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Mobile application Development: Making anywhere access a reality

by: fresherlab on Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 Time: 8:33 AM

Mobile Application Development
If your company undertakes Mobile Application Development as strategic initiative has a number of costs and benefits associated with it. In this article, we'll discuss a framework for evaluating the costs inherent in mobilizing users and applications, and we'll look at some tools that are currently available to help you build and port applications in Mobile Application Development to mobile devices.
Evaluating the costs of mobilizing your applications
In our previous series on the subject of mobile applications, we looked at the broad issues relating to strategies, networks and technologies that will affect this important element of IT over the next few years. A number of questions came up, however, calling for a little more detail on two related items: cost and middleware.
The first of these is top-of-mind today for anyone in business, let alone enterprise IT: cost, as in holding it to the absolute minimum without compromising quality. Mobilizing applications has costs and benefits associated with any strategic alternative, and we'll look at those first, discussing options for the cost-effective provisioning of IT services to a highly mobile audience. In the next section, we'll look at middleware technology in a little more detail. Middleware is one of the key alternatives for getting applications onto highly mobile platforms like handsets, and many good directions are today available for going mobile with a minimum of effort (and, for that matter, cost).
Financial concerns are clearly on everyone's mind these days. Ignoring the obvious issues relating to credit and the stock market (don't worry; I believe these will get sorted out this year), let's focus on the key cost elements involved in mobility:
* Strategy and planning: It's important, up front, to define what services and applications are going to be mobilized based on need and return on investment (ROI). In a nutshell, it's important to decide what information needs to be accessed by whom, when, where and under what circumstances (such as how often). Notice we've not yet said a word about computers, networks, devices, software or any other technical details. Assume at this stage that mobility is possible, but focus on the solution and its benefits, not the technology. Cost and ROI models should be built at this point and updated throughout the remainder of the process.

* Software: Next, think about applications. Which ones are required? Are they available from software firms or service providers, or are they homegrown? Will a port (moving the application to a new operating system or device) to a mobile platform be required? We'll cover this key cost area in detail in the next section, but for now, sketch out application and related software requirements. This will help to quantify the mobile devices and infrastructure (server and network) needed and, again, hold down costs for these elements as well. If you're writing or porting software, make sure you add in cost estimates for the design, programming, maintenance and support of any applications required.
* Hardware: OK, now it's time to spec out the whole solution, including servers, enterprise networks, service-provider (carrier) networks, and mobile devices. It's always advisable to hold the number of types of mobile devices to the bare minimum required for quality assurance, support, and security reasons (to say nothing of getting the best deal due to volume). Don't succumb to the temptation (or numerous requests) to support every handset your user base may have -- that's a sure way to drive up costs.
* Operations: Make sure the solution fits with your network operations, help desk, and other support functions. Make sure you have a strategy for mobile device management, especially with respect to configuration, functional verification, security, and procedures for what to do if, for example, a handset is lost or stolen.
* Policy: And, of course, make sure your acceptable-use and mobile security policies are up to date. It's a good idea to review these at least twice a year.
There's one final cost element, and this is the difficult one -- opportunity cost. This is the difference between what you plan to do and the next best option, which, in the case of wireless deployments, is usually doing nothing. And it's often difficult to evaluate in terms of return because the ultimate objective of mobility is productivity through convenience. But also consider the potential savings from lower real-estate (office expense) costs, which can be significant. Who needs an office (or even a cubical) when the road and customer sites are where the employee needs to be?
Finally, keep in mind that additions, upgrades and replacements need to be part of your cost planning. But there's nothing new here; high-tech is defined by progress and advances that always result in new products, services and options, and some of these will undoubtedly improve your cost-effectiveness even further.
Building and porting applications to mobile devices
In the first section, we presented a framework for evaluating the costs inherent in mobilizing users and applications. In this section, we'll look at the tools available to help you with the really expensive part: building and porting applications to mobile devices. As it turns out, there's often no need for expensive device-specific code rewrites that, in the worst case, ultimately bind the port of an application to a specific handset that will (inevitably) become obsolete.

About the Author

Fresherlab.com is a young organization, based at India’s IT hub, Bangalore.
It's a dynamic and competitive world with full of ups and downs in IT sector and therefore; the fresh engineers require just more than theoretical knowledge to get themselves ready for the industry. Academic institutions across the world provide the basic and conceptual fundamentals covering multiple areas in computer science. With increasing number of graduating engineers, but with constant number of companies, it becomes difficult for fresh engineers to compete with their unpolished skills because they need more effective and specialized quality training.

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