3 Steps for Successful Mobile Apps Deployment

- Derek Britton, Senior Solutions Marketing Manager, Micro Focus

Mobile is one of the radical forces in today's commercial environment reshaping how IT services are requested and delivered. The dawn of the tech savvy user and the positive inclination towards BYOD has radically transformed the IT services process. As the transgression towards smart devices is expanding, likewise is the parallel increase in the level of expectations for additional functionality.

It comes as no surprise that a new study from Forrester Research predicts that the take-up of mobile technology will have “dramatic effect” on back-office IT systems. Modern users expect 24/7 mobile access to all the applications and online services that they would use on their desktop or laptop computer, visiting e-commerce sites, accessing their bank online, and more recently, loading their work applications. Yet, according to Forrester, “hidden costs and disruptions” are set to plague organizations that do not make appropriate pre-emptive action.

The Forrester Report suggests that mobile projects hide a variety of potential pitfalls as a result of infrastructure that is ill-prepared for exploding activity volumes. However, organizations need not think that embracing mobile will require a costly and complete overhaul of existing IT infrastructure to resolve these issues.

So what should businesses be doing to embrace mobile in a cost- efficient fashion?

There are several steps that businesses can take to ensure that their IT infrastructures are prepared for the mobile explosion:

Re-use and adapt: All too often businesses approach mobile by developing new applications when in fact they could simply re-use and adapting existing, core back-end applications. The benefit of this approach is that costs are reduced and the existing infrastructure is not compromised.

While many may not consider COBOL for adapting business applications to support mobile use, its simplicity and therefore adaptability, makes this programming language, which accounts for approximately 70% of all critical business processes, the perfect candidate to take IT into the mobile era. With tools such as Visual Studio or Eclipse, developers are able to modernize applications to support new mobile applications across a wide number of technical platforms. COBOL can be used in each instance to efficiently deliver business services and their supporting data from the back-end to the user. The benefits of re-using COBOL systems rather than re-writing them are numerous and include a faster delivery of IT service, at lower cost and risk, while retaining intellectual property and competitive advantage.

Thoroughly test your mobile apps: When undertaking a considerable project such as adapting to mobile, testing is one area that cannot afford to be compromised. However traditional testing practices can mean that projects can overrun on time as well as budget. By moving application testing for mobile, web and related back-end systems to a more cost- effective environment that is easy to use, testing phases are able to be completed much faster and more thoroughly without eating into mainframe power. These environments also lend themselves better to supporting test automation and performance testing needs.

Review your workload deployment strategy: In order to cope with potential spikes in activity that mobile may bring, many businesses may look to add extra back-office capacity. However, this can be a costly solution. Instead, IT can look to optimize workload deployment and seize advantage of server choice (for example IBM zEnterprise allows workload to be shared across Windows, Power, Linux and z/OS partitions) to free up precious capacity to support mobile application needs.

A lot can be done with the present IT infrastructures and core assets to improve efficiency and productivity without requiring absolute revamp or overhaul that make certain that the business is taken to the future in a cost efficient and effective manner.