MEAPs along with the Imply of Device Agnosticism
Mobile Enterprise Application Platforms are pre-built environments that allow an individual to fabricate a mobile application with the intended purpose of deploying the application to multiple mobile operating systems. The mobile application development environments are usually fairly straightforward and require minimal programming experience to develop functions for the application. A lot of the higher end MEAP environments utilize a WYSIWYG UI, allowing for features such as “drag and drop” for developing functions for the application. MEAP environments are great for device-agnostic solutions that span multiple types of devices. Because they’re agnostic, they don’t cover the unique elements of a particular device but for 80% of the generic business applications, a MEAP environment should do the trick. The average IT-savvy user can typically develop and turn around an application with roughly 4-5 days of training, and deploy to any platform within a company. Applications also require a dedicated connection to the MEAP backbone for the majority of the time (though offline utilization is possible in some instances). It’s also important to note that applications cannot be migrated away from the platform, making the MEAP of choice very sticky within any organization.
What separates mobile enterprise application platforms, from mobile websites or native applications, is the ability to build design & data models using a simple graphical editor, then translate those elements into applications that can display the content on any kind of mobile device. With both websites and native applications, extensive software development work is required to gain the same level of quality, with significantly more time put in. The downsides to MEAP tools are simply that they don’t fully take advantage of native application features, but this is hardly noticed in 80% of MEAP programs. In fact, MEAP tools such as Pyxis Mobile are so full-featured; you’ll hardly be able to tell it’s not a native application. At Slalom, we’ve built expertise around MEAP tools that will ensure you have the best application possible, for the last time and investment required.
Pros of MEAP:
Utilizing a simpler IDE without requiring an extensive background in a particular programming language, clients can build applications with minimal training in much less time than a native application
A corporation can build an application once and deploy anywhere, without worrying about porting applications over to the hot new device, or supporting legacy hardware long after its expiration date to continue running a mission-critical application
Having applications localized in a central location will allow a corporation to modify the application, then push out updates in real time to all the consuming devices. This varies depending on the MEAP vendor, but for the most part, takes concern about version control or out of date capabilities out of the equation.
If there’s one thing for certain, MEAPs are growing in popularity, as more and more players enter the market. MEAPs fill the gap between extensive functionality for mobile applications, and ease of distribution inherent with mobile websites, allowing for a solid business case for medium to large businesses worldwide.
If there’s one thing that MEAP tools represent, it’s the flexibility and ease of integration to solve 80+% of enterprise application needs. Whether it’s interacting with critical business data, advertising products in an interactive brochure, or allowing clients to access personal data, MEAPs can fill many of the requirements enterprises have for mobile applications.
Con’s of MEAPs
Regardless of how easy it is to build an application, good design practice should still be incorporated into an application and having hundreds of applications built by anyone in an enterprise is the last thing any corporation really wants.
In trusting any platform to continue to support new devices, a corporation will put itself at the mercy of the vendor and assume that the vendor will be around as long as the application, and continue to support the latest hardware, or risk negating the benefits of device agnosticism if the vendor ever went out of business
When an application can be dynamically updated in one place, and impact the function of that application on every device, building processes around the proper roll-out for MEAP modifications should be a part of every MEAP rollout. Unfortunately, the ease of updating inherent in any MEAP toolset runs counter to the stringent modification requirements in place for most corporate applications.
Even though MEAPs are growing in popularity, they still represent a fairly new platform for the IT industry, and aren’t a proven solution as of yet, for long-term application deployments. It’s still uncertain as to what the future holds, and technologies like the web are slowly maturing to fill the gap that MEAPs currently fill.
With any technology, especially a platform, it’s easy to think that a tool could meet the needs of everyone in an enterprise (at least that’s what the salespeople want you to believe). However, like any technology, MEAP tools have problems themselves, some of which we highlighted here. It’s important to consider, with any enterprise rollout, what the use cases are for use, when other technologies (such as native apps or web apps) might do a better job, and how much reliance is being placed on a vendor-specific platform, so issues around vendor lock-in or single source reliance don’t creep up on your enterprise IT operation.
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