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How to Choose the Right Mobile Development Tools for Midsize Enterprises

Midsize enterprises have unique characteristics that you need to keep in mind when choosing mobile app development tools.

One of the big challenges in the era of digital transformation is: how to choose the right mobile development tools for midsize enterprisesMidsize enterprises face big challenges when developing mobile apps. It’s hard enough for large enterprises to develop them that, but at least larger companies have more substantial IT budgets. Midsize enterprises often have the same large ambitions as big enterprises, but without the budget to match. One of the big challenges in the era of digital transformation is: how to choose the right mobile app development tools for midsize enterprises.

gartner choose the right mobile app development toolIf that’s the dilemma you face, Gartner’s report, “Best Practices for Selecting Mobile Development Tools and Technologies at a Midsize Enterprise,” offers help. It starts out by succinctly laying out the problem midsize companies face: “Developing mobile apps has become a particular challenge for midsize enterprises (MSEs) that have always been challenged with having the programming and software development skills that they need. Users, however, are indifferent to the size of the company with which they are dealing. Their expectations of mobile app quality, performance, appearance and usability are high based on their experience with consumer services. Midsize enterprises have a number of options available to them to rise to the occasion, ranging from outsourcing development, to competent partners, to tools for MSEs.”

Midsize companies lag behind large organizations in building mobile apps, the report finds. Some 82 percent of large organizations have built, customized or virtualized mobile apps, versus 57 percent of small and midsize ones, it says.

How to get around the problem? Gartner offers several recommendations for midsize enterprise CIOs. The first is to look towards developing web apps or progressive web apps first for consumer-facing services, before considering mobile apps. It’s less expensive and requires less time and expertise to develop web apps and progressive web apps. In addition, when consumers do searches, they’ll find mobile sites, but not mobile apps. All this means that web apps and progressive web apps deliver “the most customer traffic at the lowest cost,” in the words of the report.  

Decide which app development tool is right for youThe second recommendation: If you do develop mobile apps, you should “Maximize device coverage through the use of cross-platform solutions by using only native apps where necessary, and consider using tools such as RMAD (rapid mobile application development) that empower citizen developers to create their own apps.”

The report’s third recommendation is to be careful not to buy costly tools and skills if your only option is to build apps. It says you should consider outsourcing instead of buying too-expensive development tools.

And finally, the report recommends that midsize enterprises “Focus on delivering those priority features quickly with best-effort, affordable solutions by identifying the business services that will give the greatest competitive advantage when delivered via mobile.”

The best mobile app development softwareIf you’re looking to build web apps and progressive web apps, or are looking to empower citizen developers, consider Alpha Anywhere. It’s a low code/no-code RMAD platform that lets anyone, even those with little technical expertise, build web apps and mobile apps. With it, you can build a mobile app once and deploy it to the web and multiple mobile platforms.

Alpha Anywhere is one of the most highly rated RMAD low-code platforms. InfoWorld named it a top mobile app development leader, and users continually rate it tops on product review sites. Here are details about Alpha Anywhere’s low-code capabilities.

To learn how Alpha Software can help speed digital transformation for your entire organization, book a demo and we'll show you how it works and answer your questions.

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About Author

Amy Groden-Morrison
Amy Groden-Morrison

Amy Groden-Morrison has served more than 15 years in marketing communications leadership roles at companies such as TIBCO Software, RSA Security and Ziff-Davis. Most recently she was responsible for developing marketing programs that helped achieve 30%+ annual growth rate for analytics products at a $1Bil, NASDAQ-listed business integration Software Company. Her past accomplishments include establishing the first co-branded technology program with CNN, launching an events company on the NYSE, rebranding a NASDAQ-listed company amid a crisis, and positioning and marketing a Boston-area startup for successful acquisition. Amy currently serves as a Healthbox Accelerator Program Mentor, Marketing Committee Lead for the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Launch Smart Clinics, and on the organizing team for Boston TechJam. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University.


The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment environment with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components. Using the Alpha TransForm no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. IT developers can use the Alpha Anywhere low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows (including data collected via Alpha TransForm), and add additional security or authentication requirements to protect corporate data.

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