the business logic, so they’re able to ramp up these resources faster to deliver applications. We’re seeing that the demand for mobile apps is five times that of Its ability to deliver on it. These RMAD tools allow IT to decentralize some of that work so IT’s not a bottleneck and these “citizen developers” and this self-service development can happen within the lines of business as well as IT users that may not be programmers.”

According to Wong, Gartner predicts that organizations will need approximately 1,000 mobile apps. These enterprise mobile apps will be much smaller that larger desktop apps because they will allow a user to quickly get into an app, do a specific task quickly and get out of the app. These apps will be built to each users' “profile and your persona.” Alpha Software agrees with this assessment and has developed it’s mobile optimized forms capability as a clear example of apps targeted for a specific user and use.

O’Dowd concludes the article by saying that RMAD technology will “kickstart and enhance the inevitable and rapid growth of enterprise mobile apps.” We couldn’t agree more!

To read the full article on the Solutions Review website, click here.

To read about a related Solutions Review article that Alpha Software CEO Richard Rabins wrote on using RMAD to develop mobile apps quickly meet business needs, click here.