MobileFrame Blog

Rapid Application Development Environments

This topic always generates a lot of discussion, so I’m sure this time will be no different. First let’s start with the definition.

Rapid Application Development – refers to a type of software development methodology that involves techniques like iterative development and software prototyping.   Essentially it is a development style that favors incremental development with constant feedback from the end user.   This development process is repeated until the application has been perfected and meets the needs of the user. Many organizations have found that Rapid Application Development or RAD is a fantastic idea, but is requires advanced tools to make this approach a reality. This is where companies like MobileFrame come into the picture.

In order to “Rapidly Develop Applications” it becomes necessary to provide functionality out of the box, to make the development effort easier.

Some of the things MobileFrame does to make it easier to go mobile include:

• Drag and Drop Screen Design – Design your mobile application logic once, and deploy to multiple different Operating Systems
• Drag and Drop Print Designer – Create Print layouts in Minutes, and not weeks.
• Printer Driver Bundling – Printer Drivers are bundled in, no need to pick a specific printer
• Device Driver Auto Recognition – We are plug and play across a wide variety of different devices, and can support mixed device deployments, with no extra effort
• User Administration – Users can authenticate against their current usernames / passwords, and IT can lock down the device to keep the network safe
• Peripheral Integration – We Support RFID, GPS, Barcode (1d, 2d), Magnetic Stripe Scanning, Photo Capture, Photo Annotation, Drawing, Speech to Text, Digital Signature Capture, Printing, Barcode Printing, plus much more
• Backend System Integration – Out of the box hooks into any ODBC or OLEDB compliant data source including (SQL, Oracle, DB2, SAP, Sybase, etc.)
• Synchronization Management – Fail proof sync engine, with the ability to prioritize which networks you would like to sync over first
• Mobile Device Management – Remote Device Management out in the field, with the ability to take administrative control
• Enterprise Application Management – Update Applications, Client Software, and third party applications over the air, no need to collect the device from the field
• Multiple Language Support – Create business logic once, deploy to any number of languages. No need to write and support a 2^nd code base
• Plus many more.

The Mobile Software Development Market is full of companies that claim to have Rapid Application Development Environments, with easy to use development tools, which can be used to assist organizations to design, develop, and deploy mobile applications. And while I can’t speak for other companies that claim to have easy to use tool sets, I can tell you that at MobileFrame the average project from Design / Scope to Deployment is usually 3-4 weeks, and includes integrations with multiple different back-end systems. With this kind of turnaround many of our customers call our environment a Rapid Deployment toolset, instead of a Rapid Application Development Environment.

In fact, the system is so easy to use that all of our sales reps can show how to build custom mobile applications from scratch, make changes to the application on the fly per the user’s request, deploy them out to the device wirelessly and perform a live integration… all on the very first phone call with a prospect.

So the next time that you are investigating different tools to help you go mobile, don’t just think about Rapid Application Development, think about Rapid Deployment.

If you are interested in seeing how MobileFrame is able to create custom mobile applications with no custom programming required, contact us today.