Enterprise App Dev

Modern enterprises are entering the age of the connected customer. Today, an enterprise's connections with their customers and employees offer enormous value from streams of real-time data — the data that can be unlocked with apps. But for Enterprise IT, those charged with building these apps, this means they need to adopt a new approach to enterprise application development.

What is enterprise application development?

Enterprise application development is evolving to become more agile and collaborative where IT works to build applications both with internal business teams and agencies external to the company — better understanding and incorporating the end user’s needs. This is primarily enabled by the rapid adoption of cloud technologies.

Historically, businesses would build the software they needed by taking advantage of large teams of in-house resources, using a lengthy, rigid waterfall process. This was primarily due to the limitations of the technology. On-premise approaches using Java, .Net, and other options kept the individual steps within application development lifecycle rigid and siloed, limiting collaboration and rapid iteration.

High productivity cloud platforms eliminate the barriers to enterprise-level application development.

With the cloud, users can work with programs and services without having to worry about expensive or time-consuming hardware installation and infrastructure setup, nor do they need to deal with server security, uptime, and availability. On-premise app development solutions are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Cloud platforms allow for better communication and real-time collaboration between teams, and for businesses interested in enterprise mobile application development, it offers something more.

Cloud app development platforms are capable of doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating customer apps. Built-in tools, APIs and data integration, security, user management, and even reusable UI components and templates — all help to resolve the challenges of enterprise application development. Now, even small- and medium-sized businesses can enjoy the same customised application solutions as enterprise-level companies, thanks to software development tool providers.

The three levels of the cloud — SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS help businesses move faster with apps. With SaaS, designed for end users and delivered directly over the web, along with PaaS which lets non-coders configure and build custom cloud apps using a simple model-driven approach, and IaaS which gives the developers a plethora of custom cloud services to build and run apps with minimal infrastructure setup effort, enterprises are supported through the entire process.

Now that that businesses are able to use cloud-based platforms rather than relying on heavy infrastructure, the question for IT departments isn’t “How can we design this app?” It’s “what type of cloud can offer us the best support while we design this app?” Finding the right app development cloud provider is an essential part of the development process, one that may easily set the tone for — and effectiveness of — app development projects for years to come.