IBM has announced the expansion of its IBM MobileFirst Application Development portfolio with new and enhanced services focusing on mobile platform, apps and studios that are designed to help businesses accelerate the adoption of a mobile strategy for business growth.

Among the new enhanced services, IBM has released standardized, customizable IBM Ready Apps for customers in major verticals including a range of tools for developers to create, deploy and manage mobile apps, on-premise or in the cloud. IBM also plans to open 18 development studios worldwide, where its experts will work with customers to custom-build new apps. The goal is to help companies and developers generate more business value from the initiatives of the mobile computing.

IBM’s new offerings presented at the IBM Impact conference aim to speed up mobile development in the enterprise. The IBM MobileFirst application development portfolio includes Worklight, Cloudant and BlueMix services.

Accelerating mobile innovation

IBM Worklight is a mobile enterprise app development platform which is used in a client’s IT infrastructure, while BlueMix delivers similar features as cloud-based services. Both can be used with Cloudant, the IBM distributed NoSQL database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) for mobile applications. The latest features in Worklight include technologies to better track feedback, sentiment analysis, and crash reports.

In addition, a new version of IBM Worklight now allows enterprises to support both native (via SDKs) and hybrid development models, as well as add new capabilities such as the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) protocol for mobile money solutions in emerging markets. The new platform also offers a new app scan function to identify potential data leaks and vulnerabilities.

The BlueMix Platform-as-a-Service offers flexible app creation and deployment options in an open environment in order to reduce complexity. IBM says both IBM Worklight as well as BlueMix offer mobile quality assurance facilities. This can help developers track user experiences and in-context crash reports to examine sentiment analysis or crowd sourced feedback submissions to identify possible problems to be quickly remedied.

“As mobile apps become a primary touch point with clients, the stakes run high to delight consumers. At the same time, the cost of a poorly designed app can significantly impact both the brand and bottom line. IBM’s mobile platform, apps and studios are designed to help businesses accelerate the adoption of a mobile strategy for business growth,” said Marie Wieck, general manager of MobileFirst at IBM.

Tools for developers

IBM is also offering a suite of industry-specific, pre-configured apps that it claims can save clients up to 60 percent on time and resources. IBM Ready Apps include those for retail, healthcare, insurance, travel and transportation, government and connected devices and banking. Developers can customize the look and feel of the preconfigured applications with common industry APIs.

According to Big Blue, the first batch of Ready Apps include an app that lets a team of healthcare expert coordinate patient care, and an app to help retail employees manage in-store inventory and track their productivity. These apps can also provide a competitive advantage by improving existing business processes. IBM also has a preconfigured application for the connected home to cater the Internet of Things.

Developers, architects and consultants will be able to use the IBM Ready Apps, Worklight, the BlueMix cloud app platform and the Cloudant database as a service.

These tools plus studios opening worldwide will see IBM ushering in a great deal of developer support. The 18 studio locations include eight in North America, four in Asia, four in Europe, one in Australia and one in Brazil.

Aligned with this, IBM will help the community of developers of client companies to develop, configure and manage the environment of app development within the community, with the support of both specific software and competent team of experts.