Salesforce's rapid smartphone development platform

Salesforce.com has launched a new set of tools it says will enable its developers and partners to accelerate mobile app development using commodity Java skills.

Today the company kicks off its global Salesforce Mobile Developer events across 37 cities worldwide. It will provide its developers hands-on experience with the new Salesforce platform mobile services, engage with its mobile experts and connect with other developers. The Australian event will be help next Monday on the 29th of April in Melbourne.

The new SDK and development framework can be combined with a customer's real-time data "to deliver engaging mobile experiences anywhere, on any device" , according to the company.

Local partners can already see the benefit. According to David Freyer, Chief Sales Officer, Arxxus, and a Saleforce.com partner the new offerings will make it easier to develop mobile apps on for the Salesforce Platform, and drive down the cost and time of development.

“We’ve built lots of mobile solutions that range from managing personnel access to secure physical sites on an iPad to our latest mobile app for field marketing,” said Freyer. “Our latest mobile app is a cross platform hybrid app that leverages the HTML5 Salesforce mobile toolkit.” Currently in private beta release, the app helps will help sales people in the field collect data more efficiently. It leverages key mobile functionality inclduing, geo-tagging and the device’s camera – all of which is powered by the Salesforce Platform.

“We like HTML5 since it represents a way to develop mobile apps across multiple platforms such as iOS and Android. This means that, as an app developer, we can build one app that works across different platforms.”

“For enterprise grade Salesforce customers, our view is that hybrid apps will make the most sense since there are usually some authentication requirements that require a hybrid approach. We’re also seeing enterprise customers requiring access to offline, geo-tagging and camera from their mobile device.”

Organisations have hundreds of application on their intranets which ideally they would mobilise and distribute to staff, or even recast for customers. However in a BYOD world the cost of redeveloping and redeploying those apps across multiple platform is prohibitive and organisations are weary of committing to only one or two mobile platforms for apps which may need may years shelf life.

While many CIO's hold out hope that HTML5 and responsive design will eventually provide platform agnosticism, web apps are unable to exploit many of the native capabilities of smartphones to the same extent as native apps.

Salesforce.com believes it has built a platform which will allow its partners to rapidly hybridise those apps, overcoming this key issue and exploiting the benefits of both approaches.

"Companies have struggled to deliver mobile apps because they have been forced to make trade-offs between a killer experience, access to business data and development speed. To provide a great mobile experience, investments must be made in specialized smartphone developers who are up-to-date with the latest tools," said a company spokesman.

These apps are often built by teams and technologies which lack access to relevant corporate data. The only alternative for many companies wanting to tap into legacy system for their new mobile services has been to use legacy app development environments which are often expensive, slow and cumbersome, and which are unable to deliver high levels of usability and utility.

Developer Mobile kits are available now while the Salesforce Mobile SDK 2.0 becomes available in June.

According to the company's web site Salesforce Mobile SDK 2.0 is designed to help enterprise developers to securely connect enterprise data to any mobile app - native, hybrid or HTML5 - on any iOS or Android device. "The SDK also enables HTML5-based apps to leverage device features like the camera and geolocation, and provides additional libraries for key enterprise requirements such as authentication and secure offline storage."

The developer mobile packs meanwhile are described as “quick start” packs to let web developer to build responsive HTML5 or hybrid mobile apps on any platform and while accessing real-time Salesforce data. Mobile Packs leverage the Salesforce Platform REST APIs through a choice JavaScript frameworks – AngularJS, Backbone.js and jQuery Mobile.