Consider these four guidelines for enterprise mobile application development within the age of mobile and cloud.

The ever-growing dependency on mobile technology has made the necessity for enterprise applications a hot topic. While convenient for staff, the rapidly evolving application ecosystem is fraught with complexities for businesses. Developers should consider these challenges once they begin building applications that access core corporate data.

Things like mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM), enterprise mobility management (EMM), and cloud services all create confusion about what you want to start enabling your employees with high-value business applications.

Many device management vendors say that they’re going to manage everything on the device level, while cloud vendors want enterprise decision makers to shift data to their cloud technology (something that provides many enterprises heartburn due to level of risk to data and other security). In any case, many existing cloud vendors aren’t providing the prescriptive instructions on ways to develop and deploy applications to finish users. I’ve highlighted four main guidelines to think about when developing enterprise apps.

1. Connectivity
First and foremost, your application must have connectivity to the knowledge you are attempting to access — for many large corporations this knowledge is hosted behind a firewall. You want to have connectivity this is meant specifically for mobile. I actually have seen many projects fail because apps were built using an individual WiFi network that had unrestricted access to the company network, but once users left the building the app stopped functioning as designed.

Another assumption is that connectivity is straightforward simply by using the VPN, however I continually hear complaints about how VPNs are usually not meant for mobile. VPNs are session-based and may continually drop the session and require the user to log back in. Alternatively, you could have the VPN client send “keep-alive packets,” but this tactic will quickly drain critical battery life. So, when evaluating how you can achieve connectivity, search for something that’s not session based, works while coverage is intermittent, and conserves battery life.

[Take BYOD hassles, add one more dose of bureaucracy, and blend in child safety concerns. See why For Public Schools, Mobility Is A Minefield.]

2. Push/sync
Leveraging push technology is significant. The most typical reason is sending user notifications, however the greater value comes from enabling your applications to work while the user is offline. The secret factor to think about when building mobile applications is that business applications ought to work whenever and wherever they could provide one of the most value. A field-service worker needs access to critical ticket data while in remote areas without a coverage, and a traveling executive needs access to business intelligence data while in flight. This is achieved either by pushing full enterprise data content to the applying, or by leveraging a “poke and pull” method where you quickly notify the user that a tool synchronization is wanted. Be forewarned — not every device is able to doing this. Some operating systems prevent background processing, meaning user-initiated triggers can be needed.

3. Full management capability
Developing applications is barely half the battle. Managing them is the opposite half. This includes such things as application testing, rollout, and lifecycle management. Both are equally important, but mobile undeniably brings in new issues that you simply don’t see on PCs, especially in a BYOD world.

The biggest wildcard is the inability of control you’ve got on OS upgrades. Let’s accept it: OS upgrades can break apps. You probably have an application that has become critical on your business, you must be ready to fix it quickly and push out an upgrade. For the diversity of devices and operating systems your employees use, you will want a comprehensive technique to manage some of the apps as you migrate, approve, or deploy them. Also, providing an enterprise application store is a smart strategy to provide optional value-add applications for staff to download all alone.

4. Open standards/open source
In the past five years, no less than eight major app stores catering to numerous mobile operating systems have launched. Within this brief term, a shift from closed systems to open standards has began to emerge. Also, the open source community was flourishing (e.g., Github).

In many cases, app developers can have already found out methods to solve an issue you are attempting to unravel. Just remember: it is a give-and-take world, so whenever you figure something out, contribute it to the cause. The largest standard within the enterprise for developing mobile applications is HTML5. HTML5 shows the largest promise for writing one app and only requiring minimal code changes for every platform. Ideally, the need arises dodge anything proprietary that locks you into the vendor’s development tools or framework, because it would require an entire rewrite and will be costly over the years.

These four guidelines may help organizations strengthen the apps they deliver to clients and employees, in addition to minimize the various complexity that always comes in conjunction with the app ecosystem. Following these guidelines helps companies deliver business-critical apps that enhance the experience for staff and customers, maintain the safety of the network, reduce downtime, and make space for innovation.

Mobile, cloud, and BYOD blur the lines between work and residential, forcing IT to check a brand new identity and access management strategy. Also within the The way forward for Identity issue of InformationWeek: Threats to smart grids are far worse than generally believed, but tools and resources are available in to offer protection to them. (Free registration required.)

Gregg Ostrowski is accountable for leading the Enterprise Developer Relations for prime BlackBerry Enterprise customers and partners. Since joining RIM in 2001, he has spent five years as Director of Technical Services where he led the North … View Full Bio

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