Emerging Tech: Disaster-Proof Your Mobile App Before Rollout

CIO — So you've created an iPhone enterprise app, and your sales folks and executives are thrilled. They want more functionality, say, tapping into location-based services or—gulp!—using the camera to capture product images. A few people are requesting the app run on their brand new Droids. Now the CEO wants the app on his soon-to-be-available BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

How's your mobile app holding up now? What if it crashes? "If the app fails, which could result from a device, network or software issue, it affects productivity," says analyst Dan Shey of ABI Research. "But the other impact of app failure is on confidence of the worker using the device. " (Maybe confidence in you, too.)

Let's hope you've rigorously tested the app before putting it into the hands of senior executives. Let's hope you have a strategy for porting the app to multiple mobile devices. But chances are you don't. Truth is, there aren't many automated testing solutions for mobile apps on the market today. Consider that DeviceAnywhere, the granddaddy of the automated test platform market, only recently developed a product for testing smartphones and tablets, and it's still in beta.

CIO — So you've created an iPhone enterprise app, and your sales folks and executives are thrilled. They want more functionality, say, tapping into location-based services or—gulp!—using the camera to capture product images. A few people are requesting the app run on their brand new Droids. Now the CEO wants the app on his soon-to-be-available BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

How's your mobile app holding up now? What if it crashes? "If the app fails, which could result from a device, network or software issue, it affects productivity," says analyst Dan Shey of ABI Research. "But the other impact of app failure is on confidence of the worker using the device. " (Maybe confidence in you, too.)

Let's hope you've rigorously tested the app before putting it into the hands of senior executives. Let's hope you have a strategy for porting the app to multiple mobile devices. But chances are you don't. Truth is, there aren't many automated testing solutions for mobile apps on the market today. Consider that DeviceAnywhere, the granddaddy of the automated test platform market, only recently developed a product for testing smartphones and tablets, and it's still in beta.

Mobile Apps: A Wildly Unpredictable, Fragmented Market

The mobile apps movement has taken enterprise IT by surprise. Suddenly, you've got mobile apps pouring into your computing environment, not to mention requests to develop apps in-house. Have faith; you're not alone. DeviceAnywhere's beta customers of its Test Automation for Smartphones product include industry heavyweights such as Oracle (ORCL), Fidelity, Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), Amazon and Disney (DIS).

Banks are building mobile banking apps. Retailers want mobile apps that help workers take inventory. Airlines seek apps that make customer check-in easier. "There is a lot of activity developing apps in the enterprise mobile space," Shey says. "The development is more toward apps used by mobile professionals and include a lot of dashboard applications for CRM and ERP applications."

These apps need to run on a variety of smartphones, operating systems, and now tablets. There is no question smartphones have greased the wheels for tablets to roll into the enterprise. More than 65 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or piloting the iPad, Apple (AAPL) said during its most recent earnings call. "We haven't pushed it real hard in business, and it's being grabbed out of our hands," says CEO Steve Jobs.

Mobile enterprise apps are riding the tablet wave: 30 percent of IT shops are piloting or planning tablet apps, according to a Forrester report. These apps have to work on a plethora of smartphones and tablets. "Every day, a new tablet appears: Cisco Cius, Dell (DELL) Streak, Samsung Galaxy Tab, RIM PlayBook, HP Windows 7 Tablet, the list goes on," writes Forrester analyst Ted Schadler in his blog.