In case you were wondering, the blog title is a reference to the Mel Brooks’ movie ‘History of the World, Part 1,’ where Mobile Master Moses unveils the 10 Commandments. I always wondered what the other five commandments were on that dropped third stone tablet (I have heard something about certain recipes for celebration feasts). But I digress.
As you develop a comprehensive enterprise mobility strategy for delivering mobile apps to your employees and customers, you need to adhere to ten core imperatives of mobility in order to ensure long-term success. These are the ‘10 Mobile Commandments‘ – fundamental rules, gleaned from our over 10 years of extensive mobile development experience, that any mobility strategy must follow in order to achieve faster time-to-market, maximum reliability and performance, and greater operational effectiveness—all of which leads to happy users!
I’ll discuss each one of these 10 Mobile Commandments in a two part blog series. We’ll start off with the first ‘tablet’ of commandments.
1st Mobile Commandment: Thou shall leverage the power of the Mobile Cloud
The Mobile Cloud is more than just serving up web sites or web apps to a mobile device. It consists of a mobility platform and mobility infrastructure that is offered as an on-demand service. By subscribing to the Mobile Cloud, enterprises can gain faster time-to-market because the Mobile Cloud offers a “plug and play” approach to app development and deployment. In addition, the Mobile Cloud future-proofs your investment and solution because it adapts to ever changing technologies, so you don’t have to.
2nd Mobile Commandment: Thou shall support native, HTML5, mobile Web and SMS apps
Different users need different types of apps, so don’t restrict them to just one or two types. You also need to optimize the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) for each user through the appropriate app type, such as native apps for transaction oriented, heavy use apps and HTML5 web apps for information oriented, lighter use apps. But also keep in mind that in order to reach the widest set of users, mobile web and SMS apps are still important, especially in the consumer world.
3rd Mobile Commandment: Thou shall simplify application development
With the proliferation of device platforms, it is important to leverage an IDE that can write once and deploy to many device platforms. However, don’t sacrifice the UI or UX by making sure that the IDE can support full customization of apps specific to each device platform, rather than use a least common denominator approach which waters down the app UI/UX across all devices. Additionally, ensure that the IDE offers server integration, built-in transaction reliability and security, and configurable localization support to make app development as easy as possible.
4th Mobile Commandment: Thou shall maximize app performance through data compression
On-device and over-the-air (OTA) data compression are crucial to enhancing app performance and usability. You can strive for up to 10X on-device data compression to optimize data access and enhance graphical data display for a better user experience. OTA data compression can also be improved by nearly 50% in some instances to maximize data refresh rates and achieve real-time data streaming, such as for tick-by-tick stock quotes in a trading app.
5th Commandment: Thou shall optimize communications for optimal app responsiveness through network sensing
Wireless network latency is a main frustration for users, and minimizing it will improve usability and drive adoption. Utilizing advanced network sensing capabilities between the device and server will lead to faster and more consistent responses in an occasionally connected environment and over varied wireless signal strengths on 2G and 3G networks. Moreover, by optimizing communications device battery life will also be extended significantly through conservation of radio usage.
The Mobile Commandments are applicable to all mobile solutions. They are fundamental to all best in class mobile apps, not only for optimizing the UI, but also for ensuring a solid foundation for building out both your short and long term enterprise mobility strategies. Demand them of your mobile applications platform – make sure they are there!
Coming up in my next blog post we’ll uncover what the second tablet of the Mobile Commandments reveals to us.
Mobile Master Moses is looking out for you.
Jump to the second set of 5 Mobile Commandments!
∞
Tags: 10 Mobile Commandments, Enterprise Mobility, Jason Wong, MAP, Mobile Application Platform, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices, Mobile Gourmet
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