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Innovation

StackMob supports the open Cloud Mobile Ecosystem

In the future, everything will be connected: people, process, data, and all of our things. And, more and more, we are seeing the mobile device taking center stage. StackMob's goal is to enable innovation in the mobile industry by unlocking information and connecting services.
Written by Gery Menegaz, Contributor

In the not too distant past, if you wanted to build an application for a mobile device, like iPhone, Android, tablet or phone, you were forced to create discrete applications. After creating an iPhone application, you must put that code aside, switch tools, and begin development on the equivalent Android toolset. Then you went to work on tweaking the application for tablet and platform (for Android). This was doubly onerous if you were building an application for the enterprise.

The mobile application development process was serial, iterative, and not quick.

Today, we live in a world of network-connected devices, where applications from my mobile phone will talk to my laptop, and tablet. In the future, everything will be connected: people, process, data, and all of our things. 

Anyone in the position to facilitate the standardization of application development would be in a position to lead us into this new phase of mobile development. Ideally it would enable the creation, management, and extension through customization of APIs, access to a multi-tiered environments, and the integration of business solutions like customer development messaging, social integration, geospatial queries, analytics, and more. 

Meet StackMob.

 

I recently spoke with Ty Amell, CEO, of StackMob about the future of mobile computing and what his firm has to offer mobile developers.

By way of background, StackMob provides a cloud-based backend for mobile applications which allow companies to accelerate their time to market, reduce costs, and deliver outstanding mobile user experiences (apologies for the marketing speak). The StackMob platform provides a flexible and scalable open solution to support the most mission critical applications. Developers can easily create APIs to store and retrieve data in the cloud, add custom code to enhance those APIs with advanced business logic and easily add functionality through the StackMob Marketplace.

Amell founded the company in January 2010 and has broad expertise in product and engineering, including building scalable distributed systems and monetizing mobile applications.

Prior to StackMob, he managed mobile, API, and frontend teams for imeem. imeem was a social media web site, ultimately purchased by MySpace, where users would interact by streaming, uploading, and sharing music and videos.  It was at imeem where he learned first hand, the pain behind writing applications, and what it takes to scale them. imeem is where he, and, original co-founder Will Palmeri, first had the idea of starting StackMob.

According to Amell, StackMob is the industry’s first, cloud-based mobile app development platform.  They built the platform expressly to eliminate many of the backend challenges associated with building, deploying and growing a mobile business.  

“Mobile has evolved into a plethora of network-connected devices and is one of the fastest growing industries in the world.” Amell, adds, “StackMob is, first and foremost, the most mature and enterprise-ready platform out there.”

StackMob was designed to handle the backend component of mobile app building, effectively allowing developers to focus value-added activities, and provides:

•    Flexible modular platform

•    Marketplace of services to extend the StackMob Platform

•    Robust API versioning

•    Proven workflow

•    Open platform philosophy

•    Advanced custom code

•    Decoupled, scalable architecture that can run on any cloud

The advent of push notifications was the main driver for their decision to build the platform, Amell told me. They knew they wanted to develop a backend for this new application, but the need for more services and implementation was enough to convince them that they were on to something.

The goal of StackMob is to enable innovation in the mobile industry by unlocking information and connecting services. Mobility is changing the way the world connects and enterprise’s conduct business. StackMob’s goal is to support those developers and enterprises by making information easier to consume.

When asked what keeps Amell up night as the CEO, he responded with: “Scaling the team is probably what I think about most. It is incredibly difficult to grow a talented group of individuals that has a great team chemistry and culture.”

Let me know what you think.

 

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