Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/04/09/salesforce_app_development/
Salesforce cuts app development steps
Customer-oriented company does something for its customers
Posted in Software, 9th April 2013 12:04 GMT
When you're a company that produces the tech that salespeople, customer relationship managers, and general biz-types use, it'd be astonishing if you did not have a mobile device strategy. Therefore, Salesforce's announcement on Tuesday that it has a great big mobile toolkit did not surprise us.
The "Salesforce Platform Mobile Services" scheme sees Salesforce try to make it easier for its customers to link its apps to their mobile applications, and to reduce the need for expensive mobile-specialist devs.
"Our goal is to make it as easy to build an application as it is to build a website," Mike Rosenbaum, a cloud platform veep at Salesforce, told us. "Developers that can build a data-driven website should be able to build a data-driven app."
To help with this, the company has updated its mobile SDK to make it easier for devs to link Salesforce data to mobile device apps that can use technologies such as cameras and GPS. The SDK also brings with it libraries for secure offline storage, and authentication.
To go with the SDK, Salesforce has also released a set of "Developer Mobile Packs", which are application development environments that use high-level JavaScript frameworks such as AngularJS, Backbone.js, and jQuery Mobile to lower the technical bar required of a developer who wants to have a fiddle with Benioff's data when on the go.
Salesforce has also launched a "Salesforce Mobile Accelerator Program" that sees the company's partners – Aditi, Appirio, Bluewolf, Capgemini, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Detroit Labs, and Tquila – offer training around app development. ®