IBM Worklight: Step Towards Success

On January 31st, 2012 IBM announced that they were planning to buy Worklight, and that this move would give great variety on all cross-platform mobile application development and its technologies. This year, on April 19th 2013, Omnie Solutions (I) Pvt. Ltd announced that they had become the

largest ASL partner for IBM Worklight in North America. Now the question arises; what is IBM Worklight, and how is it going to affect the telecom and mobile industry?

Firstly we have to understand that the acquisition of Worklight by IBM doesn't change the nature of this solution. According to Worklight's site -'the Worklight platform is suitable for the development of mobile applications for both consumers and enterprises. It includes SDKs i.e. software development kits for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile devices etc. It supports rich, cross-platform apps without requiring code translation, proprietary interpreters or unpopular programming languages.' Worklight is compatible with HTML5, web, hybrid and native apps, which is an added advantage of this IBM platform and means complete flexibility while designing an app for an enterprise.

What is IBM worklight?

IBM Worklight primarily helps organizations to extend their businesses with telecom or mobile devices. It provides an open, comprehensive and advanced mobile apps platform to build, run and manage application activities. It mainly operates in HTML5 which helps to develop an efficient environment to run and manage applications.

IBM Worklight Components

Its architecture consists of 6 major components:

1. Worklight Studio - This platform is eclipse based IDE
2. Worklight Server - It is a gateway between apps, and back end systems
3. Worklight Device Runtime Components - in this, mobile device implementations of the server's function takes place
4. Worklight Console - It is a web based administration interface
5. Application Centre - It is a cross-platform enterprise apps store that helps organization to control the distribution of apps throughout the enterprise
6. IBM mobile application platform - In this building a single, cross-platform app that can lower risk and reduce total cost however, still delivering rich experience

The above is just an introduction about the technology, but as a user, what fascinates us the most? What is the use of this technology? What are the impacts, and how can it be beneficial? So, let us focus our attention on these areas.

The most important aspects are:

• It is time and cost efficient for any enterprise
• Productivity is increased
• It decreases the time to market slot
• It boosts customer satisfaction

With IBM Worklight, organizations can:

• Maintain multiple mobile operating environments from a single, shared code base
• Easily connect to, and coordinate with, enterprise data, applications and other cloud services
• Protect mobile security at the device, application and network layer
• Direct mobile application portfolio from one central control point
• Save time in every phase of development
• Utilize minimum resources in the development period, which saves cost
• Runs a single app on multiple platforms, which saves cost.

Benefits to developers:

As most mobile developers are aware, that trend of developing mobile applications as a hybrid of web and native code is becoming global. In the current situation, the developers are more interested in open source projects such as PhoneGap and JavaScript frameworks including Sencha Touch and jQuery Mobile etc.

IBM Worklight is a mobile application platform for smartphones and tablets that allows for the effective development and management of web, hybrid and native applications. The clear advantages of Worklight are there capacity to manage applications and interactivity with enterprise application servers and databases. At times mobile development tools can be difficult to install and configure, but this is not the case with Worklight. Perhaps more importantly, Worklight gives you WYSIWYG, which is not present in PhoneGap. 

Another major and important effective advantage of Worklight over PhoneGap is that it provides "deployment and management" i.e. authentic framework, integrated backend connection, unified push notifications, direct update, SMS delivery, mobile browser stimulator and much more. This makes Worklight technology very effective, and sets it apart from its competitors. Worklight offers to enhance your competitive edge in mobile enterprise applications.

The final word is that this is a WIN-WIN situation for all; whether a developer, who needs an easy and effective way to develop mobile apps, or an enterprise looking for a solution to make tasks easier and more efficient.

Original article