Service providers are reporting rising enterprise and ISV activity in establishing mobile initiatives for a variety of horizontal- and industry-specific B2B, B2E, and B2C applications, according to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC).
The IDC study, ‘Strategies and Opportunities Driving Mobile Enterprise Application Development Life-Cycle Services,’ says third parties are stepping up their mobile application life-cycle investments to meet the demand for mobile applications with an emphasis on speeding client mobile applications to market at lower TCO with higher productivity and quality.
IDC believes that accelerating mobile IP creation/investment and partnership activity through component reusability, application factories, and use of internal IP for rapid cross-platform portability are central to provider investments.
Partnerships with mobile enterprise application platform vendors are on the rise as are initiatives that integrate smart device technology with cloud-based back-end applications to improve efficiency, reduce cost and generate new revenue streams.
The importance of usability and user experience (UX) is emerging as a critical best practice to speed up development timeframes and ensure alignment to business expectations.
Mobile development is often being packaged as part of broader mobile application life-cycle services with heightened attention to mobile platform selection, business case development, architectural planning and agile mobile development and testing.
Application Outsourcing Services director Rona Shuchat said as third-party service providers move forward, they will need to address the broader spectrum of enterprise customer needs, from new entrants to the mobile space to more mature customers that have been engaged in a mobile road map strategy for a few years.
"The focus will be on building relevant and innovative business solutions. It is important to conceptualize new use cases with customers that can increase efficiencies and facilitate higher worker productivity, lower the cost of end-to-end order and supply chains, or introduce innovative ways of marketing and positioning products to build new revenue streams," Shuchat said.
