Enterprise Mobility Application: Keeping Pace with The Changing Technology

In the wake of paradigm shift in mobile technology and smart-phones taking over the way the people work and interact with each other, technology is radically changing how people do business. Enterprise app development has become a critical asset to the businesses that not only helps to increase the productivity but also brings a positive change in the revenue stream of the company. With smart-phones shifting the base of how people communicate in a business environment, it has become imperative for big organizations to understand the benefits of enterprise app development.

What is Enterprise mobility application?
An enterprise app is business application that helps businesses in assisting the organization to give better solutions. It can be design and developed to accomplish one particular requirement of the business or helping in assisting many requirements at one go. They are highly complex systems that that meet stringent demands of security, maintenance and administration of an enterprise. They are deployed and run on a variety of platforms including in-house networks, Internet or Intranet. They help to bring the entire businesses process under one roof to perform variety of functions on the tips of one’s finger.  
      
Benefits of Enterprise App development for business:
In today’s world when smart-phones are dominating the workplace and newer strategies are coming into existence to replace old methods, it has become significantly important for businesses to revisit their business process to keep in-tune with the ever-changing user-expectations and client’s needs. Development of elegant business apps requires the collaboration of highly-technical knowledge and business analysts to envision a smoothly-run business app.
 
Scalability and Flexibility:
It prepares organization to handle increased number of application users and empower them to face the challenges of shifting technology.

Security:
It helps to embed security on the business information by stalling the use of the same in the smart devices owned by employees. It helps in decreasing the vulnerability of valuable business information.

Increase in ROI:
Organizations can reuse and augment their existing technology with enterprise app development. It helps reducing the expenditure while increasing the revenue flow.

Streamlining the activities:
It helps in negating duplicate processes and better understanding of varies business activities. It gives a clear idea to employees about the work flow within the organization.

Increased manageability:
As it promotes and improves performance of existing applications, it helps in making the business flow stringent and efficient, thus resulting in better management of applications.

Enterprise mobility application is making evolutionary changes in how the business work and run. It is slowly and gradually shifting from an expensive technology to affordable, fast, reliable and contemporary solutions for enterprises.

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A Complete Guide To Look For Best Companies In BDC, A Software Company Marketplace

BDC, the leading software business marketplace connects leading mobile app development companies to clients across different verticals. BDC acts as a common ground where leading web and mobile app development companies come on one platform. The BDC helps clients leverage the skills, expertise and experience of these best mobile development companies. Clients use the BDC as a platform to research, compare and select the best mobile and web development companies. As a leading software business marketplace, BDC also offers the industry’s leading research and market leading database of companies and references.

Research: As a prospective client with an explicit app need you are looking for the most suitable development partner on BDC. A web or mobile development partner who stands up to your unique business needs. At the outset, you may browse through the various development companies in your focus area on BDC. BDC lists leading development companies based on their core practice area along with their company profile and app portfolio. Further, clients also have access to innovative screening tools as ‘Company-Finder’ to help narrow down the search. The company finder tool filters the search results through values as service type, location, hourly rate, employee strength and founded year.

To enable clients take a well-informed decision, the company profile also includes

• Brief description of the company
• Contact details
• General information
• Client & industries segmentation
• General information, Awards and certifications
• App portfolio
• Client’s reviews & ratings
• CEO interview

As a software company marketplace, BDC thus offers their clients a rich resource of information and vendor analysis. This combined information thus helps client get a holistic assessment of the company. Further, BDC through its proprietary research methodology lists all core practice areas in mobile and web development. The market leaders include the top performing development companies that consistently deliver a competitive edge to their clients.

Comparison: The next step is to sort and identify potential app development companies and compare them to select your best development company. For this BDC offers unique company comparison tool that helps make a detailed assessment of their best development partner from the shortlisted companies. Thus, company comparison tool compares any two selected development companies on all significant values as average hourly rate, service area, number of employees and inception date. Such in-depth comparison helps clients take an informed choice that is aligned to their unique business needs. This comparison tool help gets the best of resources.

Selection: Finally, after a thorough assessment and detailed vendor analysis and comparison, you narrow down to your best development partner. Thus, BDC helps you select the best development partner from the leading pool of best app development companies.Therefore BDC, as the leading software company marketplace at the outset offers you a wide-eye view of the developer marketplace. BDC then helps you narrow down to select your best development partner by allowing access to innovative screening tool. Further, they provide an in-depth information and vendor analysis through company-comparison tool. Thus, BDC helps expedite the app development process by finding web and mobile app development solutions to meet your specific business needs.

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Why To Use Agile Methodology For Mobile Application Development?

The unique features of agile methodology derive from the list of principles found in the “Agile Manifesto”. The basic principles of collaboration, incremental development, speed and flexibility drive the agile methodology as it seeks to break down the app development process into smaller chunks and integrates quality testing, documentation and analysis into these crucial links. Agile development model improves collaboration and responsiveness to the changing requirements and drives more predictable delivery. The various Agile methodology are increasingly being used by best mobile development companies to create better applications and meet the need of users quickly. Among the various models such as extreme programming, SCRUM, Feature driven development, test driven development, the two of the most widely used Agile methodologies are Scrum and Lean ( or Kanban) methods.

So why and how does agile methodology deliver the benefits over other existing approaches as waterfall development approach?

The following are the reason why Agile methodology is best fit for mobile application development

Iterative and incremental approach in the rapidly evolving mobile app ecosystem:
In a rapidly evolving app economy, with new features and technologies regularly being introduced, the average lifespan of a mobile app is less than 12 months. Agile methodologies by incremental deliveries of value in a time-box driven ( iterative) approach  allow for quick decision making and faster development cycle. The app, in order to keep up with the pace, must be constantly adapted to offer relevant functional features through early feedback from the multidisciplinary teams. And since Agile methodology involves a high degree of collaboration between the clients and project development team new features and functions can be quickly added.

Transparency:
Due to its iterative native and constant communication between the client and the project development team, the agile model is highly transparent and gives an opportunity for constant review. Thus, it also influences the client-vendor relationship and encourages more engagement between the parties. This in turn leads to a more relevant and successful mobile app development.

New features:
Being a responsive approach where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross functional teams, Agile methodology promotes evolutionary development. It encourages a rapid response to changes in the app economy.

Early delivery:
Most agile development models attempt to mitigate the risk by developing software in short time-boxes, called iterations that last from one week to four weeks. At the end of each iteration, the team re-evaluates the project goals and priorities, this makes it easier to add new features and make the project more relevant. This iterative process eventually results in a faster development cycle.
Since each stage in itself is a miniature software project on its own, it comprises of establishing measurable goals and sharing learnings across the team. This iterative approach, however, build quality into each of the short incremental stages to produce an effective mobile app. Thus, new features are delivered quickly and frequently, this also provides an opportunity for developers to release a beta version.

Cost Predictability and estimation:
The iterative and incremental approach of agile methodologies through the time-box model also helps to accurately estimate the cost of each feature. This further helps in decision making and QC control.

Thus Agile development deliver an iterative approach to mobile app development to build quality into each incremental phase of mobile app development. Thus, agile methodologies offer significant benefits for developers and end users.

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How BDC Helps To Avoid Failures And Make Your Project Successful?

In a rapidly evolving mobile and web technologies space, best development companies play a pivotal role as a strategic partner to their clients. They offer clients the opportunity to leverage their domain expertise and experience to gain a significant competitive edge over competitors. However, in a highly fragmented developer market, finding credible developers with proven, vetted experience and  domain expertise at the right time is a major challenge. Moreover because of the low barrier entry for developers across mobile and web frameworks, there are developers spread across a continuum. The choice of outsourcing development partner is one of the most crucial decision that an appreneur or enterprise must take. Thus, leading software business marketplaces like BDC offer an opportunity for prospective clients to connect with leading developers. As a platform, software business marketplaces list leading mobile app development companies across all major mobile platforms, services and web platforms. Not only do the clients have the opportunity to get a wide view of the developer market, the developers too use this platform to promote themselves. Thus, software business marketplace offers sufficient leverage to both the developers and clients.

The following are the ways that BDC lowers down the risk of getting your project unsuccessful

Research:
BDC as a leading online software business marketplace helps connect businesses with best mobile or web development companies. BDC lists developers across the wide range of mobile & web technologies. It creates a level platform for the clients to search, research, identify and select their best development partner. As prospective clients, you may not be aware of the challenges and crucial yardsticks to be considered when choosing your best development partner. Therefore,the BDC marketplace helps you find developer that meet your specific business needs by listing developers and development companies by major platforms, core practice area, employee strength and location. To assist clients in their research, BDC also provides the market leader listing across all major platform and web frameworks. The market leader listing identifies the top performers that have consistently delivered value to clients on all key performance indicators.

BDC also offers a unique screening too called Company Finder that helps identify most suitable development companies through major filtering values.  Therefore, the BDC reports, blogs and research tool help you choose the powerful development partner by providing independent quantitative and qualitative analysis on leading mobile and web development companies.

Compare:
Prospective clients can screen and compare research results through the Company Comparison tool for optimum selection of resources. Therefore, you can compare development companies between crucial parameters as the average hourly rate, core practice area, number of employees, and year of experience. Further, prospective clients also get an opportunity to see company profile and app portfolio for a holistic selection of the development partner.

Tools as the market leader listing also help in determining the top performing company in a particular industry vertical. Thus through an incisive comparative analysis of mobile and web development companies, BDC offers clients to identify the best development partner.

Selection:
BDC thus helps you easily search your best development company based on your unique business needs. The leading software business marketplace also offers a wide eye view of the marketplace to enable a more well informed decision. Thus, by choosing the right mobile development partner, you not only get a strategic development partner, you also mitigate the risks associated with outsourcing of mobile or IT software development.

To get you best development partner, visit BDC today. Get registered now to leverage BDCs depth research and insightful company comparison tools.

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Outsourcing Stands Not Only For Cheaper Resources But Even Great Quality

With the rapidly evolving mobile technologies and significantly competitive landscape, companies increasingly realize the need to focus on their core competencies. Thus, companies now follow a model of collaboration by taking along other service providers in their quest for building a strong competency. Moreover, they have also begun to outsource the peripheral activities to quality external service providers. Thus, there are two objectives, firstly the affordability and secondly the quality of service. Thus, outsourcing becomes a key strategy for organizations seeking to reduce costs and improve services. Although the opportunity to cut cost is indeed a primary driver, Quality of service now an equally critical factor when choosing an outsourcing partner. Thus, IT software providers are starting to supplement their in-house activities with external service providers to focus on core practice area to boost productivity.

The following are the advantages of choosing quality over just cost as factor for outsourcing

Ability to leverage latest technology and domain expertise:
A vendor who commands domain expertise will have better resources and be updated with the latest technologies and know how in the industry vertical. Moreover, the service provider will offer the best practices in a particular area, which may not necessarily be feasible by the client. The client can also benefit from the use of service provider’s resources, research, tools and infrastructure which otherwise the client would have significantly to invest in.Thus, clients can leverage on outsourcing development partner’s skills, expertise and experience that might not be readily available locally. Moreover bringing in specialists means faster execution and this helps expedites the app development process.

Access to expertise:
The new outsourcing model is in essence one of collaboration and teamwork. By combining the modern technologies of mobile, cloud and web, both service provider and client can pursue enterprise collaboration. This model of team collaboration effort helps deliver more impactful and powerful results that have various trickling benefits. A new research report from Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR) (http://www.internationalbusinessreport.com/index.asp), business leaders are more likely to use outsourcing to access expertise. According to the report, improving efficiencies is among the major drivers for outsourcing. The report also highlights that 46% of BRIC businesses cite better access to expertise as an outsourcing driver, compared with 39% in G7, and 45% cite mitigating risk through using specialist, versus 35% across the G7. Moreover, specialist outsourcing service providers offer access to niche expertise through the use of specialist professionals, streamlined processes and dedicated IT system.

Thus, outsourcing provides both cost saving and access to specialised skills apart from leveraging experience of the outsource partner. To get the top leading outsourcing companies in IT software development and mobile development choose BDC, the leading software business marketplace. BDC lists the top performing mobile application development companies across major frameworks and platforms. They also offer innovative screening tools that help search, compare and select your best outsourcing partner.

What are your thoughts about outsourcing? Does it provide quality work?

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Top 7 Mobile Game Development Tools

Mobile game development has shown a remarkable upward growth trajectory in the past two years. With exciting new mobile technologies there is also a new generation of hardware and software technologies that have dramatically transformed the way we interact with machines and screens. From the launch of game consoles like Sony PS4 and Microsoft xBox to Apple’s iPad Air and latest smart phones, mobile game development is constantly evolving. Recent reports suggests mobile game development is reported to be the fastest growing category in mobile apps. 

According to a Gartner report  the video game marketplace driven by strong mobile gaming will reach $ 111 billion 2015 from just $ 93 billion in 2013. While every developer worth their salt would want to jump in the mobile game development gold rush, the arena presents many challenges. It is the survival of the fittest and the swiftest in the higly competitive and fragmented market. Big budget themselves do not assure a a big successful run in mobile game development, nor does a potent and skilled game developer workforce. With app discovery an equally crucial factor apart from app promotion, mobile game development has come to be perceived as a holistic approach that includes game design, development and promotion.

An entrepreneur or a prospective client has to overcome and manage around these following challenges in their quest for a formidable mobile game development. One that assures to replicate the stellar success of chart toppers like Angry birds, Candy crush, temple run and so forth. Apart from major challenges, it is the choice of mobile game development tools that are pivotal to a mobile game’s success. The following are the top mobile game development tools for 2D and 3D games that will boost your mobile game app development to drive more engagement and revenue. While it’s not that one size fits all, but spread across the crucial domains of game development are the following tools.

Engines and mobile development packages

UNITY:

Unity is a powerful game development ecosystem that developers use to make thousands of mobile video games for mobile devices, consoles and browsers. According to Wiki, “Unity is a cross platform game engine with built in IDE developed by Unity technologies. It is used to develop video games for web plug-ins, desktop, platforms, consoles and mobile devices.”

As a free game development tool, it is affordable and delivers high quality mobile app game development. Unlike other IDE, where it is a pain to import 3D models, Unity helps in the process of binding assets and codes instantly. Unity also offers easy GUI for editing along with high quality graphics. It is fully integrated with a complete set of intuitive tools and rapid work-flows to create interactive 2D and 3D content. 

Unity is unmatched in work-flow and productivity. Unity follows the principle that together people can do more , thus allows the workload to be carried by many. Unity offers great flexibility, multi-platform publishing along with thousands of quality, ready made assets in the assets store and a global knowledge sharing community.

Marmalade:

The Marmalade SDK is the most popular and easy tool to create multi-platform C++ games. It has specifically been designed as a versatile, flexible tool focused on making it as simple as possible to build and share brilliant C++ games. It’s underlying concept of write once and run anywhere is achieved by providing a C/C++ API which acts as an abstraction layer for the core API of each platform. Marmalade gives you the full power of C++ whether you are coding for one platform or many. Marmalade offers performance, openness, flexibility, and great low-level access of C++. Not only does Marmalade accelerate the development of cross platform C++ games. It is fastest way to build cross platform C++ games.

UNREAL ENGINE:

Unreal engine, developed by Epic Games is a top development tool used for today’s most advanced graphic applications. Unreal engine features a high degree of portability and used by many game developers today. Unreal Engine 4 is a professional suite of tools and technologies used for building high quality games across a range of platforms. Unreal Engine helps countless developers create stunning and memorable gaming experiences. Unreal Engine 4’s rendering architecture enables developers to achieve stunning visuals and also scale elegantly to lower-end systems. Unreal Engine technology powers several games as well as real time 3D films, training simulations, visualizations and more. Unreal technologies is integrated with leading technologies and operates across a range of 10 mobile platforms to offer a consist of high quality service.

Project Anarchy:

Project Anarchy is a complete end-to-end game engine and state of art toolset for mobile game development. It is the first specially made package for mobile game developers. Under the hood, Project Anarchy is a fully integrated suite collection of Havok’s powerful and versatile multi-platform game engine. The remarkably cohesive and powerful package is available completely free for mobile developers. The engine provides a clean C++ API and a suite of tools ranging from a WYSIWYG editor to lighting and audio tools. The suite includes Havok Physics, the fastest and most robust collision detection and physical simulation technology available. 

Havok Animation Studio, a state-of-art animation system built for high quality game character development. Finally the Havok AI, a fully featured pathfinding solution. Further, in addition to these core tools, project anarchy offers a growing list of third party game technology as Autodesk Scaleform for developing powerful UI and fmod for creation of playback and audio.

Corona SDK:

The highly popular Corona SDK is the most advanced cross- platform app development to seamlessly publish your mobile game apps across a range of mobile platforms. Based on the concept of write once, run anywhere, Corona SDK relatively runs (fps) frames per second with no lag and adjust seamlessly to different screen resolution. Not only does it offer a fast emulator that help expedite the mobile game development, it has a great emphasis on design. Available in three different versions, Corona SDK is leader for 2D apps and games.

Corona’s extensive API library enables everything from animation to networking with just a few lines of code which helps in faster app development. Corona SDK allows you to publish for iOS, Android and Windows Phone from a single code base. Further, Corona SDK also supports in-app purchases, a variety of ad networks and other monetization models. Corona SDK is thus a multifaceted tool, relevant for indie developers as also game studios.

Engagement and Monetization:

App.io:

App.io’s interactive ad units converts 3x more than regular mobile ads on incentivized networks. They are easy to setup and require no plugins. app.io today has more than 15000 developers using its desktop browser. Developers can create ad units that are basically functional copies of their mobile game app that consumers can play for a set amount of time, before having to download the native application.

Swrve: 

Swrve is a single, integrated platform for driving mobile engagement and monetization within mobile apps. From in-app campaigns and local-time push notifications to real-time responsive UX and A/B testing , Swerve enables you to control every aspect of  mobile experience and understand what engages users. Swerve is easy to integrate, requires less coding, is easy to use and delivering ROI for some of the world’s leading app developers and publishers.

Nextpeer:

Nextpeer is a free multiplayer social SDK for mobile games that enables you to create cross platform, multi-player game. Their unique in-gaming playing capabilities offer opportunity to make your game even more interesting. It offers developer to build a social network channel directly into the game that enables the game to go viral. It further gives your players a fresh gaming experience by playing against different people every time. Thus developers can increase player engagement and boost app discover-ability.

Using these major popular tools, You can accelerate mobile game development process. Finding top mobile game developers is however a major challenge in the highly fragmented developer marketplace. BDC, the leading software business marketplace, provides you the directory of game development companies where a game development company can add their profile and a user can find top mobile game developers for their game idea.

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Extend Your Campaign’s Performance By Leveraging Facebook’s Audience Network

image credit: Facebook

Google is currently the reigning player with its Google AdMob Network and Apple’s iAds platform comes a close second. Even Twitter, with its acquisition of MoPub, the mobile advertising exchange too is about to launch its mobile ad network. But what  brings a disruptive innovation in the mobile advertising ecosystem is the recent Facebook launch of  its much awaited mobile ad network called ‘Audience Network’.

Facebook’s Audience Network allows developers to  run their advertising campaigns using Facebook's massive detailed targeting database. Thus apart from their  own ads, facebook now allows developers and advertisers to run  interstitial ads, banner ads  on third party apps. 

So what is the Facebook Audience Network and how does it help my business?

According to Facebook, it plans to fully capitalise through mobile  on its massive  database network. “ The Audience network allows a new way for advertisers to extend their campaign beyond Facebook and into other mobile apps. Facebook ads work because they are personal,  relevant and easy to measure on both desktop and mobile. The Audience Network brings these same powerful features to additional app based mobile experiences, giving marketers, even more scale for their Facebook campaigns. The Audience network uses the same targeting metrics that are available for Facebook ads today that includes audience segments and advanced app engagement metrics. It uses the same measurement tools as marketers use for facebook ads too.” 

With the Facebook Audience Network, developers and advertisers will be able to leverage facebook’s richness and breadth of data to serve ads according to the types of ads their audience want to see, from the brands they interested and in the format that is best feasible for their apps.  Apart from being a significant revenue pot big money spinner for the social media giant, the Facebook Audience network is likely to cause disruptions in mobile advertising.  With Audience Network, Facebook  brings their own ad targeting data  to third party mobile apps  for developers and advertisers. Thus, they can sell their own ads, target their specific audience, handle analytics and even route payments.

So how does Facebook Audience Network work? And What are its features?

Developers are just required to sign-up to avail the ad targeting tools and analytics that will thereon enable them to target and sell ads to third party mobile apps.Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive  too added at the conference, “the mobile ecosystem needs a way to deliver these kinds of native personalised ads to people, and I  am glad that we can deliver more than one million  active advertisers to your app.”

As explained in the F8 conference, the Audience network delivers ads in three creative formats to help developers/ marketers meet key business objectives like driving app installments and engagements. The three ad formats are IAB Banner, Full screen interstitial and native ad units to drive great performance and deliver the best possible ad experience. Further same images can be used across these three creative ad formats. The best app marketing companies can constantly optimise their ad campaigns by measuring app engagement, conversions and more by using either Facebook’s SDK or working with mobile management partner.

Further given the huge scale and database network resource of Facebook, it is possible they will likely enhance the larger marketing objective soon. Thus, the hyper-competitive mobile advertising arena is set for exciting opportunities ahead. 

Find your best mobile app development partner at BDC, the leading software business marketplace.

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