IBM Fuels Next Wave of Mobile Apps for the Enterprise

IBM MobileFirst Portfolio Delivers Secure App Experiences at Enterprise Scale

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Apr 29, 2014, 09:00 ET

LAS VEGAS, April 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a significant expansion of its IBM MobileFirst Application Development portfolio, new industry-specific IBM Ready Apps, and the opening of 18 new IBM MobileFirst studios around the world to help business leaders accelerate mobile initiatives.

The new offerings will help developers from enterprise and born on the web companies quickly design, deliver and deploy secure mobile apps – helping to prevent data leaks and vulnerabilities – with the same speed and simplicity that consumers have come to expect, at enterprise scale.

"As mobile apps become a primary touchpoint with clients, the stakes run high to delight consumers. At the same time, the cost of a poorly designed app can significantly impact both the brand and bottom line," said Marie Wieck, General Manager, IBM MobileFirst. "IBM's mobile platform, apps and studios are designed to help businesses accelerate the adoption of a mobile strategy for business growth."

The new IBM mobile offerings include:

IBM MobileFirst Application Development portfolio: A complete range of tools for developers to create, deploy and manage mobile apps, on-premise or in the cloud. The IBM portfolio, comprised of IBM Worklight, Cloudant and BlueMix technologies and services, enables developers to quickly build and deploy mobile apps.

IBM Worklight is a mobile enterprise app development platform deployed on a client's IT infrastructure, while BlueMix delivers similar capabilities as cloud-based services. Both can be used with Cloudant, IBM's NoSQL distributed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) for mobile apps.

With the new portfolio, IBM has addressed the evolving needs of mobile app developers by redefining the mobile application development platform. This redefinition includes offering enterprise-grade security and integrated quality assurance, so clients can build better, more secure apps faster. The new platform features a new app scanning capability to identify potential data leaks and vulnerabilities.

A new version of IBM Worklight integrates additional mobile app lifecycle capabilities, expanding the definition of a mobile application development platform. IBM Worklight now allows enterprises to optimize mobile user experiences by supporting both native (via SDKs) and hybrid development models, as well as add new capabilities such as the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) protocol for mobile money solutions in emerging markets. The BlueMix Platform-as-a-Service provides composable app creation and deployment capabilities in an open, common environment to reduce complexity. Both IBM Worklight and BlueMix offer mobile quality assurance capabilities to help developers track user experiences and provide sentiment analysis, crowd sourced feedback submissions, and in-context crash reports that identify problems for rapid resolution.

IBM MobileFirst Business Acceleration portfolio offers IBM Ready Apps, a suite of industry-specific, pre-configured apps that can save clients up to 60 percent on time and resources. Whether an organization is just getting started or has multiple successful mobile projects underway, the IBM Ready Apps streamline design and enable organizations to customize their app once and deploy it to any platform or device. Organizations can also tailor the look and feel of apps and add features using built-in integration with common industry APIs.

IBM Ready Apps include those for banking, retail, healthcare, insurance, travel and transportation, government and connected devices. IBM Ready App for Industrial, Connected Home users can control and configure devices throughout their home such as setting the thermostat, arming the in-home alarm system, turning lights on or off, and setting/adjusting appliance settings. In addition, users can also view the amount of energy being used by a specific home device or in an aggregated view of all devices in the home.

IBM Ready App for Retail, In-Store Associate will help retailers benefit from the use of an in-store performance dashboard to track productivity, look up inventory and view store maps to analyze in-store foot traffic to prioritize customer service.

"Mobile banking is changing not only how people bank, but also what they expect from their bank. Our goal is to use technology to make banking simpler, engaging, more relevant and accessible for all Canadians. Developments in mobile banking will continue to transform the industry and people's relationship with their money," said Charaka Kithulegoda, CIO, Tangerine. "IBM will help accelerate our mobile app development and provide value to our clients through richer and more engaging banking experiences."

IBM MobileFirst studios expand IBM's mobile ecosystem, providing clients direct access to local teams of IBM mobile experts including designers, developers, architects and consultants in locations around the globe. Clients can work side-by-side with IBM mobile professionals to quickly conceive, design, build and deploy working prototypes. In addition, clients will be able to access the two new families of solutions announced today and benefit from capabilities ranging from the creation of new apps to transform the retail banking customer experience, to new solutions that can change the face of patient healthcare.

The new IBM MobileFirst studios further the investment in the IBM Interactive Experience Labs and are located in major global cities including Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Bangalore, India; Beijing, China; Boston, Mass.; Chicago, Ill.; Dallas, Texas; Ehningen, Germany; Groningen, Netherlands; La Gaude, France; London, UK; Melbourne, Australia; Mexico City, Mexico; New York City, NY; Sao Paolo, Brazil; Shanghai, China; Tokyo, Japan; and Toronto, Canada.