Chapter 8. Conclusions and Further Readings

The process of software development, especially software as young and rapidly evolving as mobile apps, is constantly improving and changing. So many important aspects of mobile development changed during the time that we wrote this book, that we were challenged by the decision about when to declare it ready for publication. By the time you read the book, you may have learned about a new technology or solution that is relevant to the topic. The coauthors of this book continue to be involved in software, especially mobile software development, and we invite readers of this book to interact with us by posting comments on the “landing page” for this book on the IBM developerWorks community on the internet. The web address is www.ibm.com/developerworks/dwbooks/enterprise-mobile/index.html

While new tools and techniques for developing mobile apps will undoubtedly come (and go), there are some predictions that we can feel very confident about making. Mobile apps and the use of smart phones and other “smart” personal devices, in a wide variety of sizes and form factors, will continue to grow as the primary way by which the average person will obtain information and services over the Internet. There is no putting that genie back into the bottle. For businesses, mobile devices will be crucial touch points of engagement with their customers, likely to eclipse even the web browsers running on PCs and laptops.

But the apps running on these mobile end points will increasingly need connection and interaction with services and data available in “the Cloud.” The Cloud, whether public or private, is the location where massive amounts of data can be collected, stored, and analyzed to uncover key insights. Consider image and video data as one example. While mobile devices will increasingly be the means for recording and viewing video, the physical limits of mobile devices will result in the cloud being the ultimate resting place for all of that information. In the cloud, the video data can be effectively combined and analyzed by multiple analysis engines in ways that are never going to be practical on the mobile device.

You can extend the video data analogy to all kinds of data: health monitoring data, geopositioning data, and data captured from intelligent end points of all kinds (appliances, household items, point-of-sale devices, etc). The cloud is the best, most economical location to store and process all of the data that will be produced by our universe of smarter devices. Yet when people want to look at the ultimate results produced by boiling down all of that Big Data, they will be looking at the display screens on their mobile devices.

So, even though mobile devices and apps will continue their inexorable pathway to become the main way that we interact with information technology, and will increasingly capture and collect a wider and wider variety of data, the true power and value of mobile software will only be realized when combined with cloud based services that can store the data and process it at scale. The implications of this assertion is that the mobile app development really means production of code for the mobile device and also, just as importantly, delivery of code that runs in the cloud. We have covered some cloud related material in this book, but just touched on current capabilities. Cloud computing is a domain of enterprise IT that is accelerating in its maturation. Perhaps, this would be a perfect topic for the third book in this series. Let us know by commenting on the landing page for this book!

2. MobileFirst Platform: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/mobilefirstfoundation

3. Rational Application Developer wiki: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/2fad2df2-9c68-4aa3-abba-01e910211998

4. Rational Software Architect Design Manager: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/designmanager

5. Rational Software Architect: Model driven development and deployment of Node.js RESTFUL application https://youtu.be/fggfu8u_aOM

6. Rational Team Concert: https://jazz.net/products/rational-team-concert/

7. GrandSlam Tennis Reference Usage: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/businesscasestudies?synkey=A951466Y90458U66

8. IBM Mobile Quality Assurance: http://www.ibm.biz/mobilequalitycloud

9. Five Imperatives of Application Lifecycle Management: https://jazz.net/library/article/637

10. Development and Design Analytics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NovQGpa2H6E

11. Offline Testing with a Mobile App: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm9MEk8dZzA

12. Mobile Testing: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/rtw

13. FURPS+: http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Furps

14. DevOps Self Assessment: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/invisiblethread/entry/diy_with_ibm_s_self_assessment_tool_for_devops_practices

2. Standford Design Thinking: http://dschool.stanford.edu/redesigningtheater/the-design-thinking-process/

3. Good Design is Good Business: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/gooddesign/

4. The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and expanded edition by Don Norman (http://www.amazon.com/The-Design-Everyday-Things-Expanded/dp/0465050654).

5. Observing the User Experience, Second Edition: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research by Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsky, Andrea Moed (http://www.amazon.com/Observing-User-Experience-Second-Edition/dp/0123848695).

6. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd edition by Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596527341.do).

2. OMG Cloud Statndards Customer Council, Architecture for Mobile paper: http://www.cloud-council.org/CSCC-Customer-Cloud-Architecture-for-Mobile.pdf

3. IBM Bluemix Platform: https://console.ng.bluemix.net/home/

4. Developing applications for Android using Rational Team Concert, in an agile way: https://jazz.net/library/article/505

5. IBM MobileFirst: http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/us/en/

6. MobileFirst Platform homepage: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/mobilefirstplatform

7. MobileFirst Platform Developers: https://developer.ibm.com/mobilefirstplatform

8. AngularJS home: https://angularjs.org/

9. Apple Developer: https://developer.apple.com

10. Android Developer: https://developer.android.com/index.html

2. Wikipedia’s definition for “Mobile Application Management”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_application_management

3. Comparing Mobile Application Management with Mobile Device Management: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2189066/tech-primers/mobile-application-management--mam--has-put-mdm-in-its-place.html

4. Mobile security best practices: http://www.cio.com/article/2378779/mobile-security/7-enterprise-mobile-security-best-practices.html

5. Wikipedia’s definition for “Application Integration”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_application_integration

6. Configuring DataPower XG45 with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation (formerly IBM Worklight): https://books.google.com/books?id=MXjJAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA224&ots=jNFE5x7IHX&dq=datapower%20xg45%20mobile&pg=PA224#v=onepage&q&f=false

2. Build a mobile app that isn’t perfect: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/mo-build-imperfect-mobile-app/

3. What is Mobile Quality Assurance? https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/mobilequalitybeta/entry/what_is_mobile_quality_assurance

4. Wikipedia description of mobile application testing and various tools available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_application_testing

5. Get that 5-star rating for your next app: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/mo-mqa/

6. First Glance: Mobile Quality Assurance: http://asmarterplanet.com/mobile-enterprise/blog/2013/10/first-glance-ibm-mobile-quality-assurance-mobile-analytics-developers.html

7. Setup Mobile Quality Assurance with Swift and iOS 8: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-mqa-swift-app/

8. OTA testing with MQA: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/mo-otadistribution-mqa-app/index.html

9. Mobile testing with IBM Rational Test Workbench, A step-by-step guide: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/mobile-testing-rational-test-workbench/

10. RTW Documentation: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSBLQQ_8.7.0/com.ibm.rational.test.lt.rtw.nav.doc/topics/c_ovr_rtw.html

11. Mobile application testing with Rational Performance Tester: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/mobile-application-testing-rational-performance-tester/index.html

12. Resource monitoring of mobile apps during automation testing: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/performance-analysis-mobile-applications/index.html

13. Test Automation of Mobile Application using Rational Test Workbench (RTW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRsRyR0Vj4g

14. How to create robust mobile and web UI test scripts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMsAs34N6PI&list=PLZGO0qYNSD4VZEYSvNbpXqFnAqmsSj2gQ

15. Running test workbench tests from IBM UrbanCode Deploy (for Continuous automation testing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWzew3fzhQg&index=8&list=PLZGO0qYNSD4VZEYSvNbpXqFnAqmsSj2gQ

2. DevOps for mobile development: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/mo-mobile-devops/

3. The Developerworks DevOps Zone: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/devops/

4. DevOps for mobile apps challenges and best practices: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/mo-bestdevops-mobileapps/

5. Implement enterprise scale iOS continuous builds with UrbanCode Deploy: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/mo-mobile-devops-implement-enterprise-scale-ios-continuous-builds-with-urbancode-deploy/index.html

6. DevOps for mobile app development: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/extendibminnovate/entry/devops_for_mobile_app_development

7. Mobile DevOps – why should you care? https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/mobileblog/entry/mobile_devops_why_should_you_care1

8. Mobile and DevOps: continuous change, user demand and effective collaboration: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/invisiblethread/entry/mobile_and_devops_continuous_change_user_demand_and_effective_collaboration

9. Mobile and DevOps: creating a working environment of continuous testing: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/video-portal/entry/mobile_and_devops_creating_a_working_environment_of_continuous_testing

This is just an initial list of reference material related to the chapters of the book. The online version of this reference list is constantly being updated and revised to offer verified links to the latest technological articles. Please visit that web page often for the most updated version: www.ibm.com/developerworks/dwbooks/enterprise-mobile/index.html