BriefingsDirect

Dana Gardner

Kapow Mobile Katalyst debuts as new means to rapidly convert web applications to mobile apps sans APIs

By Dana Gardner | June 14, 2011, 9:35am PDT

Summary: The post-PC era writing has gone from the wall to the tablet, and many enterprises, customer-facing retailers and service providers therefore want to make more of their web and business applications work on popular mobile smartphone and tablet devices such as Android and iOS.

Kapow Software today released Kapow Mobile Katalyst as a platform for rapid mobile-enablement of business applications.

The post-PC era writing has gone from the wall to the tablet, and many enterprises, customer-facing retailers and service providers therefore want to make more of their web and business applications work on popular mobile smartphone and tablet devices such as Android and iOS.

“It’s no surprise that millions of employees around the world are bringing their smartphones and mobile devices to work, resetting workplace expectations to have always-on access to the instantly available business apps that they’ve grown accustomed to from their personal lives,” said Stefan Andreasen, Founder and CTO, Kapow Software.

However, many of these applications do not come with application programming interfaces (APIs), or complete APIs, and the transition to workable and dependable mobile apps can be arduous, expensive, time-consuming and some times nearly impossible. [Disclosure: Kapow is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Kapow has entered the mobile migration opportunity with a platform and tools that wrap underlying logic and transaction services from existing applications into a series of REST and SOAP services. Such functions as shopping baskets and transaction integrations and business logic can be re-purposed to mobile devices as native apps in a few months versus much longer, said Andreasen.

Kapow Katalyst accesses and integrates the data and business logic of nearly any existing packaged or proprietary business applications without requiring APIs, he said. Adding a service-level interface to a legacy application is a complex development project requiring an extensive rewrite — years of planning, coding, and testing as well as spending, disrupting, and, too often abandoning, he said.

Visual tools and mappings

Using visually built flow-charts and data mappings to control the application’s business logic through its existing web interface, users can then deploy the “mobilized” application with one click into a production environment without re-writing any existing code, according to Kapow.

Furthermore, Kapow Mobile Katalyst allows for repurposing of existing applications as mobile applications, but leaving the underlying systems untouched.

Kapow is partnering with companies that specialize in mobile front-end development such as Antenna Software. “A mobile website is only as good as the data that supports it,” said Jim Somers, chief marketing & strategy officer at Antenna Software. “Together with Kapow Mobile Katalyst, we are able to accelerate the delivery of our mobile web solutions to help drive significant business value for our customers, quickly. We’ve proven our joint success with several leading global brands and look forward to building on this relationship.”

Kapow Mobile Katalyst is available now and can be deployed on-premises or via a hosted online service from Kapow.

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Topics

Web, Mobile, Business Application, Business Logic, Web Application, API, Kapow Katalyst, Channel Management, Marketing, Dana Gardner

Dana Gardner is president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, an enterprise IT analysis, market research, and consulting firm.

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Dana Gardner

Dana Gardner is president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, LLC, a New Hampshire-based IT analysis and new media content production and consultancy firm that he founded in 2005. He produces a series of podcast/videocast/transcript/blog content shows, called BriefingsDirect[tm/sm], some of which are sponsored and which he blogs on. Such sponsored shows are declared individually as such and by what organization or company. When Dana blogs on ZDNet on companies that he does have, or has had, consulting and/or sponsorship relationships, he declares that in each blog entry. There is no connection between the negotiation of such sponsorships and the opinions expressed by Dana here on ZDNet. To date, the following organizations/companies have sponsored, or do sponsor, some BriefingsDirect content, or have consulting relationships with Dana: Active Endpoints Akamai Technologies Aster Data Systems BP Logix Business Technology Quarterly CA Compuware Electric Cloud Genuitec Gerson Lehrman Group Greenplum Hewlett-Packard iTKO JustSystems North America, Inc. Kapow Technologies LogLogic Nexaweb Technologies, Inc. The Open Group Paglo Panda Security Platform Computing Progress Software rPath Sailpoint Splunk TIBCO Software Weblayers Workday WSO2 ZDNet As a matter of CNET Networks and Interarbor Solutions policies, when Dana covers an organization that is also a sponsor of a BriefingsDirect-produced podcast, videocast or any other content, a disclosure will be included with the coverage. Updated (1/4/2010): Instead of providing a disclosure on just those editorials (blog posts, etc.) that intersect the above listed companies, we have changed the policy to include a link to this full disclosure at the end of every one of Dana's blog posts. In the case of audio or video-based coverage, such disclosures will be provided within the editorial content itself.