IBM released a new generation of its MobileFirst Foundation designed for the cloud. It helps to accelerate delivery mobile experiences in the cloud.
IBM announced the next generation of its IBM MobileFirst Foundation now available on the IBM Cloud to accelerate enterprise mobile application development.IBM MobileFirst Foundation is Big Blue’s suite of tools to help enterprise developers build, test, connect, run and manage mobile applications. The integrated platform includes a comprehensive development environment, mobile-optimized runtime middleware, a private enterprise application store, and an integrated management and analytics console along with built-in security.IBM designed this new version of MobileFirst Foundation – IBM MobileFirst Foundation 8.0 -- especially for cloud deployments, as mobile is a key entry point for enterprises undergoing digital transformation and migrating their operations to the cloud.“Demand for cloud continues to skyrocket and mobile applications are the driving force behind that demand within the enterprise” said Michael Gilfix, vice president of MobileFirst and Smarter Process at IBM, in a statement. “Uniquely designed for the cloud, the new IBM MobileFirst Foundation meets the need for speed and productivity in mobile application development without compromising security.” With the new version of MobileFirst Foundation, developers can provision an IBM MobileFirst Foundation environment on the cloud or on premise with one click. This enables organizations to start out small and scale as necessary. The new version also includes an advanced Mobile Analytics feature that gathers real-time telemetry data and application usage metrics. It also enables developers to create custom business metrics to gain insight on user preferences. “This release introduces key features that we think are going to be game-changing for those enterprises that just need to get their ideas into market now,” Gilfix told eWEEK. “We introduced Foundation now on cloud with IBM Bluemix. We’ve made it super easy for developers to quickly start developing their applications on the cloud so they can take advantage of all the speed the cloud offers.”IBM MobileFirst Foundation 8.0 also enables users to make real-time “Live Updates” to applications. Even non-developers can make these updates to applications by changing app functionality through configuration instead of code, without having to redeploy the application. IBM said the new Live Update feature reduces time and cost of app updates and cuts release cycle times down from weeks to days.According to a Forrester Research study on MobileFirst, IBM’s platform delivered an improved time-to-value delivery of mobile applications, from 12 weeks to 7.3 weeks, due to faster deployment and testing cycles. “Through common integration and app management, MobileFirst Platform enabled organizations to more quickly deliver applications on multiple platforms,” the report said. “The faster deployment of apps enabled sooner realization of value with every app iteration.”The new release also features integration of IBM’s API Connect API management tools, which will enable developers to quickly create new integrations to back end systems and bring those out to their mobile applications. This had been a pain point for mobile app developers in the enterprise, IBM said.In all, IBM says the new release of MobileFirst Foundation helps enterprises speed up mobile application development at a time when demand for mobile applications is exploding. In April IDC released forecasts stating that cloud IT expenditures will reach $57.8 billion by 2020 -- and this trend is largely driven by mobile app development demand. And just last week, Gartner released a new report estimating the by 2020 more than 75 percent of enterprises will be using a mobile application development platform to help keep up with this demand.
- eWeek