Methodology Approaches Regarding Classic versus Mobile Enterprise Application Development

Abstract

In the nowadays enterprise computerized context, there is a trend that shifts the business applications to the new mobile environments. In the light of this information, it is highly important to be knowledgeable about the software development methodologies available in order to make the right choice when it comes to developing a mobile application. The current research aims to presenting the methodological approaches regarding the development cycle of classic enterprise software versus mobile apps. In the first part of the paper a brief literature review regarding the mobile is made, for the purpose of justifying the current research theme. The most consistent part of the article puts face-to-face the classical and the new development methodologies adapted to the requirements of the new mobile environment trends. The paper also presents the challenges and limitations of mobile applications as well as few of the future trends in the researched domain.Keywords: Application 's Lifecycle Models, Agile Models, Mobile Environment, Mobile Apps1 Introduction to Mobile ApplicationsMobile applications, also referred to as mobile apps, are software applications that are usually designed to be ran on smart phones and tablet computers [1], The term apps had become extremely popular and, as a consequence, in 2010 was listed as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. Mobile applications are available through application distribution platforms, which are managed by mobile operating system developer.There are several major trends that we believe it contributes to the boost of using the today mobile applications:* the increased availability and options to Internet connection for mobile devices;* the shift to the new mobile environments for the business applications;* cloud application's development;* the newest research findings that identifies new technologies which increased the performance of mobile device while the price remained at the same level, allowed mobile devices to became available for a wider variety of users.Another important aspect, when it comes to mobile application development, is the number of users. Thus, the number of mobile worldwide workers in 2013 is over 1 billion and accounts for about 35% of the worldwide workforce. The structure of the above ratio shows that Asia/Pacific (including Japan) have the largest total number of mobile workers, 785 million, while the second place is taken by Western Europe whose mobile workforce reached 129.5 million in 2013 and accounts for about half of the Western European workforce population. The study [2] also highlights that US has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with 75.5% by the end 2013 accounting to 119.7 million mobile workers. A quick glimpse to the future is displayed in the two most recent studies which predict that mobile worker population will reach 1.2 billion by 2014 (a VDC study [3]) and 1.3 billion by 2015 (an IDC study [4]).Every day, hundred thousands of mobile devices are sold and about the same number of applications is downloaded. By 2015, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts [5] that 182.7 billion mobile will be downloaded. That's a 1600 % increase from the 10.7 billion downloaded in 2010. This information highlights the mobile user's appetite for a wide range of software applications.Cloud application development brings innovation [6] to mobile computing as mobile devices use clouds for a wide range of purposes, from data processing and data storage to other intensive data and information transactions. So far, there are few mobile cloud applications (like Google Maps, Gmail for iPhone and Cisco's WebEx on iPad and several others that use Software as a Service model) but the trend is highly increasing.The main purpose of the paper is to present the methodologies for developing classic enterprise application versus mobile applications. …