Mobile Application Development Challenges of 2015 Mobile application development nowadays is a challenging one, while development in this area is full of opportunities and provides a vibrant atmosphere. The onset of many new devices like smartphones to tablets, is creating a new ecosystem for what users can do. The questions that developers need to ask are, what devices the developer should target, what are the simple yet effective applications that one should create and how can anyone secure the data being downloaded and up loaded. The trends seen in this space due to consumerization bears heavily on the application developers. This trend means many facets. Corporate application users may be accessing enterprise data on their own mobile devices or may be ones deployed by their internal IT department. This leaves the application developers not knowing whether they have to use multi-platform or cross-platform development effort. Multiple usage scenarios would mean developers having the difficult task of accommodating challenges such as data access, user experience and security issues. Developers have to first choose the best development environment that would offer a better chance of success. Applying best practices to the development and design of the application will bring best results to the application development process. The best practices would depend on:
Development skills, methodology, design, API management, testing and user experience, feedback mechanism, application analytics, and security. Gartner has made a prediction that by the year 2015, mobile application development projects which target smartphones and tablets will be far greater in number than desktops. The market for enterprise mobility will also grow in number by several billion by 2017. There are around 73% of companies that have built less than 5 applications, while the remaining 27% built none or just one.
These numbers prove that enterprises are struggling to fully comprehend the mobile application space. The challenges in the mobile application development stem from the complexities involved in this space. Creating a well-designed and developed mobile application means ensuring a great user experience as the system evolves. Having said that we can assure you that careful planning and strategizing can lead to significant profits in this industry and excellent results in the form of effective and high performing mobile applications.
Security First one needs to understand that security is a flexible area. The need for security depends largely on the type of application in use. For example, mobile shops or bank applications would need bill payment incorporated through the mobile app and hence these need to have greater security than the informational ones. Security across devices and applications can be a tremendous responsibility to ensure and manage on different devices and so many operating system variants.
Authentication This is the most susceptible part in the app since the user needs to provide user credentials such as login ID and password and in the short time available in the case of rapid development, implementing a secure authentication routine from the beginning can be a challenge to most app developers. The developer needs to integrate the application with the LDAP directory of the enterprise in order to ensure proper authentication. A single sign-on (SSO) across all enterprise application is a must.
Server- Side Validation On the server side, it’s easier to implements validations and checks, rather than on the client side. By this method the app’s performance will not be slowed down by complexity of the validations and the logic will remain up-to-date since it’s on a central server – bug fixes, and security fixes may be applied instantly without needing to update the app since the logic remains in the server.
Encrypting data
All sensitive data needs to remain encrypted and this is more important when it is going to be stored on a mobile device. There is usually a secure container that will protect the enterprise apps in case the device gets lost or compromised.
Identifying Mobile Use Cases Look for mobile use cases that add real value to the enterprise rather than ones like calendar and email on mobile. Although these are also relevant they are really not the important ones. One should look for creating mobile applications that are meant to extend current enterprise applications and processes to mobile devices and make a significant impact on business.
User Experience User experience is one of the major challenges faced by mobile application developers. There are enterprises that treat mobile applications as just another screen they extend enterprise applications to mobile devices simply without understanding that user interactions and behaviour are very different. This will lead to low adoption and usage of the mobile application leading due to the unintuitive and cumbersome user interface. The developer should put in extra effort to ensure that this does not happen.
Development Technology (Native, hybrid and web) There are several views on this and there are articles that pit one against the other of the three development technologies. Companies tend to have a good understanding of these and their advantages and disadvantages as well. In spite of this they tend to have a problem choosing the right one and the one that makes most the sense to them. The uninformed decision can lead to loss in time, money and effort. So better understanding the better choice needs to be made with care.
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