HP: We can do mobile app design, integration too
HP on Wednesday launched a bevy of software and services offerings designed enable enterprises to tie their mobile applications to back-end systems and deliver consumerish user experience.
According to Paul Evans, general manager of application transformation at HP's enterprise unit, mobile applications are becoming "the face of the organization." Indeed, mobile applications and user interfaces increasingly make or break how customers feel about a company.
The mobile enterprise applications strategy was outlined on a Webcast.
HP's software and services unit is focusing on user experience as well as the back-end integration. IBM also recently highlighted its design chops for mobile applications. Overall, IT services companies and systems integrators will have to talk user interfaces and design as they work with major customers. Integrators and services companies like Accenture and Cognizant increasingly position themselves for the SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) stack.
For its part, HP has worked on about 1,000 projects where the company designed the front end systems and integrated back-end systems of record, said Evans.
Franklin Grosvenor, vice president of enterprise mobility and social business services at HP's enterprise services unit, said that customers---internally and externally---now expect corporate apps to work like popular consumer ones from the likes of Facebook or Google. "For enterprise apps, the expectations are that they'll work just like consumer apps," said Grosvenor. "These apps have to be relevant and engaging and it's not limited to just customer facing ones. These apps are targeted at employees and partners."
Generally speaking, enterprises are looking at hybrid applications that combine native functionality and HTML5. What remains to be seen is whether HP's push into design and back-end integration works garners new clients. HP's software unit typically resides in the background of an enterprise doing things like app management, automation and integration. Putting design and user interface expertise out front is a new spin for HP.
The goal for HP is to meld front-end design with business process knowledge to speed up development for mobile applications.
Among the moving parts from HP on Wednesday:
- HP revamped HP Anywhere, a mobile enterprise application platform. Genefa Murphy, director of product management for HP Software's mobile, analytics and user experience efforts, said the company will create mobile containers to deliver apps and connect them to back-end systems. These containers, available on the Apple Store and Google Play, are designed to take processes that are managed by legacy systems and deliver them with a strong mobile interface.
HP Anywhere will allow developers to work on HTML5, JavaScript and Apache Cordova and support Sencha Touch, Enyo and jQuery Mobile. The platform also integrates with mobile device management software players such as SAP Afaria. HP also launched a developer zone to distribute software developer kits and application how-tos.
- The company said it will offer integration services based on Tibco and Red Hat's Jboss platforms. Tom Hall, worldwide cloud services marketing manager for HP's enterprise services unit, said the company will modernize applications, rearchitect and rewrite them and host them to improve mobile performance. The effort, dubbed HP Applications Integration to Cloud Services, is available in September.
- HP also launched user monitoring services to track behavior on mobile apps as well as performance. This data is pushed back to a company's development team so they can improve future versions. HP's Real User Monitoring 9.22 concentrates on Android applications and user experiences and Performance Anywhere is a software as a service version.