Cape Town, 12 Nov 2015
Western Cape-based EOH MC Solutions is stepping up its mobile application development capacity to meet growing demand from clients for high-end mobile application services.
Matthew Wridgway, Lead Architect for Mobile Development at EOH MC Solutions, says the company has skilled up internal resources and grown its developer skills pool to meet the increasing demand for mobile applications from its custom development and integration services clients. Offering consulting, strategic planning advice and a range of mobile app development services for all levels of mobile app maturity,
EOH MC Solutions is finding the market keen to harness the power of mobile to enhance their customer experience, he says. However, while companies are eager to extend their mobile presence, many are approaching the space based on a perception that they need to move to mobile, rather than a sound understanding of what mobile users want from the experience, and what role the app should play in the overall strategic direction. By tapping into a large skills base including Web developers and EOH digital services for support, EOH MC Solutions' mobile app development division is able to advise clients on every stage of the app development and management process.
"It's a good idea to look at analytics data around the company's Web site first, to see how many people are accessing the site from mobile devices, what devices they are using, and what site features and functionality they are accessing from mobile, to determine what the demand is," says Wridgway. "Then you need to analyse what their user experiences will be like on those devices, pick up any issues, and brainstorm ways to optimise the user experience."
Wridgway notes that it is important to understand the requirements of the various mobile platforms when building apps. "The various mobile platforms have specific needs: for iOS you must be aware of the platform guidelines and requirements so you can get your app out in time. And Android has challenges with a mix of high and low end devices in the market and differing Android versions that need to be navigated around."
With extensive in-house app development experience, EOH MC Solutions is harnessing EOH's broad expertise and a range of tools to build apps suited to clients just wanting to optimise their portal for mobile, through to those looking for the most engaging highest performance mobile experience that includes integration with other devices and services. Wridgway says: "We are really impressed with Microsoft's progress in the mobile space. They have full-time Android and iOS engineers working on their own apps for other platforms as well as their own. Microsoft is really strong on Xamarin, and we've found that it can be a useful technology depending on where you are on the mobile maturity spectrum. The idea of leveraging your existing .Net capacity to do mobile development of your own products is enticing."
"Whether you are developing hybrid apps built with Web technologies and run in a native app container, or you are want to use Xamarin or go fully native, you still need to understand how to deal with the platforms and app stores, about app and API versioning and putting code out there that you can't just patch from the Web server."
He adds: "Microsoft's cloud platform Azure has a lot to offer in the mobile development space, we can build scalable high performance web APIs for the apps we build by using Azure for the API. Azure Mobile Services and Notification Hubs are an important component for us because mobile apps aren't complete without push notifications, and Azure Notification Hubs do a great job of integrating with the Apple Push Notifications Service and Google Cloud Messaging."
In addition, EOH MC Solutions is building its capacity to offer big picture mobile advisory services: "We educate business about intricacies of getting apps into app stores and managing them once they have been released to end users, because they need to consider the app and API versioning. We have versioning strategies in place either to force users to update the app or present them with ways to update. We assess the client's mobile maturity, strategy and needs and tailor solutions based on what their appetite is - from a first attempt to go mobile, right through to a full native approach. Additionally, we look at business goals, do user experience research and analysis, and help them validate the idea to ensure we develop an app with real impact."
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