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5 challenges in developing enterprise mobile apps

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Sharath Kumar
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At the recent IBM TechForum, we heard Leigh Williamson, Distinguished Engineer at IBM, voice out his company's views on mobile platforms and solutions. While disclosing that businesses have realized the need to develop mobile apps to capitalize on consumer trends and reach their target audience, he also outlined the pain points that companies face in creating a quality application to represent their business. We take a look at these major obstacles and how they can be overcome:

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1) Too many platforms, too little time

With a myriad of mobile platforms available for consumers currently, companies have to design their apps to meet the various platforms their customers use. Due to the highly fragmented nature of languages and tools needed to build apps on various platforms, mobile development projects have become extremely complex and costly. The tight deadlines put on mobile development projects, which usually span between weeks to months, also act as a pressure point. Most businesses make the mistake of restricting their focus to a single platform, and this reduces the reach of their application!

2) Ensure that you deliver a quality application

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Mobile users are now used to high quality apps, which deliver on both the design and the content front. According to IBM, this is of critical importance as a customer-facing application represents the "face of the business". A B2C application needs to engage the customer personally, and improve customer loyalty. IBM's Leigh Williamson noted an interesting trend in B2C apps, "Businesses send out frequent software updates to customers not only to iteratively improve the app, but also to remind customers that the app still exists on their phones". The user experience of the app is key to brand perception, and many businesses suffer when customers are influenced negatively by a low-quality app.

Intensive testing and formal reviews are re quired to ensure that an app meets all its requirements before its release to customers.

3) Integration with back-end systems

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It will be a waste of time and money to implement back-end systems just to function with mobile apps. Instead, a B2C app should ideally integrate seamlessly with back-end databases and services to deliver content. However, this is easier said than done! Existing systems may have to be modified to work together with the apps. Programmable interfaces have to be coded so that these back-end services can talk with apps. The process becomes even more complicated if back-end systems have intricate dependencies, as these will also have to be taken into account if modification is necessary.

4) Making your application impregnable

Users are becoming increasingly skeptical of installing mobile apps due to security and privacy concerns. Although operating systems such as Android and iOS provide top-notch security capabilities, it is up to the developer to utilize these to secure their app. For example, take the case of an Indian bank releasing a mobile banking solution. Such an app needs encryption right down to the file system level, as a breach of security would be extremely damaging to the bank's customers and it's own reputation. As IBM's Leigh Williamson pointed out in his talk, security in a mobile app has to be a priority from the bottom-up, decided at the design stage itself rather than as an afterthought.

5) Accelerated time-to-market requirements

While traditional desktop apps usually have timelines that vary from months to years, mobile apps are expected to be complete in a few weeks. With such tight deadlines, teamwork is extremely imporant in achieving business objectives. Excellent collaboration tools have to be used to align teams across the entire software life cycle to overcome time and efficiency constraints. Mobile development projects also require developers to adopt agile methodologies so that they can ship features iteratively, and this can mean reconstructing the software engineering culture within the company.

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