Magic Quadrant for Mobile ApplicationDevelopment Platforms23 July 2015 ID:G00270267

Analyst(s): Richard Marshall, Van L. Baker, Ray Valdes, Jason Wong, Adrian Leow

VIEW SUMMARY

The mobile app development platform market continues to grow, evolve and mature in response toescalating customer requirements. We assess the major vendors to enable enterprise IT developers,architects and mobile development leaders to select the right platform partners.

Market Definition/DescriptionThe mobile app development platform (MADP) market offers tools, technologies, components and servicesthat enable enterprise IT developers to create mobile apps for customers, partners and employees. AMADP enables an enterprise to design, develop, test, deploy, distribute, analyze and manage a portfolio ofcross­platform mobile apps on a range of devices running Android and iOS, and addressing therequirements of diverse use cases including external­facing and internal­facing scenarios.

Magic Quadrant

Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Vendor Strengths and CautionsAdobe

NOTE 1PRICING

To provide guidance to organizations about pricing fordifferent MADP offerings, Gartner has defined acoarse­grained three­tier structure, as follows: (1) alow­cost tier of less than $25,000 per year for aninitial mobile development project; (2) a midrange tierof between $25,000 and $100,000 per year; and (3)an enterprise tier of more than $100,000 per year.

NOTE 2VENDORS AND PACKAGES CONSIDERED

Adobe, Alpha Software, Amazon, apiOmat,Appcelerator, Appery.io, AppGyver, Appian, Apple,appsFreedom, Asial Monaca, Axway, Backbase,Bizmatica, Branding Brand, Built.io, Catavolt,ClickSoftware, DSI, EachScape, Embarcadero, FSI,Globo, Good Technology, Google, Gupta, i­exceedAppzillon, IBM, Instant Developer, Kii, Kinvey, Kony,L&T Infotech, Mendix, Mi­Corporation, Microsoft,MicroStrategy, modomodo, Neosperience, Nexaweb,Oracle, OutSystems, Pegasystems, Pivotal, Progress,Red Hat, Reddo Mobility, Retriever, Salesforce, SAP,Sencha, Smartface, Unvired, WaveMaker, WebRatio,Xamarin, Zebra, Zetes.

EVALUATION CRITERIA DEFINITIONS

Ability to ExecuteProduct/Service: Core goods and services offered bythe vendor for the defined market. This includescurrent product/service capabilities, quality, featuresets, skills and so on, whether offered natively orthrough OEM agreements/partnerships as defined inthe market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.

Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment ofthe overall organization's financial health, the financialand practical success of the business unit, and thelikelihood that the individual business unit will continueinvesting in the product, will continue offering theproduct and will advance the state of the art within theorganization's portfolio of products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities inall presales activities and the structure that supportsthem. This includes deal management, pricing andnegotiation, presales support, and the overalleffectiveness of the sales channel.

Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond,change direction, be flexible and achieve competitivesuccess as opportunities develop, competitors act,customer needs evolve and market dynamics change.This criterion also considers the vendor's history ofresponsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativityand efficacy of programs designed to deliver theorganization's message to influence the market,promote the brand and business, increase awarenessof the products, and establish a positive identificationwith the product/brand and organization in the mindsof buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by acombination of publicity, promotional initiatives,thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: Relationships, products andservices/programs that enable clients to be successfulwith the products evaluated. Specifically, this includesthe ways customers receive technical support oraccount support. This can also include ancillary tools,

Adobe has a number of mobile and Web development tools and platforms, as well as design tools thatemphasize HTML5 support. Adobe is especially effective with offerings targeting marketing organizations,and is unique among the vendors in this Magic Quadrant because of its ownership of the PhoneGapframework, the hybrid wrapping technology that many players in the MADP sector use. The AdobePhoneGap framework is also available as an open­source offering through the Apache SoftwareFoundation as Apache Cordova. The company's commercial MADP offering, Adobe Experience Manager(AEM) Apps, is the core of Adobe's MADP, which includes both PhoneGap Enterprise (for utility apps) andAdobe Digital Publishing Solution (DPS; for content­centric apps). The PhoneGap Enterprise offeringbundles some life cycle support, business user and marketer authoring tools, support for native apps, andintegrations with other parts of the Marketing Cloud, including Adobe Analytics. Adobe DPS, integratedwith AEM, offers an easy way for enterprises, using their design and creative teams, to create content­centric mobile apps. Adobe Experience Manager Apps, PhoneGap Enterprise and DPS, in combination withAdobe's market­leading analytics capabilities, enable organizations to create, deliver and measureexperiences across both content­rich mobile apps and the Web with one set of assets.

For enterprise initiatives, the AEM Apps offering provides both PhoneGap Enterprise and DPS capabilitiesthat integrate with the entire AEM platform. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, interms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are in the enterprise tier of more than$100,000 per year (see Note 1).

Adobe Experience Manager Apps supports both when a multiplatform hybrid app and/or native apps arethe required architecture. Additionally, AEM Apps is appropriate for marketers that are delivering content­centric mobile apps and websites. This is especially true for digital marketers focused on campaignmanagement capabilities.

Strengths

Adobe PhoneGap is the de facto industry standard for hybrid wrapping technology, is widely deployedin the market, and has established a rich ecosystem of third­party extensions that add to thecapabilities of the PhoneGap wrapper technology.

Simplicity of development using familiar technologies (HTML, CSS, TypeScript and JavaScript) withchoice of frameworks (almost any JavaScript that can run in a Web browser) can lead to a quickstart for simple apps.

Adobe has enjoyed significant success in publishing and customer­facing solutions, and has toolsthat are well­suited to business and digital marketing professionals.

Cautions

The hybrid wrapper approach, which is one of the options offered by Adobe, has limitations in termsof performance and fidelity when used in the most straightforward manner. These limitations can bemitigated through native plug­ins and additional native­code development. Use of the ApacheCordova open­source solution can require significant effort on the part of developers to find and testextensions and third­party JavaScript libraries that address the additional capabilities required forsome app development.

The Adobe mobile app development toolchain is less complete than other competitors in thesegment, and connectors for integration with enterprise back­end systems are limited.

PhoneGap has attained widespread adoption among developers focused on customer­facing mobileapps, but Adobe has limited relationships with IT development organizations focused on developingbusiness­to­employee (B2E) mobile apps.

AppceleratorAppcelerator is a pioneer in modern cross­platform mobile development. It has built a community of over600,000 developers for its free open­source Titanium offering, and it is seeking to leverage this developerbase to advance its more recent enterprise­oriented Appcelerator Platform.

Appcelerator pursues a broader­scope, platform­centric approach to the enterprise market. Acquisitionsand partnerships have added breadth and depth to the initial offering, which was built on a JavaScriptframework that compiled to native Android and iOS apps. Additions include cloud­based mobile back­end­as­a­service offering, testing and analytics, all of which can be leveraged for both apps built withAppcelerator, as well as apps built using Objective­C on iOS and Java on Android. The result is a relativelywell­integrated and cohesive set of capabilities.

Appcelerator's pricing strategy is twofold: maximize adoption through free or low­cost pricing of open­source Titanium, and build sustainable business through enterprise­level pricing of Appcelerator Platform.Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related costs,are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year) for Titanium­based projects, and morethan that for platform projects (see Note 1).

Appcelerator Platform is suited for a portfolio of enterprise apps internally and externally facing thatrequire different approaches (hybrid, Web or native) connecting with a robust set of back­end services.

Strengths

Appcelerator offers a full portfolio of mobile back­end services and front­end tools and frameworksthat can address diverse scenarios.

The company has demonstrated the ability to respond quickly in a cohesive, integrated manner to achanging market.

Although the vendor is relatively small, it has been able to achieve a position of prominence in thedynamic and rapidly evolving MADP marketplace, as evidenced by showing up regularly on shortlistsand proofs of concept.

customer support programs (and the quality thereof),availability of user groups, service­level agreementsand so on.

Operations: The ability of the organization to meetits goals and commitments. Factors include the qualityof the organizational structure, including skills,experiences, programs, systems and other vehiclesthat enable the organization to operate effectively andefficiently on an ongoing basis.

Completeness of VisionMarket Understanding: Ability of the vendor tounderstand buyers' wants and needs and to translatethose into products and services. Vendors that showthe highest degree of vision listen to and understandbuyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhancethose with their added vision.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set ofmessages consistently communicated throughout theorganization and externalized through the website,advertising, customer programs and positioningstatements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products thatuses the appropriate network of direct and indirectsales, marketing, service, and communicationaffiliates that extend the scope and depth of marketreach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and thecustomer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approachto product development and delivery that emphasizesdifferentiation, functionality, methodology and featuresets as they map to current and future requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of thevendor's underlying business proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategyto direct resources, skills and offerings to meet thespecific needs of individual market segments, includingvertical markets.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary andsynergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capitalfor investment, consolidation, defensive or pre­emptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to directresources, skills and offerings to meet the specificneeds of geographies outside the "home" or nativegeography, either directly or through partners,channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for thatgeography and market.

Cautions

Appcelerator is relatively small compared with established enterprise software vendors, posingchallenges for selling at the strategic level, especially to organizations that don't track the mobilesector closely and look to established vendors.

Appcelerator has lost momentum and mind share among the independent developers that were amainstay of its bottom­up strategy.

Appcelerator's technology is code­centric, emphasizing programming in JavaScript on both client andserver. This emphasis on JavaScript can be perceived as a negative by some enterprise appdevelopment organizations whose teams lack depth in JavaScript, and which prefer approaches thatminimize coding and are familiar with traditional enterprise server­side languages (Java and .NET).

AppianPrimarily known as a business process management (BPM) software vendor with offerings that alsosupport data­driven and case­management­style applications, Appian has adopted a unified platformapproach, allowing a single process definition to be delivered across a range of devices without additionaldevelopment.

Appian's enterprise mobility platform extends the reach of its existing BPM product to iOS, Android andWindows Phone devices, as well as mobile Web and early support for wearables. This allows forms andprocesses to be delivered consistently across all employee touchpoints. Processes are delivered on mobilevia proprietary container apps that include offline capabilities and built­in encryption.

Apps are supported by a broad range of cloud­based services, including analytics, location and storage, butwith the notable exception of push notifications. APIs are available to expose these functions via REST forconsumption by custom apps. The Appian development process is supported by a good range of test andapplication life cycle management (ALM) capabilities, including a test cloud, user experience (UX) testsupport and continuous integration.

Appian's licensing objective is to include mobile as part of all its engagements. This is supported by arange of cost models based on monthly per named user, per occasional user and app­specific user fees.These user­based prices include both front­end and back­end services. Typical project size is at theenterprise end of the scale (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).

Appian is best suited for process­oriented organizations looking to deploy those processes as apps across arange of devices, including Web and desktop, and is also suited for data­driven and event­driven apps.Appian's unified approach reduces the risk of process fragmentation due to implementation variations, butdoes not necessarily allow per­device optimization.

Strengths

Appian offers a comprehensive set of unified capabilities for organizations wishing to developprocess­based apps.

A visual composition approach helps process experts work with IT toward the delivery of mobileapps, eliminating the need for coding and reducing app management overheads.

Appian's proprietary container approach provides native performance due to high­level processinterpretation, as well as providing agility via the easy updating of the process definitions.

Cautions

While Appian has invested heavily in mobile and data­centric capabilities, Appian is better suited forprocess­centric and case­management­driven apps.

While the unified approach is excellent for enterprises that require broad reach, there are mobile­specific optimized features not available, such as offline capabilities and push notifications.

Appian's user­based pricing model means that organizations with large numbers of employees needto be careful in understanding usage predictions to keep costs under control.

BackbaseBackbase's initial focus was UI (Ajax library), which broadened to "lean portal" technology and MADPs.The current core offering is the Backbase Customer Experience Platform (CXP), which combinespresentation management with content management, customer analytics, personalized campaignmanagement, forms management and mobile platform support. In addition to CXP, Backbase has avertical offering targeting the banking and financial services sector.

Backbase CXP offers a set of omnichannel experience management capabilities (security, enterpriseintegration, cross­device rendering, content management, personalization, targeting, messaging,publishing, orchestration, and so on) in a single, fully integrated platform. It is based on lean architectureprinciples (widgets, Web­oriented architecture [WOA], REST, mobile­OS­agnostic, mobile back end as aservice [MBaaS] API gateway). CXP Manager offers a GUI for business users without programming skills toedit mobile apps, including functions such as content editing, layout and navigation, setting targetingrules to run sales campaigns and integrated analytics, and A/B multivariate testing.

On the client side, there is the Backbase Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK). The Backbase MobileSDK is a collection of components allowing organizations to quickly build mobile apps based on out­of­the­box templates and apps (widgets). These are fully functional apps that in most cases are a starting pointfor building (or extending) mobile apps. Among others, the mobile SDK acts as a bridge between CXPServer (MBaaS) and the mobile app. The mobile SDK also contains tools to build, test, deploy and manageapps. The server side has CXP Server with robust (micro)services for security and permissionmanagement, enterprise app integration, content management, personalization and targeting, workflow,publishing, and editorial management. All CXP Server services are exposed via a robust API gateway

delivering REST endpoints.

Backbase CXP enterprise licensing has two options — unlimited (server and client) instances capped onthe number of registered app users or an unlimited end­user license capped on the number of CXP serverinstances. Data center and cloud pricing is fee per user, per month. Typical costs for an initial mobiledevelopment project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at theenterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 per year).

Backbase CXP is well­suited for midsize to large organizations in any vertical that want to implement anomnichannel experience with a strong background in prebuilt solutions for financial institutions.

Strengths

Apps built on top of the CXP platform, regardless of the channel, are a collection of miniapps(widgets) hosted in a container (for example, mobile app or website). A benefit of this is that itallows easy reuse of functionality between channels to create a true omnichannel solution.

CXP integration services can take care of loosely coupled integration between apps/widgets andvarious back­end systems. This allows agile development teams to work on separated functionality,test each component separately, and distribute mobile apps almost independent of each other.

Backbase divides the app life cycle into two tracks: the development track and the business track.The business track is enabling business users to update content on a daily basis without having toredeploy the app. In order to have content management as streamlined as possible, this track iswell­defined and less flexible than the development track.

Cautions

Customer feedback has indicated that content reuse of responsive widgets works well, butperformance optimization of the widgets has been an issue in some instances, as the company hasfocused resources on new features and its Launchpad — a set of prebuilt templates, widgets andapps.

Backbase has a relatively small presence and ecosystem outside of the U.S. and Europe, so someself­supporting customers — those not relying on third­party professional services — report subparsupport and relative lack of insight or influence in Backbase's roadmap and development.

Backbase's lack of a track record in some industries, combined with its low profile compared withportal leaders, limits its appeal to customers outside the financial services market.

ClickSoftwareClickSoftware is a leading independent vendor of mobile workforce management solutions for technicianand field­resource­heavy industries, such as communications, utilities, energy, healthcare and capitalequipment. The company has recently moved into private ownership under funds managed by FranciscoPartners.

ClickSoftware's mobile app development platform includes visual forms build, which can use componentsfrom an open library, and an enterprise­focused runtime platform that includes data synchronization androle­based security. While often used to customize ClickSoftware's packaged solutions, it can also createcompletely new mobile apps.

The ClickAppStore offers prebuilt apps that integrate with other capabilities within the overall solution.Innovative capabilities are evident in ClickSoftware's AI­based ClickButler agent, the Shout socialtechnology and extensive use of gamification.

The ClickSoftware platform's data integration capabilities are robust for an independent vendor, havingbeen proven in the field through years of enterprise deployments. Client apps are based on an HTML5­hybrid architecture. ClickSoftware was one of the first mobile workforce app vendors to offer cloud­basedhosting options for its mobile middleware.

ClickSoftware offers a variety of licensing options, including SaaS, perpetual licenses and transaction­based. Pricing strategy is to build a sustainable software tool/platform business through base solutionstargeting specific roles, to which individual apps can be added, with different pricing models (per­usersubscription fees and transaction­based fees). Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, interms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the midrange portion of thespectrum (more than $25,000 per year and less than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).

ClickSoftware's platform primarily meets the B2E needs of organizations that require custom mobileworkforce management apps. ClickSoftware's extended platform capabilities, such as collaborativeworkflow or intelligent agent technology, can be of wider interest for additional departments and roles inan organization.

Strengths

Continued innovation is apparent in the company's offerings, including early support for wearables,and building on existing features such as the collaborative workflow engine, social capabilities,intelligent automated agents and gamification.

The company continues to develop its strong strategic partnerships with SAP, Salesforce and IBM, aswell as offering wide geographic coverage and a growing network of service partners.

ClickSoftware was one of the earliest tool companies to recognize the need for the rapiddevelopment of functionally rich mobile workforce apps. Existing integration to its workforceplatform reduces the need for development in field service organizations.

Cautions

ClickSoftware's mobile tools currently are best suited for use with its packaged workforcemanagement solutions. Organizations must confirm that the platform will provide the features andlicensing models needed for general mobile development.

While ClickSoftware is strong in innovation, it is weak in some areas, including app life cyclemanagement and consumer apps.

As with all smaller, independent vendors, potential customers should ensure that ClickSoftware'sglobal support options are aligned with their requirements.

DSIDSI focuses on the needs of mobility in the supply chain processes of businesses. The DSI MobileEnterprise Platform integrates with existing enterprise systems to mobilize and optimize supply chainfunctions, while preserving data and process integrity across existing systems of record.

DSI's metadata­driven development approach supports multichannel development, managing designlayouts for multiple device form factors. The platform offers a visual development tool that creates appsand websites on Windows Phone/Windows Mobile/Windows 8, iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices. DSIalso offers a set of prebuilt business process flows, or accelerators, for apps such as mobile inventory, fieldservice, field sales, procurement and delivery. DSI has also opened up its platform to support any front­end SDK to develop the mobile client using its open APIs. The company also acquired RareWire, a smallmobile software and services vendor, to leverage its UX expertise and proprietary tools to address cross­platform consumer­grade mobile app use cases.

DSI offers transaction­based connectivity into major systems of record (SAP, Oracle E­Business Suite, JDEdwards EnterpriseOne, JD Edwards World, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Infor Lawson) with validated andcertified mobile­optimized functional interfaces. In addition, DSI supports RESTful APIs, SOAP­based Webservices and use of custom connectors. Many DSI deployments feature mobile­to­machine integration,incorporating industrial equipment such as automated scales and conveyor belts. DSI offers private,hybrid and public cloud (via Amazon) deployment options, but the vast majority of customers aredeployed on­premises.

DSI's on­premises licensing model is based on app servers for development and deployment, while itscloud­based platform is licensed on a per­user subscription basis. There is no charge associated with thedevelopment tooling itself. DSI also requires licensing of the requisite connector interfaces into back­endsystems. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees andrelated payments to the vendor, are in the enterprise tier of pricing (more than $100,000 per year; seeNote 1).

DSI is well­suited for building and operating custom mobile apps for B2E/B2B scenarios, particularly forsupply chain data­driven processes, including those with significant mobile­to­machine requirements.

Strengths

DSI's rapid, visual development tool provides customer self­sufficiency, allowing nondevelopers tobuild and maintain rich mobile apps without deep technical knowledge or support of third­partydevelopers.

DSI offers an extensive set of solution accelerators that can significantly reduce the time and risk ofdeploying tailored, mobile­optimized supply chain solutions, particularly for manufacturing, energy,utilities, retail and healthcare.

DSI provides one of the most robust back­end integration capabilities available in the MADP market,with many independent software vendors (ISVs) reselling connectors. Its Cloud Connect wizard toolsignificantly cuts installation and configuration time.

Cautions

DSI's strength in focusing on mobile supply chain is also its weakness in terms of being a broad, all­purpose MADP. Although it has started to gain traction with building consumer­facing apps usingWire, the core DSI platform still lacks some functionality to provide the highest­quality consumer­grade mobile experiences.

DSI has a relatively small presence and ecosystem outside of the U.S., so finding service deliverypartners may be a challenge for some customers not in the U.S.

DSI uses a proprietary metadata­driven container approach to build apps, and its acquisition ofRareWire introduces another proprietary XML­based scripting language called Wire language.However, Wire is extensible with JavaScript today, and DSI intends to embrace HTML5 in the future.

EmbarcaderoEmbarcadero has multiple product lines that target enterprise developers, architects and databasedesigners.

Its RAD Studio XE8 is an integrated development environment (IDE) and app framework that developershave used to build Windows apps using the Object Pascal and C/C++ languages that also comes withsupport for HTML5 and JavaScript. RAD Studio supports natively compiled apps that can be deployed toiOS, Android and Windows tablets (Microsoft Surface Pro), as well as desktop Windows and Mac OS X. TheFireUI feature allows developers to create user interfaces across multiple devices using a master form toshare all user interface code, then optimize inherited views for each target platform and device. Views canbe customized for each target platform, including Windows desktop, Surface Pro Tablet, Mac desktop,iPhone, iPad, Android tablets, and smartphones and wearables such as smartwatches.

RAD Studio provides true compilation to machine code without a virtual machine layer or middleware,unlike most other multiplatform approaches. It uses established languages (primarily C++ but alsoPascal) that many enterprise developers are familiar with, providing high performance at runtime and also

during the development cycle.

Embarcadero offers two middleware solutions for on­premises or virtual private cloud hosting to createand manage remote APIs — one is SDK­based and the other contains prebuilt services with a runtimefee. Embarcadero also provides REST client connectors to connect to virtually any back end.

Embarcadero's pricing strategy is to build a sustainable packaged software tool business through low­costpricing and online sales to developers. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms ofdirect licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the low end of the spectrum (less than$25,000 per year; see Note 1).

Enterprises with B2C and employee­facing cross­platform apps that require high performance, that needto leverage existing C, C++ or Pascal skills, and that can run on both desktop and mobile platformsshould consider RAD Studio.

Strengths

RAD Studio XE8 has a focus on the Internet of Things (IoT) by introducing features such as AppTethering, Bluetooth LE, and proximity­awareness beacons to add proximity and location awarenessto existing apps.

True compilation, combined with a fast compiler, provides both high performance at runtime and arapid development cycle.

Embarcadero tools provide multidevice form­factor preview, which features live previews for mobileplatforms (for example, iOS and Android) and desktop platforms (for example, 64­bit Windows andMac OS X).

Cautions

The Embarcadero offerings are missing some aspects of full life cycle support, such as device cloudtesting and a mobile back­end­as­a­service offering. Appmethod and RAD Studio XE8 do supportintegration through REST to leading MBaaS services, such as from Kinvey.

Some customers have expressed issues with the lack of supporting information for the componentsEmbarcadero supplies, and the only way to know which one is right is to spend hours experimentingwith each one. Some components have been found to contain property and method design errors.

RAD Studio has had limited adoption, and, therefore, finding mobile app developers that haveexperience with these tools may be difficult.

GloboGlobo provides a range of enterprise mobility solutions beyond MAPDs, including an enterprise mobilitymanagement (EMM) solution that is included on the relevant Magic Quadrant.

The GO!AppZone platform contains tools for the creation of native and proprietary container­based appsvia GO!AppZone Studio. This uses HTML5 for cross­platform development, including offline capability andbuilt­in FIPS­140­2 validated security. SDKs are provided to enable native plug­ins for Android, iOS andWindows Phone. Development is accelerated by GO!Apps configurable industry­specific app templates.Globo's global network of development partners can and does develop additional GO!Apps templates.

Back­end options include cloud and on­premises options via GO!AppZone Deploy and GO!EnterpriseServer, respectively. These offer MBaaS capabilities such as integration, authentication, push notifications,basic analytics, logging and data synchronization to support the app offline capability, as well as user andapp management. These capabilities are linked to the GO!Enterprise Server, but do not require it.

Globo offers a variety of licensing options combining its products, including a combined license for both theEMM and MADP products. Some components are offered on a freemium basis, encouraging adoption;others are available with subscription or perpetual­basis scaling with the number of devices used. Back­end products include a variety of options, including volume, device and server options. Engagementpricing is typically in the midsize and enterprise tiers (greater than $25,000 per year; see Note 1).

Globo and its GO! family of products is best suited to companies looking to use a single vendor'stechnology to build and manage a portfolio of secure apps integrated with back­end systems.

Strengths

Globo offers an end­to­end mobility solution for those looking for a single vendor covering MADPsand EMM.

Strong, certified security and offline capabilities are included as part of the base package.

Extensive back­end capabilities can be delivered in the cloud, on­premises or hybrid.

Cautions

While GO!Apps can be configured, Globo does not yet offer true rapid mobile app development(RMAD).

Software development life cycle (SDLC) capabilities are currently limited.

While GO!AppZone can be used to build initial stand­alone apps, best value will be achieved whenused to build a portfolio of apps.

IBMIBM has integrated and packaged several acquired companies and technologies under the MobileFirstPlatform, notably Worklight (2012) and Cloudant (2014).

The IBM MobileFirst Platform has transitioned to emphasize an open architecture that enables developersto build apps using its Eclipse­based development tool or any other front­end development tool, includingXcode and Android SDK. It includes platform services that can be leveraged via SDK and API and, bybuilding on its platform and connecting with its Bluemix MBaaS, the apps can leverage MobileFirst's scale,security, integration and management capabilities. The MobileFirst Platform provides SDKs for its MBaaSfor front­end development tools, and it has also partnered with several popular development tool vendors,including Xamarin, jQuery and Drifty (Ionic). Additionally, IBM offers mobile solutions that embed theMobileFirst Platform software, including Maximo and MobileFirst for iOS apps developed as part of thepartnership with Apple.

Bluemix MBaaS services can be consumed in any app through APIs and enable the addition of capabilitiessuch as cloud data store, notifications, workflow and authentication, plus specific iOS services for the appsbuilt with Apple. Through its SDKs and those of partners, IBM enables integrations, mobile services andhosting for customers moving to the cloud. Bluemix runs on IBM's own global scalable SoftLayer cloudplatform, and an on­premises version called Bluemix Local.

For the MobileFirst Platform software, IBM charges client device and app license fees, plus softwaresubscription and support fees. Bluemix cloud services are available with both pay­as­you­go andenterprise licenses. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing feesand related payments to the vendor, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 peryear; see Note 1).

IBM MobileFirst is best­suited for midsize and large development organizations that want a front­end­agnostic MADP approach to developing Web, hybrid and native apps across multiple device platforms.

Strengths

IBM is a significant supporter and contributor to open­source activities and widely uses openstandards in its platform, such as HTML5, Apache Cordova and Node.js.

The MobileFirst Platform offers one of the most comprehensive portfolios of ALM, testing, securityand MBaaS capabilities.

MobileFirst offers a strong and growing set of prebuilt, customizable apps and iOS­specific back­endservices for organizations that are iOS­centric. However, overall adoption of these apps still appearsto be low.

Cautions

Enterprises looking for rapid app development for simple apps may find that the platform is morethan they need in terms of capabilities and expense. Gartner data indicates dissatisfaction fromsome clients on platform licensing as projects expand. Enterprise buyers should identify theappropriate IBM licensing terms for projects to keep costs at a manageable level.

Since IBM has opened up MobileFirst to partner with and support multiple front­end developmenttools, customers need to ensure that the Eclipsed­based hybrid app development tool continues tokeep pace functionally, such as improving its RMAD capabilities.

While IBM is developing significant MBaaS and cloud capabilities in Bluemix, these are still new andunproven.

KonyKony offerings span the full SDLC, from design to enterprise mobility management. The Kony platformincludes a set of foundational services that can be deployed on­premises, in a hosted private cloud or inthe public cloud. It offers scalable cloud services that can be adjusted on demand with testing tools andanalytics embedded in the platform.

The platform consists of three systems. First, the Kony Visualizer offers design capabilities integrated intothe development environment and includes real­time preview capabilities and requirements­gatheringcapabilities. Second, Kony Studio includes visual developer tools that can import UX designs from KonyVisualizer and allows developers to add cross­platform JavaScript code and to connect to back­end APIs.Third, Kony Management offers capabilities for deployment and management of mobile devices and apps,including basic device management, role­based enrollment and app deployment.

Kony MobileFabric is a hosted set of MBaaS offerings that can be used by any client­side developmenttools, including native and hybrid. Kony MobileFabric offers REST APIs and SDKs for services includingidentity, line­of­business integration, basic API management, data orchestration, offline datasynchronization and location­based messaging.

Kony has introduced a set of quick­start templates and representative task­based apps for the enterprise.These include Kony Sales (for sales force automation), Kony Services (for field technicians), Kony HR (forworkforce management), Kony Healthcare (for member management) and Kony Retail Banking.

Kony's pricing strategy is to build a sustainable software tool/platform business through different pricingmodels (session­based pricing for B2C and user­based subscriptions for B2E). Typical costs for an initialmobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are atthe enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).

Kony is well­suited for projects in which large, diverse device populations must support a range ofcomplex, long­lived apps needing strong integration with enterprise back ends. Enterprises that need tointegrate with SAP and Oracle back ends and want a flexible development, deployment and managementplatform will find a good fit with Kony.

Strengths

With a focus on full enterprise life cycle and multichannel enablement, Kony continues to develop

into a strong enterprise player.

Kony keeps up with the high rate of evolution in the mobile space. The company has been able toleverage its offshore development centers to maintain a steady flow of product releases andenhancements, making use of a larger developer head count than competitors.

The direction of Kony MobileFabric and Kony Apps is consistent with evolving enterprise needs, andreflects trends in the MADP sector as well as helping to shape those trends.

Cautions

Gartner has heard concerns from some Kony clients that the platform becomes expensive as mobiledevelopment efforts grow, although use of Kony MobileFabric offers a lower­priced entry point forsmaller projects.

Enterprises looking for rapid app development of a few simple apps may find Kony is targeted atmore advanced use cases and hence is more than they need in terms of complexity and expense.

Kony's overall growth is partially dependent on its ability to deliver apps in conjunction with itsprofessional services, causing some friction with Kony's channel partners, but recent changes mayameliorate this situation.

MendixMendix is one of the rare companies that recognizes the rise of digital business and provides tools tosupport that initiative across all channels. The Mendix App Platform enables rapid, model­drivendevelopment of hybrid apps within the context of a larger Mendix platform. Process­based models arecompiled to HTML5 and execute within the Apache Cordova container. The codeless development processcan be extended with code extensions in Java, JavaScript and Scala as required.

Describing its product as cloud­native, Mendix is a member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation. In additionto the hosted Mendix App Platform, there are on­premises and hybrid options. Data integration facilitiesinclude interfaces to common back­end systems including SAP and Salesforce, as well as Open DataProtocol (OData), SOAP, REST and, unusually, Java Message Service (JMS). Other capabilities include pushnotifications, local storage and identity management, but do not include any analytics.

Mendix aims at the upper middle enterprise market as a broad platform for innovation and digitalbusiness. This means that engagements are typically in the midsize and enterprise tiers (greater than$25,000 per year; see Note 1).

The Mendix App Platform is most suitable for companies looking to adopt a cross­platform, cross­channelapp. Organizations with a strong cloud focus will find Mendix's application platform as a service (aPaaS)credentials particularly of interest.

Strengths

Mendix software and consultancy together offer strong strategic consultancy support for businessinnovation around continuous interaction.

Model­driven development allows developers and business analysts to create apps without codingwhile retaining a rigorous approach.

Mendix offers cloud­native architecture and strong aPaaS support, supported by the membership ofthe Cloud Foundry Foundation.

Cautions

The Mendix App Platform currently has no built­in mobile analytics capabilities, so is not suitable formonitoring user activity and process efficiency. Mendix addresses these needs via integration withthird­party products including New Relic.

The Mendix App Platform is not recommended for mobile­only or single app development.

Mendix offers limited security certifications, but has ISAE 3402 Type II service compliancecertification, including security auditing.

MicrosoftMicrosoft is taking its first steps into a multiplatform world. Microsoft Azure App Service provides cloud­hosted back­end services for mobile apps on multiple client­side operating systems (iOS, Android andWindows), with endpoints for a variety of architectural approaches (native iOS/Objective­C, nativeAndroid/Java, Xamarin, HTML5 with PhoneGap/Cordova). Microsoft continues to evolve its cross­platform,standards­compliant, and open­source capabilities via additions to Visual Studio. In addition to support forbuilding Universal Windows applications, Visual Studio now has built­in support for creating cross­platformapplications using HTML5 (Cordova), C# (Xamarin), or cross­platform C++ by including support for Clang,GCC and GDB. Further embracing the cross­platform strategy, Microsoft also introduced Visual StudioCode, a code editor that runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Microsoft also offers an emulator for theAndroid operating system.

Microsoft has also added capabilities to import and edit Java and Objective­C code and strengthened itspartnership with Xamarin, incorporating Xamarin's cross­platform extension for Visual Studio into thestandard setup. This extension of Microsoft tools to support a single development environment and linksto enterprise SDLC and ALM are likely to prove attractive for C# and .NET developers.

With Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova, developers can build cross­platform hybrid apps written withHTML5, JavaScript and CSS that can be deployed to iOS, Android and Windows. Hybrid apps in VisualStudio can also be created using TypeScript, a strongly typed extension of JavaScript that makes it easierto reason about large­scale applications. Developing mobile applications targeting iOS and Android withC#/.NET requires tools from vendor partner Xamarin.

Microsoft Azure has a leading position in cloud platforms and, with Azure App Service, growing adoption inthe enterprise MBaaS category. Azure App Service includes capabilities such as push notifications, offlinesync, identity management, SQL and NoSQL database integration, social media integration, location, andbroad support for integration of multiple SaaS vendors in addition to enterprise systems of record. VisualStudio Online facilitates collaboration of mobile development efforts and offers ALM support across a rangeof development tools and platforms, including iOS and Android.

Microsoft's pricing strategy is similar to other native platform owners: Grow the ecosystem of appsthrough low­cost pricing and open­source delivery of developer tools, and gain revenue through per­appcommission on the now merged Windows Store sales and metered usage of cloud services. Typical costsfor an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to thevendor, are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $10,000 per year; see Note 1).

Microsoft's mobile platform is a solid choice for enterprises with a significant investment and skills in theMicrosoft ecosystem: Visual Studio, .NET and Windows­based back­end systems. Microsoft also supportsNode.js on the back end. Microsoft Azure is a strong contender for companies looking for platform­independent, cloud­based mobile back­end solutions.

Strengths

The long­standing relationships that Microsoft has established with enterprise IT departments offersMicrosoft enterprise developers a flexible platform, especially when considered in conjunction withthe now integrated Xamarin plug­in for Visual Studio.

Microsoft has become more open in delivering mobile app development by supporting iOS andAndroid apps in Azure App Service and as supported code bases in Visual Studio. As mentioned,building these apps may require the Xamarin plug­in, which offers cross­compile capabilities for C#apps, but other approaches are also available. Microsoft also officially supports the Apache Cordovacontainer and the use of JavaScript/HTML5 for hybrid app development and Titanium.

Microsoft Azure is a leading cloud platform, and Microsoft Azure App Service offers a range of servicesfor mobile app development (push notifications, identity management, database integration andsocial media integration) in a context familiar to enterprise IT teams, making it an easier transitionto the cloud for Microsoft­centric organizations.

Cautions

Microsoft has broadened its support for multiplatform development during the past year, building onthe Azure services that were in place since 2013, but this is new territory for Microsoft and it is toosoon to say that it will attract large numbers of cross­platform developers to its developmentplatform beyond its existing Windows developer base.

Microsoft is still focused on the Windows universal app strategy, and this does not easily expand toother operating systems and still may require the Xamarin tool for cross­platform development.

The unification of the Microsoft platform across all device form factors does not truly arrive until thelaunch of Visual Studio on 20 July 2015 and Windows 10 on 29 July 2015.

MicroStrategyAs part of its MicroStrategy Analytics Platform for business intelligence (BI), MicroStrategy offersMicroStrategy Mobile, a MADP supporting the creation, deployment and measurement of mobile apps.

MicroStrategy Mobile offers a metadata­driven development approach that uses a proprietary multiappcontainer with native, visual and nonvisual components for each target device platform (iOS, Android andBlackBerry 10). The platform provides a no­code, visual tool to compose and configure UI and functionalelements, as well as to tune the layout for the necessary screen sizes and form factors. MicroStrategyalso offers a variety of tools within the platform, including administration, testing, analyzing userbehavior, app performance, app issues and object management. Customers can further customize andintegrate with third­party solutions through its mobile SDK tool.

MicroStrategy Mobile takes advantage of all the prebuilt connectors from the main Analytics Platform. Itsupports bidirectional connectivity using SQL, HiveQL, MDX and XQuery. MicroStrategy certifies over 100common and uncommon databases, operational (CRM, ERP) and information systems. Data connectorsare optimized for each source, and allow queries to achieve high performance.

MicroStrategy Mobile is licensed based on per named user or per CPU. MicroStrategy also provides theoption of per­app pricing instead of per user. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, interms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the enterprise end of thespectrum (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).

MicroStrategy's MADP offers a strong metadata­driven declarative development tool and tight integrationwith MicroStrategy Analytics Platform for rapidly building apps that need to leverage BI data.

Strengths

MicroStrategy offers a no­code and drag­and­drop design canvas that enables nondeveloper users tobuild apps quickly. It also contains a library of mobile­optimized and touch­enabled widgets that letapp designers easily configure online/offline transactions, embedded multimedia and datavisualizations.

MicroStrategy Mobile can easily create mobile BI apps, as any existing reports and dashboards fromthe MicroStrategy Analytics Platform can be quickly mobilized.

MicroStrategy's metadata­driven development and deployment approach gives app builders theability to instantly push out new content and app updates without any code recompilation, while stillretaining native app capabilities, such as GPS, mapping, camera and offline.

Cautions

MicroStrategy Mobile is built to run with MicroStrategy Analytics Platform, so it is not ideal forcustomers not requiring the analytics server capabilities.

MicroStrategy's proprietary, no­code­only approach to app development limits the capabilities of theplatform to APIs that MicroStrategy supports, and is not well­suited for use cases with a high degreeof customization.

MicroStrategy has not opened up its mobile platform, like other MADPs, to add MBaaS functions andsupport third­party front­end mobile app development tools and broader app use cases.

OracleOracle has played a comparatively minor role in the mobile app development landscape; however, thisstarted to change with the launch of a series of completely new mobile products. These include OracleMobile Cloud Service (MCS), a solid MBaaS solution and analytics package, and updates to the MobileApplication Framework (MAF). Its rapid mobile app development tool, Oracle Mobile Application Accelerator(MAX) will launch in late 2015 along with additional enhancements to MAF and MCS. The updated MAF isused in an increasing number of publicly available packaged mobile apps built by Oracle.

Oracle's pricing model is diverse, reflecting its portfolio of products and services, but in general, itsapproach is enterprise­level pricing for enterprise­grade offerings (including per­server, per­app, per­userand value­based pricing). Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of directlicensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than$100,000 per year; see Note 1).

Oracle MCS can be used with any front­ or back­end tools, and existing Oracle clients will find MAF suitstheir needs. The development tools address an increasingly broad audience, growing from initially Javadevelopers with MAF to embrace those with JavaScript skills including Node.js. A new partnership withXamarin adds C# developers, while Oracle MAX allows business analysts with limited programmingknowledge to build apps visually.

Strengths

Integration continues to be a strong feature of Oracle's offerings. A new focus on REST and SOAPAPIs offers open connectivity to products from other vendors, including SaaS offerings.

Interoperation with Oracle's security and mobile management tools, combined with the company'sanalytics and marketing systems, helps deliver entire enterprise mobility solutions.

Support for Web­centric development skills, especially JavaScript and Node.js, simplifies staffingmobile projects. MAX will continue this broadening by adding codeless development.

Cautions

While Oracle has articulated a strong market message about a more holistic approach to mobile appdevelopment, delivering products to market is taking longer than expected.

While it is possible to create stand­alone apps with the Oracle Mobile Platform, it is better suited forbuilding portfolios of apps, particularly with integration into existing back­end systems.

While Oracle has a vast, global partner network, only a relatively small number are currently familiarwith Oracle's Mobile Platform. Check capabilities with local providers if you are planning on using adelivery partner.

PegasystemsPegasystems' MADP was acquired in its purchase of Antenna Software in 2013 and is now fully part of itsPega 7 platform. The mobile component of the platform integrates with and mobilizes customerengagement channels and back­office processes.

The Pega 7 platform has a built­in mobile framework for agile development using both a model­drivendevelopment environment and mobile SDK. Its single­object model offers persistence across UI andintegration for dynamic case management, process management, complex­event processing andbusiness rule management. The Pega MADP component supports the deployment of Web, hybrid andnative apps. For hybrid apps, it uses a proprietary app container that runs across multiple devices andsupports over­the­air app management, multiple HTML5 apps per container, and multithreaded appsupport. Pegasystems' back­end services can also support third­party front­end development tools andframeworks, such as JQuery Mobile, Sencha, Xamarin, Xcode and Android SDK. Pegasystems offers itsplatform in a public cloud configuration, hybrid cloud or on­premises. The overwhelming majority ofcustomers have deployed in its public cloud, which offers many security certifications, including FIPS 140­2 Level 2 for encryption, FDA 21 CFR Part 11 for electronic signatures, and European Union Data Privacy.

Pegasystems' MADP can be licensed to develop hybrid, native and Web mobile apps with full app anddevice management services. There is an option for licensing the Pega 7 platform's ability to integrateinto back­end services and apps. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of directlicensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than$100,000 per year; see Note 1).

The Pega 7 platform and its MADP capabilities are suitable for organizations focused on customerengagement and with a need for intelligent case management automation.

Strengths

Pegasystems offers a comprehensive, Web­based, collaborative app development environment,including online developer communities, social collaboration, built­in agile framework fordevelopment management, and cloud­based testing tools.

The Pega platform's model­driven paradigm for its mobile app architecture and visual developmentapproach is a strong differentiator in a crowded market.

The platform's services framework allows developers to create and access reusable componentsacross different apps. Custom­developed services and third­party services can also be easilyintegrated into new apps via documented APIs.

Cautions

Pegasystems has folded Antenna's technology within its unified platform and, while it may appeal toenterprises building strategic business apps, it might not be suitable for independent MADPdevelopers.

The Pega platform's model­driven development approach can be appealing, but the relatively limitedpool of people trained on the platform can pose a hiring challenge for organizations that require in­house expertise, or for those seeking service partners that are experienced or certified in using itsdevelopment tools.

Pegasystems' pricing is geared toward complex, strategic apps, and may not be cost­effective fororganizations looking to build a small number of simple apps.

Progress Software (Telerik)Telerik is now a subsidiary of Progress Software. Telerik's strength comes from Web development, whereit enjoyed success with 1.7 million developers and leveraged its success by expanding its scope to includemobile app development. The acquisition gives Telerik new sales channels and additional resources andexpanded integration tools from the Progress side that can be leveraged for additional capabilities. Telerikalso has a full MBaaS offering that includes push notifications, identity and access management, socialmedia integration, location, and analytics. The Telerik Platform originally centered on Microsoft platforms(Visual Basic, ASP.NET, WPF, Windows Forms and Silverlight), but now supports server­side Java and PHP.The platform enjoys growth of over 50% per year and the acquisition has the potential to accelerategrowth. The mobile offering, Telerik Platform, supports development in HTML5 and JavaScript, as well asthe open­source NativeScript framework to help these same developers create cross­platform nativemobile apps targeting iOS, Android, Windows 8.x and Windows Phone.

The Telerik Platform is a collection of integrated modular tools, frameworks and cloud services thatsupports the development and deployment of mobile Web, hybrid and native apps. The platform offersapp prototyping, building, testing and analytics, as well as data connectors enhanced by ProgressSoftware's DataDirect data integration suite. Telerik also has app deployment capabilities. Telerik's mostpopular product is Kendo UI, which is an HTML5 framework built on top of jQuery and best suited for Webdevelopment. It is compatible with Twitter Bootstrap and Google AngularJS, and Kendo UI Core is anopen­source variant of the Kendo UI Professional product.

In May 2015, Progress announced the latest release of the Telerik Platform, which is focused on mobileapp development in addition to Web development. The most recent release added three newcomponents: Screen Builder, AppManager LiveSync and enhanced Telerik Analytics. The Telerik Platformsupports hybrid Web app development based on leveraging the open­source Apache Cordova container.The company has a verified plug­in marketplace for tested Cordova plug­ins. Telerik also supports nativeUI libraries and the new NativeScript native virtual machine runtime that gives JavaScript access tonative APIs in apps developed with the platform.

Telerik's go­to­market strategy has been altered for the better by Progress Software, which has asignificant enterprise sales organization. This complements the historical bottom­up approach of sellingdirectly to developers (per­seat licenses) and better positions the enterprise­oriented offering of theTelerik Platform. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing feesand related payments to the vendor, are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year),while enterprise­level pricing is more than $100,000 per year (see Note 1).

Developers should consider Telerik if they are creating line­of­business apps that are inward­facing orpartner­facing, or if they want to build primarily Web and hybrid apps.

Strengths

Telerik has a successful developer­centric approach, with products primarily sold online at a modestcost ($300 to $1,800 per developer). The acquisition of Telerik by Progress Software enhances theTelerik Platform with additional integration capabilities and improved enterprise support capabilities.

The platform offers an integrated modular collection of components, frameworks and tools thatsupports development for different platforms with a variety of approaches.

The platform leverages de facto open standards, such as jQuery, Bootstrap, AngularJS and ApacheCordova; also, the Telerik Kendo UI Core framework and the NativeScript runtime are open source.

Cautions

Although there is a unified Web interface, Telerik Platform has been built through acquisitions andinternal development products. This will be further complicated by the integration of the ProgressSoftware DataDirect integration tools. Not unlike other MADPs, this makes the Telerik toolchain amodular set of tools that is being integrated to ensure compatibility of the components.

The platform lacks some capabilities for full SDLC support, such as full featured app management,and some capabilities are relatively new and unproven, such as Screen Builder and AppManagerLiveSync.

Historically, Telerik has had a Web rather than a mobile app focus, but this is changing as thecompany has shifted resources to mobile app development tools. Additionally, the company hasinvested in additional analytics capability that is a must for mobile app development. The addition ofthe DataDirect offering from Progress has the potential to significantly improve the company's

integration capabilities, but this is still unproven.

SalesforceSalesforce is the pre­eminent vendor of cloud­based business apps (SaaS) in CRM, sales force automationand related categories. The company complements its app business with a robust platform capability thathas evolved to add full­featured support for mobile app development. The platform began as distinctpieces (Force.com, Visualforce, Heroku and Mobile SDK), but was revamped into an integrated offeringcalled Salesforce1 Platform — which is an API, a platform and a mobile container app all bearing the samebrand. The Salesforce1 Platform has been enhanced since initial release with the addition of SalesforceLightning Components, a UI framework used by the company to implement the Salesforce1 app and nowavailable to customers for its own apps. Lightning Components use JavaScript on the client side and Apexon the server side. Lightning Connect pulls data from back­end systems of record such as SAP, Oracle andMicrosoft. Lightning App Builder allows visual creation of apps with drag­and­drop components.

Developers building on the Salesforce1 Platform can work at different levels, from the metadata level(extending and leveraging objects and functions in the CRM system with minimum code, to deploy onsmartphones, tablets and desktops), to the mobile SDKs that allow high­performance native apps toaccess cloud­based resources to support hybrid and HTML5 apps. Mobile apps built with Salesforce1 toolsare deployed to the companion app container and managed there. In addition, Salesforce hasdemonstrated support for wearables (Apple Watch, Android Wear, Samsung Gear, Google Glass andothers).

Salesforce's initial pricing approach was to complement its enterprise software business with a MADPoffering that incorporates different pricing models (per named user, plus metered usage for cloud platformservices). With Salesforce1, all customers with every edition get access to the Salesforce1 APIs, theSalesforce1 mobile app container, the AppExchange and other mobile­related capabilities. As a result ofthis strategic change, typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensingfees and related payments to the vendor, are at the low­end portion of the spectrum (less than $25,000per year; see Note 1). Pricing on a per­user subscription ranges from $25 per month per user to $150,depending on volume and scale.

Enterprises that want to extend Salesforce business apps or need a portfolio of custom­built B2E appsthat tap into the same high­scale cloud infrastructure and data, including refined enterprise socialcomputing capability, should consider Salesforce offerings.

Strengths

Salesforce offers a robust and mature cloud­centric platform that can support a portfolio of apps thatleverages an integrated data model, with no separate silo for mobile. These apps can incorporatesocial computing (Chatter), analytics, workflow and other capabilities.

The Salesforce1 Platform enables developers to work at different levels of the technology stack, frommetadata to hybrid container to native code to component­centric mobile Web apps.

The company's platform visibility is on the rise, as the company enjoys an upward curve in revenueand market reach.

Cautions

Exploiting the advantages of the Salesforce1 Platform means that an enterprise could get locked into a single vendor, proprietary language and proprietary data model, which can be efficient andadvantageous for some companies but unacceptable to others. This risk can be mitigated through amobile SDK that enables developers to build native front ends to the Salesforce back end, andthrough the Heroku platform as a system (PaaS) that allows apps to be built without being linked tothe Salesforce data model.

Some customers find the platform attractive but perceive the cost to be high.

Developers that adopt a container­centric approach and a mixed declarative and programmaticenvironment may experience complications in some scenarios.

SAPIn the mobile sector, SAP's considerable investments and managerial focus on mobility have established itas a highly visible leader in the enterprise segment of this market. SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) is anassemblage of products brought in through past acquisitions (Sybase, Syclo) as well as throughorganically developed components, such as SAP's HTML5 and JavaScript­based UI framework, SAPUI5(based on open­source jQuery).

Version 3.0, the major release of SAP Mobile Platform, first shipped in October 2013 and becamegenerally available in May 2014. Service Pack 7 (SP07) of SMP 3.0 shipped in April 2015. SMP 3.0 SP07enhanced developer capabilities for database integration, and enhanced the Push API. In addition, SP07added management capabilities for Fiori­based apps (which now number more than 500). Fiori is a keypart of SAP's strategic vision, which combines innovations in user experience (Fiori) with a high­performance data layer (Hana), with a flexible and cloud­friendly business application suite (S/4).

SAP's pricing strategy is diverse, reflecting its portfolio of products and services, but in general, thecompany's approach is enterprise­level pricing for enterprise­grade offerings. A few offerings are free andopen source (such as SAPUI5). Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms ofattributable direct costs and related fees, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000per year; see Note 1).

SAP offers strong mobile capabilities for field service and asset management use cases. Enterpriseslooking for a single vendor that offers a broad portfolio of mobile technology alternatives should alsoconsider SMP, especially if the organization already has a strong vendor relationship with SAP.

Strengths

SMP is a proven enterprise­focused mobile app platform that supports a broad range of clientarchitectures and development toolchains, including native, HTML5, hybrid, SMS and metadata­driven clients.

SAP's broad customer base of thousands of enterprises means its established offerings have beentested in a broad range of mobile apps across a diverse set of industries.

Prebuilt solutions for some SAP modules, such as SAP Work Manager, can significantly acceleratethe time to market.

Cautions

SAP's broad product portfolio and wide range of capabilities, including support for multiple apparchitectures, can lead to licensing complexity and cost. Some customers report that they are oftenconfused about which mobile products and components they need, or if the subset of capabilitiesthey desire is independently licensable.

Other vendors can now justifiably claim to have comprehensive, mature mobile app platforms and,in some cases, have outpaced SAP in areas such as mobile app testing or mobile cloud options.Some smaller vendors may have an advantage in terms of reduced organizational complexity,because at SAP, the breadth of mobile­related offerings is distributed across multiple organizationalunits.

SAP's cloud support for mobility is relatively nascent. SAP Hana Cloud Platform mobile services(HCPms) seems well­conceived but is relatively new and unproven (released in 1Q15). Despiteunification with SMP through SAP Mobile Platform SDK, there are some fault lines between themobile cloud platform and SMP 3.0. Migration is not possible for applications built with Agentry,Mobiliser, mobile business object (MBO) technology or custom OSGi bundles.

XamarinXamarin provides tools, components and cloud services for building native cross­platform apps in C# foriOS and Android, Windows Phone, and Mac OS X. Xamarin's mobile development offering has seen rapidgrowth from positive developer response to its tools, which allow Windows enterprise developers to use afamiliar development environment to build Android and iOS mobile apps.

Xamarin compiles C# into natively executed code for each target platform. Xamarin offers two integrateddevelopment environments (IDEs): a plug­in for Visual Studio and its own IDE, Xamarin Studio. BothIDEs are integrated with libraries of components (from Xamarin and third parties), as well as visualdesigners for iOS and Android. The IDEs expose C# APIs for each platform. Developers achieve native UIsand code sharing by building separate UI code in C# that leverages any of the platform­specific APIs, orvia Xamarin. Forms build the app UI from shared code with reduced functionality, but render UI elementsas fully native controls. Xamarin's IDEs manage the split between common and platform­specific code,providing common tooling for shared code alongside platform­specific tooling where appropriate (such asnative designers for composing iOS and Android UIs).

In 2014, Xamarin enjoyed strong growth in the enterprise, more than doubling its customers. Itattracted high­profile partners such as IBM and SAP, and now Oracle, and has a growing partnerecosystem. Microsoft and Xamarin continue to build on its engineering partnership. Though Microsoftsales does not sell Xamarin directly, the platform is integrated into the Microsoft Visual Studiodevelopment environment. To address support for a broader spectrum of the mobile softwaredevelopment life cycle, Xamarin continues to expand its cloud­based app testing, Xamarin Test Cloud,which provides automated functional performance app UI testing on over 1,600 devices and OS releases.Xamarin also offers Xamarin Insights (beta), which is a crash­reporting and mobile app monitoringservice. Both Test Cloud and Insights are targeted at all mobile developers, not just C# developers. Anynative or hybrid app written in any language can be tested with Test Cloud and Insights.

Xamarin's pricing strategy is to build a sustainable software tool/platform business through a tiered pricingmodel. Licensing of the Xamarin MADP is per developer, with a yearly subscription of between $900 and$1,900 per platform, per developer, depending on support. The company's revenue model is shifting fromper­developer seats to site licensing. Typical costs for an initial mobile proof­of­concept project, in terms ofdirect licensing fees and related costs, are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year;see Note 1).

Xamarin is appropriate for developers who want to use C# and .NET skills to develop native apps thattarget any combination of iOS, Android and Windows Phone platforms. Xamarin is also appropriate for anyorganization looking for a scalable and sustainable mobile quality strategy.

Strengths

Xamarin addresses what has been an underserved segment of the mobile development market —namely, C# developers who want to build native mobile apps without having to learn newlanguages and tools.

Xamarin provides its own cross­platform mobile development tool, Xamarin Studio, coupled with anextensive library of Xamarin and third­party components, visual design tools for iOS and Android,and integration with Visual Studio. Moreover, the company offers a very affordable training package.

Xamarin has built a strong partner network, primarily in North America and Europe. This includesboth strategic partnerships, such as with Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP, as well as a significant poolof implementation and channel partners.

Cautions

Xamarin still lags behind a number of larger players when it comes to supporting the mobile app lifecycle, but it has started to address this gap with the Xamarin Test Cloud, and it further benefits

from the Microsoft ALM tools and ecosystem.

Xamarin has historically focused on front­end development. Mobility projects that require back­endintegration, new back­end logic or synchronization for offline use likely will be dependent onintegrations that Xamarin has with IBM MobileFirst, SAP and Microsoft's Azure App Service.

The company is enjoying significant growth, which in and of itself is challenging and is still limitedwhen compared to other MADP providers when it comes to addressing the full mobile appdevelopment life cycle. Additionally, Xamarin finds itself competing with an emerging portfolio ofcompanies addressing the market for rapid mobile app development tools.

ZebraBy acquiring the enterprise side of long­standing MADP provider Motorola Solutions, bar code scanner andprinter manufacturer Zebra has broadened its offering in the mobile app development market.

The core mobile offering is the RhoMobile Suite, which includes RhoStudio, an IDE for building cross­platform mobile apps; RhoElements, an HTML5 framework and container for native and hybrid mobileapps; RhoConnect, mobile app middleware for back­end system integration and synchronization for offlineuse; and RhoHub, a cloud service that enables developers to build and deploy apps without the need fornative SDKs running on local machines.

Zebra's development platform direction is largely guided by the needs of the company's custom industrysolutions in areas such as retail, supply chain and public safety. As a result, the platform is focused onrobustness, scalability and connectivity, as well as on deep mobile device support and ruggedizedhardware.

Zebra's product has always been open source at its core. Licensing is based on a per­developer cloudsubscription model. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing feesand related payments to the vendor, depend on which parts of the portfolio are leveraged. In the case ofRhodes (an open­source subset of RhoElements that provides necessary components for consumer apps)and RhoStudio, these are free products. The other offerings fall into the low­end portion of the costspectrum (less than $25,000 per year).

Zebra's RhoMobile Suite is well­suited for mobile scenarios that require strong data handling, back­endconnectivity, or broad and deep device hardware support.

Strengths

Zebra has a deep understanding of the mobile app requirements in retail, manufacturing, utilities,energy and government, and its products based on the RhoMobile platform are proven in thoseenvironments.

RhoElements supports a wide range of mobile devices with cross­platform support for both theleading consumer and enterprise mobile platforms and its hardware capabilities.

RhoConnect offers strong back­end system integration and robust data synchronization capabilitiesfor mission­critical enterprise scenarios.

Cautions

Zebra has fallen behind the market leaders in terms of full support for the mobile app developmentlife cycle, with features missing from the platform such as early­stage design and prototyping,automated cloud­based testing, and postdeployment monitoring and analytics. (Zebra plans to addintegration with Zatar, Zebra's IoT platform, as well as Zebra's new data analytics platform, in2015.)

Zebra's focus on service­led solution delivery has resulted in low market visibility as a developmentplatform provider, which may make it difficult for enterprises to recruit and retain RhoMobiledevelopers (although it launched a RhoMobile website in late 2014 to reignite visibility in thedeveloper community).

Although Zebra offers Rhodes (which provides components for consumer apps), consumer andmarketing apps are not a strong focus for the vendor.

Vendors Added and DroppedWe review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change. Asa result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may changeover time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the next doesnot necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of achange in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

AddedWe added four vendors:

Appian

Backbase

Globo

Mendix

DroppedFour vendors that appeared in our 2014 Magic Quadrant were not included this year:

Apple only offers development tools for iOS apps so it does not meet the cross­platform criteria.

Google only offers development tools for Android apps so it does not meet the cross­platform criteria.

Sencha no longer meets the revenue or inquiry traffic inclusion criteria.

Verivo is no longer in the MADP business.

Honorable MentionsThe following vendors did not meet the inclusion criteria (typically because of revenue), but they arecredible alternatives to the vendors included in this Magic Quadrant. Several of these vendors are coveredin "Market Guide for Rapid Mobile App Development Tools" and "Market Guide for Cloud Mobile Back­EndServices." Distinctions between styles of mobile app development are covered in "How to Address theComplexities of the Mobile AD Technologies Vendor Landscape."

Alpha Software offers the Alpha Anywhere platform with a wizard­driven developmentenvironment for building HTML5 and hybrid mobile apps, including connectors for common back­endsystems and SQL databases.

AnyPresence provides an enterprise­focused MBaaS offering that includes integration, dynamicallygenerated SDKs, API definition, templates and a test user interface builder. These provide a quickstart to app development projects.

Appery.io is a low­code platform for the rapid development and deployment of cross­device apps. Itoffers a cloud­based development environment with integrated back­end services and plug­ins thatsimplify integration with cloud services and enterprise systems.

EachScape offers a platform for generating native iOS and Android apps, as well as HTML5 hybridapps, through a drag­and­drop editor.

FeedHenry (by Red Hat) offers a collaborative mobile app development environment, mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) and app management capabilities. Cloud and on­premises options areavailable, as are a large number of Node.js­based connectors. FeedHenry offers an open bring­your­own­tool approach, allowing clients to select additional front­end development tools.

Kinvey, launched in 2011, provides core MBaaS features with additional SDKs for a broad range ofclients, advanced identity management, enterprise integration, analytics, security and contentdelivery network capabilities.

Specializing in mobilizing SAP, but supporting many potential back ends, Movilizer offers a form­based tool for rapid deployment of business process apps in a dedicated container.

OutSystems offers an integrated platform to visually develop, deploy and monitor hybrid mobileapps, including device­native extensions, Web­based portals supported by back­end data, workflowand integration logic, including well­managed Web services, prebuilt adapters to cloud and on­premises systems such as SAP, and app templates to further accelerate development.

Webalo offers a platform with a graphical development tool to build and configure mobile apps thatconnect to back­end systems via Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) drivers, XML Web services, flatfiles and Web scraping.

Zetes supports mobile enablement of supply chain and related activities with the MCL MobilityPlatform. Capabilities include drag­and­drop app creation, mainframe and SAP integration, plusdevice and power management. Voice command and control is a particular specialty.

Inclusion and Exclusion CriteriaVendors in this year's Magic Quadrant met the following criteria:

Must create apps for multiple platforms, at least for iOS and Android.

Demonstrated significant market impact, with at least one of the following:MADP software revenue in 2014 of more than $25 million

A high volume of inquiries from Gartner end­user clients

Had at least 10 new paying enterprise implementations in each of at least two of the followinggeographic regions: North America, Latin America, EMEA or Asia/Pacific.

As a result of our inclusion criteria, we excluded vendors that:

Offer only mobile back­end services

Only sells their software coupled with development/professional services where the tool is usedexclusively by company consultants

Target only a single system platform, such as iOS only or Android only

Evaluation CriteriaAbility to ExecuteProduct or Service: How well does the vendor's platform meet the buying requirements of enterprises?Can the platform be used to build native, hybrid and Web apps? Is the platform open? Does it integratewell with third­party frameworks, APIs and other vendors' platforms? Does it require only standard ITskills and tools? How labor­efficient is the offering? Does it support declarative or metadata­basedprogramming? Does the vendor supply app templates or frameworks to accelerate development? Doesthe platform support the full software development life cycle, including testing? What support is there forapp deployment and distribution, runtime monitoring and operations? Does the vendor have a strongpartner ecosystem that extends the value of its products/services? Does the vendor offer strong cloudoptions, including mobile capabilities such as push messaging and location?

Overall Viability: We look for continued commitment from upper management and overall company

financial well­being — including factors such as product investment exceeding competitors' productinvestment. We also looked for company growth that exceeds the market growth rate.

Sales Execution/Pricing: Does the vendor have the scope and sales model to participate in allenterprise evaluations, or is it constrained? Does the pricing model create a sales barrier?

Market Responsiveness/Record: How rapidly has the company responded to changes in the market,including new operating system versions? Does the company support new categories such as wearables?

Marketing Execution: What is the level of market awareness of the company's mobile enterpriseoffering? Has the vendor achieved meaningful differentiation?

Customer Experience: What is the number, variety and size of customer references? What specificfeedback and observations are offered by customers, both from references and from other contacts(inquiries, conferences and so forth)? What is the customer experience when partners are involved?

Operations: How well does the vendor support customers? Does it provide cost­effective and competentconsulting services? Can it provide a cloud­based deployment model or hosting services?

Table 1. Ability to ExecuteEvaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing High

Market Responsiveness Medium

Marketing Execution Low

Customer Experience High

Operations Low

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Completeness of VisionMarket Understanding: Does the vendor understand the needs of IT, marketing, product engineering,system integrator and vertical­sector users? How does it stay on top of those needs and translate theminto useful products? To what degree has the market validated the vendor's vision?

Marketing Strategy: Does the vendor have a reasonable strategy to create broad awareness of thecompany and its offerings?

Sales Strategy: Will the strategy enable the vendor to compete in the majority of enterprise selections,or will it constrain the vendor's success? Does the vendor have a successful approach toward channelsales and services partners?

Offering (Product) Strategy: Does the roadmap for the product reflect the market's direction and thelikely requirements of buyers within 18 to 24 months? Drilling down from the high­level roadmap, doesthe vendor provide an effective and achievable strategy with regard to each of the following areas:multiplatform, multichannel, app life cycle, user experience, integration, analytics, standards and cloudsupport?

Business Model: Does the vendor's business model yield the kind of growth that will allow the companyto lead the market? Are the licensing models appropriate and supportive? Does the vendor encourage astrong ecosystem around its products?

Vertical/Industry Strategy: Is the vendor able to articulate a strategy for vertical differentiation inspecific sectors (such as financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing and energy), and canit sustain that position? Does the vendor offer packaged mobile apps or templates for specific verticalindustries?

Innovation: Does the vendor lead the market with innovative product technology, software architectureand business models?

Geographic Strategy: Does the company have a strong plan for supporting customers and growingbusiness in different regions?

Table 2. Completeness of VisionEvaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding High

Marketing Strategy Low

Sales Strategy Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy High

Business Model Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy Low

Innovation High

Geographic Strategy Low

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Quadrant DescriptionsLeadersLeaders must represent a strong combination of Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. In theMADP sector, this means that Leaders not only are good at cross­platform development, deployment andmanagement across the full life cycle, but also have a good vision of the multichannel enterprise, supportfor multiple architectures and standards, a solid understanding of IT requirements, and scalable channelsand partnerships. Leaders must provide platforms that are easy to purchase, program, deploy andupgrade, and which can connect to a range of back­end and cloud services, from the same vendor as wellas third parties.

ChallengersChallengers in this market must have high numbers of enterprise clients; a large, growing base of seatsin deployment; and the ability to meet the needs of all departments in global rollouts. They are vendorswith a history of execution in the broad market, but they may not yet have accumulated a substantialtrack record in the MADP sector across a range of scenarios. Challengers may also lack a cohesivetechnical or business vision — or may have lingering gaps or confusing overlaps in products or channels tomarket.

VisionariesVisionaries in this market have a compelling vision of products and the market's future, as well as thetechnical direction (and necessary resources) to take them there. However, they have not backed up thatvision in one or more of the following areas: history of execution, revenue, size of client base, diversity ofsolutions or strong financial results.

Niche PlayersNiche Players in this market are not as strong in one or more of the following criteria: productbreadth/completeness or focus, geography, or number of customers. Although they may be a good choicefor a particular project, they are not well­suited as a broad platform for all types of projects. Nevertheless,for specific scenarios, an offering from a Niche Player may represent the optimal choice.

ContextThe enterprise mobility market continues to evolve, with growing demand for mobile apps in all areas.This growing demand means that organizations are recognizing that they can no longer continue to builda collection of single apps; a portfolio approach is required.

Implementing such an approach represents a significant shift in mobile development at all levels, and thisis reflected in the market. App delivery is much less about the technical aspects of programming theclient and significantly more about its business impact, design, integration, deployment andmanagement.

Many organizations are realizing that mobile is an essential competitive advantage as part of an overalldigital business transformation. Mobile is only part of this bigger picture, and while mobile­first thinking ishelpful to ensure a simple, powerful experience, it is not in itself sufficient. This, too, is reflected bychanges in the market, emphasizing multichannel delivery and support for continuity of user experienceacross channels.

Diversity of target device continues to increase, with manufacturers offering compelling devices in manyform factors from watch to massive tablet. No one screen size or operating system dominates. Anycompany wishing to address a wide audience must deliver a cross­platform experience that is optimizedfor a range of form factors and operating systems.

Here are some points to keep in mind when using this research:

As with all Magic Quadrants, vendors in the Leaders quadrant are not necessarily the best for allprojects or enterprises. Depending on enterprise needs, a vendor in any quadrant could be the bestfor the enterprise. Some platforms may be a better fit with the organization's skill sets. Consider thematch between the skills that are there and those required by each MADP evaluated. Also considerthe cost and complexity of the vendor's offering, and whether this offering aligns to benefitsexpected during the estimated life span of the product use.

Do not assume that there is a one­to­one correspondence between a MADP and a product listing ina vendor's portfolio. MADP is a platform that can be assembled out of subsystems of varyinggranularity — and with different degrees of effort that don't always correspond to the granularity. Inaddition, the developing nature of mobile apps and infrastructure can make it difficult for someenterprises to select a single, strategic MADP vendor. Concentrate on finding a small set of platformsthat will satisfy short­ to midterm needs, and be prepared to re­examine choices every few years.

In implementing a MADP and in deploying it through its life cycle, account for varying rates of

technology change in different subsystems. In general, back­end systems will have a slower rate ofchange with a longer life span, while front­end technologies (such as HTML5, native UI componentsand graphics hardware, as well as the APIs that support mobile apps) will evolve at a rate that is twotimes or three times that of back­end technologies. Do not constrain the evolution of the entiresystem to the speed of change of the slowest­evolving subsystem.

Consider the MADP as an intermediate stage in a path from fragmented tools and platforms towarda unified orchestrated set of digital and nondigital channels. Do not assume that a mobile silo is along­lasting destination. Consider how the organization can deliver an effective user experience thatis orchestrated across multiple channels in a seamless manner.

Market OverviewThe MADP market continues to mature, moving away from the tech­centric position of the past toward amore business­aligned approach, expanding support for the app development life cycle and offering morerobust and scalable capabilities. Enterprises face the challenge of building and delivering a sizable portfolioof mobile apps for customers, partners and employees. Organizations that had successfully built anddeployed a handful of customer­facing and employee­facing apps now find that there is a backlog ofdozens, even hundreds, of apps that are needed to allow different populations of users to get data fromdiverse information systems, both internal and external.

Enterprises seeking a mobile development platform have expressed to Gartner the followingrequirements:

Cross­platform, supporting more than one platform (that is, not just iOS or Android or WindowsPhone).

Multiarchitecture, supporting not just native or mobile Web or hybrid architectures, but supportingmore than one (or, ideally, all) of these architectures.

Built­in support for offline operation, which is becoming a recognized necessity for manyorganizations. Offline support is one factor in considering a mobile app over a mobile website.

Support for the app development life cycle; for example, metadata­driven apps, prototyping,multidevice testing (test cloud, for example), multiplatform build process (build cloud), versioning,configuration management, analytics, distribution and management of mobile apps once deployedthrough various mechanisms (not just an app store), and so forth.

Prebuilt or configurable integrations to common back­end systems such as databases, SAP, Oracleapps or Microsoft Dynamics.

Rapid mobile app development (RMAD) tools that can be used by less­technical staff such asbusiness analysts or process experts.

Cloud­based services for integration, data persistence, notifications, data analysis, social mediaintegration, and so on.

Using standards (HTML5 and CSS3), including de facto standards (jQuery, PhoneGap/ApacheCordova).

An ecosystem of third­party libraries, frameworks, tools, components and services partners that canfill in the gaps in the offering.

A track record of successful deployments at different levels of scale and in different verticals.

Another trend we have observed is that because of the explosive growth in mobile usage, many vendorscontinue to enter the market (see Note 2). Often, these are existing vendors from other sectors such asbusiness applications, BI, mobile security solutions, virtualization and vertical markets — especiallybusiness process management (BPM).

Major vendors continue to break product suites into smaller components, for example, IBM Worklightbecoming the MobileFirst portfolio of compatible products, or Kony's MobileFabric. These vendors recognizeand encourage end users to mix and match tools, typically layering different front­end tools over anMBaaS core while augmenting the apps with specialist capabilities such as security monitoring.

It is important to note that because of this, there is not a one­to­one equivalence between a MADP and aspecific item in a vendor's product catalog. An enterprise MADP may be built out of different subsystems,including open­source libraries and native­code toolkits. Alternatively, an enterprise may begin with a coresystem that is a product from a commercial vendor — possibly a product with a specific focus or narrowscope — and then integrate this with other systems (SDLC, testing or back­end services) to arrive at itsown MADP.

It is also important to note, as with other Magic Quadrants, that the best choice for one enterprise maynot be the same as for another, and that these choices are not just in the Leaders quadrant. It alldepends on the requirements. Some vendors in quadrants other than Leaders (Niche Players, Visionariesor Challengers) may provide a better fit for those requirements — and often better economic value aswell.

From last year's Magic Quadrant, we have continued to include cost indicators. This is in response torequests from end­user organizations for at least rough guidance on what to expect. Precise guidance isdifficult, because vendors have different pricing models, organizations have different skill sets andmethodologies, and app requirements can vary widely. Nevertheless, it is possible to define a simplethree­tier structure for costs for an initial mobile development project: low, midrange and enterprise. Lowis less than $25,000 per year, midrange is between $25,000 and $100,000, and enterprise is above$100,000, as defined in Note 1. Every vendor profile in this Magic Quadrant has a mention of costs usingthis coarse­grained categorization.

As the MADP sector continues its robust growth and evolution, the question arises, "Where will things go

from here?" Vendors have broadened and deepened offerings to, in many cases, arrive at a robust andcomplete mobile development platform. Fragmentation such as native versus hybrid versus Web hasbeen eliminated, or at least tempered. Despite the vendors' undeniable progress in tools and platforms,the critic may say that the final result is a very good mobile silo: functional, comprehensive andworthwhile — but a silo nonetheless. The future evolution of MADP is to go beyond the mobile silo, in thedirection of a unified digital channel, so that organizations can field a single digital presence that spansdesktop Web, mobile Web, mobile apps, and apps for other devices and channels such as kiosks andwearables. This will enable orchestration of experiences across channels through the construction ofcoordinated solutions targeting different channels, and optimized for the particular capabilities of eachchannel. This is what Gartner calls ensemble or continuous interaction — when a user begins atransaction on one device and continues it on other devices or channels, sometimes in sequence but alsoin parallel. This vision of a continuous experience across channels will take years to be fully realized. Thiswill likely require a mix of channel­specific technologies integrated with channel­neutral back­endservices. Until that time, siloed MADP offerings will continue to play an essential role in digital business.

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