How many vendors did you look into before you decided to move forward with MobileFrame?

His answer, said it all… “I don’t know how many but we looked all over the globe for a mobile platform, and didn’t find what we were looking for until we found MobileFrame.”

That begged the question, why MobileFrame?

His answer was pretty telling. He said that after doing some investigation,  all of the other “Code-Free” development environments may have looked easy at first glance but were just smoke and mirrors when it came down to crunch time.

He wanted the ability to create applications for his business and be able to make changes to them without having to pay a vendor at every turn.  As our conversation continued he left me with a pretty powerful thought. He said “I have ideas all the time that I can leverage to improve our operations, but If I don’t have a way to implement them quickly, and easily they never happen.  This means that we fall behind our competition with every missed opportunity.  MobileFrame is the tool that will get us where we want to go…”

If you would like to hear more about how your organization can leverage our Mobile Enterprise Application Platform to deliver the results you require, please contact us today.

Contact Us | Phone: 408.885.1200 |  Email: info@MobileFrame.com

Not surprisingly for this week we’ve decided to focus on : What a Mobile Computing Platform is, and why it matters (Disclaimer – MobileFrame is a software company that focuses on providing the most highly configurable and easy to use Mobile Enterprise Application Platform, that money can buy)

First and foremost what is a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform?

In its most simple form, a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) is a software based mobile computing strategy for providing organizations the means to deploy multiple different mobile applications on top of the same technology stack. Typically this type of Platform approach provides organizations with the ability to extend the data usually enclosed in multiple different back-end enterprise systems, deploy against multiple different types of operating systems, and connect or “Sync” over a wide variety of different types of communication mechanisms.  The platform approach usually involves the ability to scale quickly and easily, with a build once and deploy to a wide variety of different types of devices without the need to actually target a specific device or operating system.  This approach when carefully planned lowers overall total cost of ownership, and provides a central management point for all mobile application throughout the enterprise.

Typically there are several components to a mobile computing platform

1. Development Environment – Provides the ability to create the mobile application screens, and underlying business logic
2. Synchronization Server – Allows for bi-directional synchronization of data between the back office business systems, and the mobile worker
3. Consolidated Database – A Database that serves as the central data repository or the pass through to multiple different back end systems, also referred to as a Staging Database.
4. Client Software - This is software that gets installed onto each mobile client to run the mobile applications, manage the synchronization, as read / write to the local database if applicable

The Typical Problem:  ABC Corporation has 3 separate divisions that all would like to implement mobile technologies, each with their own unique needs.  When faced with the decision of what to do ABC Corporation must decide if they plan on building or buying their mobile solution, as well as who is going to make the selection of the solution vendor, devices, as well as who is going to manage and support the applications.  Unfortunately many organizations allow for each division to separately manage their own solution, leading to a decentralized approach.

This approach leads to some of the following challenges:

• Significant development costs
• High total cost of ownership
• Decentralized management
• Hard-coded applications, with the need to re-install whenever changes are made
• Developed for use with a single device type, and or operating system
• No out of the box integration mechanisms to manage the data
• Support related headaches, no centralized management

If ABC Corporation were to take the platform approach, they would gain the following benefits

• Rapid application development tools
• Code Re-use
• Single source toolset
• Mobility management (device management, etc.)
• Application updates handled wirelessly
• Out of the box connectors to multiple different backend systems.
• Multiple Device support
• Lower total cost of ownership
• The ability to make changes and deploy them instantly.

For these reasons and many others, organizations that are interested in going mobile have been looking at Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms, to provide the necessary tools, connectors, and support mechanisms to alleviate many of the common pitfalls of going mobile.  If you would like to see a demonstration of how MobileFrame addresses the mobile challenges within the enterprise, please contact us today!

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Over the past several years I’ve witnessed many organizations travel down the same path, they focus almost 100% of their energies on incorporating mobile technology into their business, but fail to think about the full lifecycle of the project.  This kind of thinking is usually characterized by questions such as:

• What should phase 1 include?
• What should my workflow look like?
• What kinds of reports do we need?

These are all very important questions and should definitely be discussed BUT just thinking about the application itself and not the full lifecycle of the project is a recipe for disaster.   Here are a couple of things to think about:

• How do I roll out application updates?
• Do I need to re-compile the application and have it re-installed for every update?
• Will the device need to come back in from the field?
• What happens if the user is having a problem with his device?
• How can I troubleshoot the device remotely?
• How can I control which applications are installed on which devices?
• Which user has what device?

These questions and many others need to be answered before you deploy an application to the field.  Planning ahead and considering the full lifecycle of your mobile project, as well as partnering with a company that specializes in mobility will ensure a smooth and successful roll out.

For more info about MobileFrame and our MDM capabilities, request an online demo or contact us directly.

Phone: 408.885.1200  Email: Sales@MobileFrame.com