appsolute value art of apps

Appsolute Value, © 2013 All Rights Reserved

Appsolute Value: The Art of Apps

Larger Financial Institutions are still looking for the right Mobile Strategy. Most Banks now have

successfully passed the first ‘Launch’ stage (see figure 1). This first generation of mobile apps

holding basic business functionality did provide IT of FI’s with a quick ‘stop the gap’ solution to

meet first business requirement to provide their customers mobile access to financial services. To

enable expansion, Financial Institutions (FI’s) are now looking for a scalable, more robust set of

tools that can transform mobile app development to an industrial, repeatable and end-to-end

mobile lifecycle best practice. We have gathered in this point of view all our mobile project

experience, know-how and lessons learned to enable you to select the most viable mobile app

development approach.

Challenges for the best Mobile

(apps) strategy

A lot of executives we meet ask us over and

over again the same question: should we

build web apps (HTML5) or Native apps (SDK-

built) going in the next stage (scalability) of

mobile app development (see figure 1).

Unfortunately this is the wrong question

stemming from an almost religious clash of

two tribes of app developers (web vs. native

developers) which seem to dictate even the

executive room claiming what delivers the

best or fastest User Interface on smartphones

!

Figure 1

Your answer to these questions however

should not be approached from a single

perspective, the User Interface, in this context

mostly meaning how customers want to use

apps) but also from other perspectives like

Integration effort, security, performance,

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and last but

not least requirements for new emerging

vendor/suppliers of mobile development &

management software environments from a

single code base and an integrated

middleware component (MEAP).

Especially developers tend to decouple the

mobile thin client from these other

perspectives which are as important for larger

Author: Michel van den Berg Appsolute Value, © 2013 All Rights Reserved | 2

companies. As FI’s (and large companies in

general) begin to tackle more complex,

transaction and revenue oriented applications

by adding more functionality, risk of failure is

rising with the same rate as the opportunities.

The ‘Launch’ stage apps which have been

created mostly in a monolithic, silo-oriented

way have resulted in largely un-integrated,

stovepipe, disposable pieces of code that

need to be updated every few months or

underperform and are un-intelligent (the

latter two apply mostly to first web-apps).

Mobile apps which require rendering business

functionality bring unprecedented business

growth to business managers and allow

business operations to move from hardwired

business processes to task-oriented mobile

customer/employee engagement, come with

a number of multi-multi complexities to be

addressed in the next generation of mobile

(app) strategy:

1. Multi-platform: While the transition to

the first online channel, the web, forced

most applications to conform to a single,

basic HTML client, embracing the

potential of mobile (including enterprise

mobility) entails development for a

multitude of mobile Operating Systems,

iOS, Android, Blackberry OS and Windows

phone are now the mostly adopted. Each

OS requires specific developer capabilities

(including specific integration matters)

whether you like it or not.

2. Multi-channel: Many FI’s have spent large

amounts of money to adopt a multi-

channel approach (branch-ATM-CC-web)

and create a seamless customer

experience. Instead this resulted in highly

siloed organizations and complex SOA

architectures. Now with a Multi-OS

mobile environments and social networks,

two additional digital channels have

emerged rapidly. A multi-digital-access

challenge have emerged with seamless

switching between various platforms,

even for the former ‘pure players’! Hybrid

apps is the likely app style FI’s should

address building a new digital access

model. Cloud technologies will play the

other key role.

3. Multi-device: ever since Apple brought

the first real smartphone to a mass-

market level, many, many smart phones

and later tablets have flooded your

consumer pockets and employee standard

employee utility elbowing out the PC and

laptop.

4. Multi-apps & device Management (MAM

& MDM): With the proliferation of apps

and mobile devices, demand is soaring for

solutions that can help enterprise manage

apps & devices. Corporate Appstores are

emerging to control the usage and own

deployment of apps and the Bring Your

Own Device phenomena.

Entering the second stage of scalability and

depending on a company’s mobile strategy,

an accelerated entrance of the ‘aggressive

growth’ stage of the mobile roadmap (figure

1), a transition to a more sophisticated

development tool is unavoidable. A mobile

app development ecosystem that supports

robust back-end integration with enterprise

source systems, databases, enterprise

security, version control, multi-device

detection, not sacrificing the UI richness, will


be at every company’s doorstep, sooner or

later, when mobilizing your business becomes

the core of your strategy.

To make such a strategy is robust and

pragmatic , companies need to step away

from the development of disposable mobile

apps but rather should make an extensive

scrum exercise of all requirements and quickly

pair them with the appropriate toolset and

management practices. Still many (IT)

executives rely in these stages on the

available resources in the current company. It

is tempting to take a web approach and rely

just on HTML5 and web development

capabilities. However especially as security

and performance have been and still are

dominant requirements, it makes mobile app

development a very daunting exercise. We

have seen many larger FI’s trying this but they

came all out on a more expensive and very

frustrating exercise.

A mobile strategy would also link into the

more technical complexities and pair mobile

apps with new (solution) architecture with

many new architecture principles.

Part of the mobile strategy and new

architecture principles is enablement of

accelerated apps development (fast to

market). Agile methodologies (scrum) and

onshore resourcing should figure prominently

in the mobile project and operations teams.

Make a plan to minimize mobile

app development tools, not

war….

Much of the current debate on mobile apps

development tools (including HTML5 and

native SDK’s) and app architecture is

dominated by mainly two camps, HTML5

developers and native developers. HTML 5 is

an unstructured pile of code still growing

today as it is an open standard.

Native app developers optimize apps to API’s

for a specific mobile OS allowing a superb

customer experience often enforced by

marketing, making it however difficult to

reuse code across platforms. Since the

fragmentation of customers amongst the

many mobile operating systems, marketing

wants to provide access to more customers.

Native apps also allow deep access to offline

processing, storage capability, most device

(and still growing) features and sensors, in-

app frameworks (like push notifications, ad

serving, content), all very common

requirements in a typical business context.

It forces IT to invest largely in new app

development capabilities making cost rise

steeply. Forrester suggest to budget for a

50%-70% of the cost of the original native

implementation (mostly iOS). So if your choice

is to provide access to customers on all 4

major OS’s an increase of client development

costs will be 150% to 210%. Also web apps

however have a 20%-25% increase in porting

costs of 20%-25% to tweak UI for different

device form factors. Mind that post-

implementation costs (for managing apps and

devices) are not even calculated for in above

cost increases.

Unless you have deep pockets and a strategy

not sensitive for a growing TCO as app


development and tooling matures, more

companies look at hybrid applications. Hybrid

apps (or sometimes also referred to as

‘wrappers’) union the best of both worlds

(native and web apps).

Libraries like the popular Phonegap and

Appcelerator have bridging capabilities for the

multi-platform exercise (but not all of them).

They are open source and therefore less

popular with larger companies and for those

( business) app developers working within a

secure business environment however some

have taken these libraries for further

customization and turned them in licensed

frameworks (like IBM’s Worklight) however

most of them are more proven than others

and some focus on specific business

industries.

In the Financial Services industry the hybrid

app development approach is chosen by those

banks (HSBC, Unicredit) which want to reuse

their large online banking infrastructures

especially when they are built on portal

technology.

Similar to the hybrid approach is the fourth

mobile app (development) style, the multi-

platform (or cross-platform) style

Differences between the hybrid frameworks

and the multi-platform frameworks (Kony,

Antenna, Service2Media, etc.) are the adding

of a server/middleware component. The

server-side component allows for adding

enterprise connectivity and security enabling

a secure communication path and encryption

of data in flight. Other features are

disconnected use, synchronizing of local data,

push notification/SMS and device detection

for the hundreds different devices.

Among multi-platform framework and their

vendors are large differences. The most

advanced ones not only cover version

management but also advanced enterprise

mobility services like apps maintenance

(MAM), corporate appstore and MDM. One

of the most enhanced frameworks (Kony)

enables development of native, web apps and

hybrid apps, making the previous mentioned

debate obsolete and enabling support to

legacy mobile platforms.

Hence the need for a robust and future-

proven mobile strategy since larger FI’s like

Citi, Nationwide, Allianz, RBS and Standard

Chartered have embarked already on multi-

platform app development tools.

So in reality, by monitoring how banks travel

up onto the higher stages of the mobile

roadmap the need for either a hybrid or an

multi-platform approach is evident* where

mostly all FI’s have started from a cheaper

web-based approach and/or (UI) rich single

native approach.

* References to:

- Forrester, Building Next generation Mobile Banking report

- MGI Research, mobile Apps Platforms Buyers Guide

The Mobile Ecosystem

If one counts up all changes taking place on a

customer, technology and business model

level based on the anticipated proliferation of

billions of apps, hundreds of devices and

zettabytes of (personal) data, the accelerated

emergence of the Apps economy is on every


company’s doorstep. At the same time

extrapolating trends and movements to the

future, a holistic view on mobile is surfacing:

Solution: Coming to MEAP

In dealing with larger companies we see more

and more companies selecting a Mobile

Enterprise Application Platform tool (MEAP).

Various research and forecasters* see a 70-

80% preference for MEAP

MEAP is a mobile software development

environment that builds code once for all

types of mobile apps and renders it to many

devices and connects with various operating

systems, networks and back-end server

environment. Why the MEAP product is on

the radar of many companies and it is

predicted a significant number of companies

will own a MEAP product in 2013/2014:

1. Larger companies need to provide their services to a larger number of customers and employees (Bring Your Own Device)

2. Where requirements around performance and security (specific for most of the FI’s) are dominant, native apps are commonplace. Based on the roadmap we assume native apps will become more complex or will multiply.

3. The proliferation of apps is eminent. The ‘apps economy’ was first mainly consumer facing (B2C) but now start to enter also our working life’s. Simplicity, collaboration and task-

orientation make a natural demand for enterprise apps (B2E and B2B). E.g. the Blackberry Z 10 is a nice example of how our private, social en working lives gets integrated into one device.

4. With more added functionality and more governance required by the company over all those apps we will see the growing demand of enterprise services like MAM, MDM and corporate app stores.

5. Continued fragmentation of architectures, strategies, OS, mobile app styles gives an advantage for platform agnostic tools

6. Whilst more companies sign up for the MEAP product, the mobile provider is able to prove their track record, build their number of so-called vertical apps (‘off-the-shelf’ mobile software), increase their API engine, increase their multi-platform development community and in the end lower their license prices. (however one should note large differences in vendors regarding this point)

7. Companies will be better able to structure their mobile development discipline, understand a more realistic budget expectation and overcome their current concern of vendor and lock-in risks (after first having business case and security risks around mobile app development in general

8. As larger companies are on the forefront to integrate a MEAP product with their larger and more complex organizations, medium companies will follow suit to benefit from the growing number of best practices and growing number of specialists.


Varying speed of mobile development, the

impact of internal different point of views and

the still unfolding mobile technology (fastest

growing technology ever) cause still lots of

confusion. However with so many companies

understanding better the impact of the apps

economy on increasing revenues, business

growth, brand enhancement and even cost

efficiencies, they now determine faster the

selection of the appropriate mobile app

development tool.

Hence the rising need for a sound mobile

strategy based on a mobile roadmap so

companies are getting enabled to follow a

more thorough mobile software development

too selection process.

If a company sees mobile apps as a tactical,

low functionality, B2C and low cost

opportunity and just another digital channel

(so an add-on to their current infrastructure) a

single platform toolkit is a better choice.

If mobile technology is an enabler of strategic

initiatives (strategic differentiator/generator),

a MEAP product could be used

In the long run (the higher stages of the

roadmap) one can even expect an IT

organization which can tap into all four

different mobile app style development tools

and capabilities.

Our Services – Art of Apps

These first set of drivers to select a future-

proven mobile app development tool will help

you to set the scene for a first high level

selection process and define your apps

strategy. Appsolute Value has in-company

experience with building the four different

styles of Apps – web apps, native apps, multi-

platform apps en hybrid apps. Our people,

having done this at a variety of clients, are

now working together in the Mobile Solution

Network (www.mobilesolutionsnetwork.com).

The mobile strategist can help you selecting

the right apps strategy as part of defining a

larger, more comprehensive mobile strategy.

With a clear focus (outside-in view) on the

customer, we translate your business goals

into mobile concept matching your

customer’s needs.

Our mobile designers and mobile developers

realize those mobile concepts into actionable

apps so you can go to market fast having

chosen the right app development tool.

References – Pure Mobile

Appsolute Value successfully performed the

Art of Apps at several medium and large

organizations in Europe and North America.

You can be next.

Some of our gigs can be found at our website.

http://www.mobilesolutionsnetwork.com/


www.mobilesolutionsnetwork.com

If you want to sit back and watch a video. Go

to our YouTube channel

www.youtube.com/appsolutevalue

If you want to share something interesting

with us on mobile. We are very interested

since we can’t know everything about billions

of Apps, right?! So pin it at

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That ‘s all you can find on the web about us.

For all the rest we are pure mobile. Oh, you

want to like us, use your Smartphone, just

call. You don’t want to tell it to us out loud…

send us an email:

http://www.mobilesolutionsnetwork.com/

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