AT&T’s MEAP Helps Enterprises Extend Critical Business Apps to Devices

AT&T just announced that it is offering a managed version of its Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP), which enables enterprises to offer applications across a range of devices, including PCs, smartphones and tablets.

For those interested, MEAPs address some of the difficulties of developing mobile software by managing the diversity of devices, networks and user groups at the time of deployment and throughout the mobile solution’s lifecycle, providing a long-term approach to deploying mobility.

Cross-platform or device considerations – specifically when you consider the fragmentation present across the mobile industry – is one of the big drivers behind using MEAPs. For example, a company can use a MEAP to develop the mobile application once and deploy it to a variety of mobile devices (including smart phones, tablets, notebooks and ruggedized handhelds) with no changes to the underlying business logic. However, testing, customization and monitoring are still required.

According to Gartner, using a common mobility platform like a MEAP brings considerable savings and strategic advantages in this situation, especially with the Rule of Three:

1. Support three or more mobile applications
2. Support three or more mobile operating systems (OS)
3. Integrate with at least three back-end data sources

Mobile World Congress 2010: Did You Survive?

Was Mobile World Congress quieter this year? Not according to the official stats or my aching feet, hands and vocal chords resulting from an extremely busy and fruitful schedule of meetings during the show.

What was very much apparent during the show and echoed by Rob Conway, Head of the GSM Association (which runs MWC) is that 2010 will be the “year of the developer”.

This was firmly established on day one when I picked up the MWC Show Daily and saw the launch of The Wholesale Applications Community which aims to make it easier for developers to build and sell apps “irrespective of device or technology”. However, with so many industry consortiums launched in the past that have aimed to deliver similar benefits (with several of the same members); I am interested in how they will convince developers this will work.

Another key announcement that caught my eye was the launch of Windows Mobile 7 which saw several of the key features being showcased during the event. With some of the technical details and the availability of the handsets being somewhat vague, as well as whether developers will need to recode existing Windows content for the platform, I wondered whether The Guardian was correct in stating that Microsoft may have “pressed the launch button a little early”.

Despite both announcements not quite offering the full story, they both provide further support to the crucial role that mobile (and therefore mobile developers) will play across a range of industries in the year ahead. I’ll be watching both with interest in the coming months and as always welcome any views you may have on these announcements.

Finally, we did manage to have some fun at Mobile World Congress between meetings with the new office Flip which we plan to start using increasingly at events we attend.

Apart from the team interviewing myself about our own announcements at the show (see below), we also took the opportunity to talk to some of our customers and partners during the event and plan to post them in the coming weeks.