Appcelerator’s built one of the most recognized and accessible platforms for building mobile applications, and with last month’s update, the third-party developer tool is heading to the enterprise.  It’s become an undeniable fact that the workplace is becoming more mobile, and that means more apps need to be developed for smartphones and tablets.  This presents a unique challenge for the enterprise, where apps have historically been built in-house, and IT has full control over the app’s distribution and end user devices.  In turn, Appcelerator faces specialized challenges in crafting a platform with BYOA in mind (Bring Your Own App).

Below is an excerpt from a recent interview with Appcelerator CTO Nolan Wright, who gives us the inside scoop on his company’s latest project.  He shares the top mobile enterprise trends he’s following, along with what his team considered when crafting a developer platform specific for mobile interfaces and enterprise security requirements.

What 3 trends are you following with mobile enterprise/BYOD?

We are closely following the following trends: -BYOD/BYOA.  These trends are driving the need for enterprises to deliver great user experiences for employee-facing mobile apps.  BYOD makes it very difficult for IT to dictate adoption of new mobile apps (unlike the desktop days where they could dictate everything), so enterprises need to build and deliver compelling mobile experiences for their employees -The shift in focus and in spending from traditional desktop web projects to mobile projects.  In our most recent enterprise survey, 87 percent of enterprise respondents believed that more mobile applications will be developed than new desktop applications in their enterprise in 2013.  This statistic supports our belief that soon all development will be mobile development. -Also, as companies build more and more mobile applications, they will clearly need an integrated platform like ours to manage their needs across the mobile application lifecycle. The Appcelerator Platform enables enterprises to create, deliver and manage their entire mobile portfolio.

How are you facilitating faster time-to-market for enterprise mobile apps, and how does this compare to other solutions in the market?

Mobile is placing some new and difficult demands on the enterprise.  Here are a few examples: -Deliver great user experiences across multiple platforms. -Deliver releases in weeks, not months and also produce frequent updates all while increasing quality and innovation. Integrate with multiple data sources in multiple locations (e.g., on-premise SAP and Oracle, SaaS-based data like Salesforce and social data from Facebook and Twitter). -Quickly scale their backend to support unplanned spikes in usage.   Our platform not only directly addresses each of these needs, it does so in a way that is uniquely suited for the new demands of mobile.  Many of the competitive offerings in the market were designed and developed before the smartphone existed, so they cannot possibly solve these new challenges confronting the enterprise.

What security measures did you have to layer into Appcelerator’s new enterprise platform?

Since the platform is delivered over the cloud, security is of paramount importance. Built into the platform are numerous capabilities to ensure that the customer data is safe, secure and resilient – both at rest and in motion. Enterprise customers can also consume the platform as a virtual private cloud (VPC) which gives even more security capabilities, such as dedicated virtualization infrastructure and VPN connectivity to their corporate data.

What UI challenges did you face in crafting a platform designed specifically for mobile enterprise app development and testing?

The key challenge was to create a product that delivers value to multiple personas within the enterprise (e.g., Developers, QA Engineers, Product Managers, DevOps, Business owners and Executives) in a format that caters to each. For example, business owners need to be able to view high level information such as trends showing recent app usage and adoption. Developers, on the other hand, need to be able to drill down into field-reported appcrashes to pinpoint the specific line of code causing the crash.

How much does API management play into the end user’s role in employing the Appcelerator Platform?

API management will become increasingly important as enterprises create a new set of mobile APIs as well as API-enable existing data sources.  They will need a set of services specifically focused on securing, managing and analyzing these APIs as well as understanding how and where they are used.