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Magic Quadrant for Mobile App Development Platforms

Published: 15 June 2016 ID: G00290469
Analyst(s): Jason Wong, Van L. Baker, Adrian Leow, Joachim Herschmann
Summary
Mobile apps are at the front line of the digital revolution, and MADPs are becoming the main driver accelerating digital transformation
in businesses. We evaluate the major vendors and key trends in this space to help IT leaders select platforms that best match their
business and technical needs.
Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2020, more than 75% of enterprises will have adopted at least one mobile app development platform to accelerate their digital
business transformation strategy, up from approximately 33% in 2015.
Market Definition/Description
As organizations move toward digitization of their businesses, mobile apps have become indispensable to consumers and business
professionals alike. In most cases, they are the preferred channel for interaction and engagement with information and services. While
demand for apps rises steeply, mobile app development in organizations simply cannot keep pace due to a deficiency of skills,
insufficient resources, lack of mobile-friendly integration, and an inability to scale the technology and processes. These challenges are
what a mobile app development platform (MADP) is designed to address.
The MADP market offers tools, technologies, components and services that together constitute the critical elements of an integrated
platform. The MADP enables an organization to design, develop, test, deploy, distribute, manage and analyze a portfolio of cross-
platform mobile apps running on a range of devices and addressing the requirements of diverse use cases, including external-facing
and internal-facing scenarios. Over recent years, a substantial part of the development process has required server-side support —
which we classify as mobile back-end services — delivered (potentially) via a mobile back end as a service (MBaaS) component (see
"Layer MADP and RMAD Over Mobile App Services for a Potent Mobile App Strategy" for a broader classification of the mobile app
development market).
Magic Quadrant
https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=134VIQGE&ct=160503&st=sb 1/65
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Mobile App Development Platforms
Source: Gartner (June 2016)
Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Adobe
Adobe is in the Leaders quadrant this year, based on the strength and mind share of its entrenched user base with designers and
marketers as well as web developers. Adobe is executing well with enhancements to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Mobile and
shows strong vision in meeting the needs of its core market.
AEM Mobile is Adobe's MADP; however, its full mobile app development capabilities require the use of other Adobe products,
including Adobe Marketing Cloud and the new Adobe.io offering. Many of the back-end data integration and services capabilities are
tightly integrated with the Adobe Marketing Cloud, such as messaging (push, in-app, SMS, email) and location services. Adobe's
mobile analytics are also very strong, offering extensive enhancements to facilitate personalization and targeting for apps developed
using AEM Mobile.
AEM Mobile supports both native and hybrid app development. The native runtime can be extended using the Apache Cordova
framework for custom functionality, if needed. The runtime is integrated with the Adobe Mobile Services software development kit
(SDK), which provides access to the Adobe Marketing Cloud services. This integration allows developers to drag and drop content and
services into mobile apps built using their visual development environment (as used by marketing professionals). The former Adobe
Digital Publishing Solution has been incorporated into AEM Mobile and allows for the integration of managed content into mobile
apps built using AEM Mobile.
Adobe offers AEM Mobile as part of a single-tenant AEM managed services environment or as a SaaS-based AEM cloud management
service. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor,
are in the enterprise tier of more than $100,000 per year (see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
STRENGTHS
Adobe has a leading position in the business-to-consumer (B2C) market, with creative tools in addition to its analytics and
marketing cloud solutions. AEM Mobile leverages these strengths and builds on them with strong native and hybrid app
development capabilities.
The AEM Mobile tool offers a low-barrier, visual drag-and-drop environment and has incorporated Adobe's Digital Publishing
Solution into the product to facilitate integration and management of content assets. This enables a complete workflow from
prototype to app creation.
AEM Mobile incorporates a subset of Adobe Mobile Services, allowing marketers to measure engagement with the AEM Mobile
apps, engage with the audience through push and in-app messaging, and track the success of audience acquisition campaigns.
CAUTIONS
AEM Mobile employs an Adobe-centric development construct across multiple tools that may be unfamiliar to developers that have
not worked extensively with Adobe's Marketing Cloud.
The Adobe.io developer portal, which exposes the hosted services based on Adobe's cloud offerings, is a relatively new and
unproven offering primarily aimed at B2C-oriented mobile apps.
Integration into back-end systems of record may require investment in the Adobe Marketing Cloud and Adobe Analytics to deliver
the full functionality needed within the desired mobile apps.
Appcelerator
Appcelerator (now part of Axway) is in the Niche Players quadrant this year, based on inconsistent market execution and traction,
though its 2015 corporate issues have been stabilized by the acquisition by Axway in January 2016. Although it has strong products
and technology, Appcelerator's vision for meeting key emerging market needs, particularly the rapid mobile app development (RMAD)
component, has lagged.
One of the long-standing independent MADP vendors, Appcelerator has achieved a level of stability through acquisition by Axway (an
API management and integration provider). It gains new sales channels, additional resources and expanded integration tools from the
Axway side that can be leveraged for additional enterprise capabilities. The Appcelerator platform offers JavaScript-based cross-
platform mobile app development capabilities, including mobile back-end service functionality and API creation via Arrow and Arrow
Builder respectively. Appcelerator has nurtured a community of more than 800,000 developers that use its Titanium open-source SDK
for cross-platform mobile development with native API support.
Appcelerator's development environment, Appcelerator Studio, offers functionality for building, testing and publishing native apps
across mobile platforms leveraging the Titanium SDK and Hyperloop framework. Still relatively immature, its App Designer provides a
visual design canvas for cross-platform design and development. Appcelerator Arrow provides mobile back-end service functionality
for a broad range of services running in the Arrow Cloud — including push notifications, location and storage — and is also open to
other third-party development tools. Through OEM partnerships, Appcelerator Arrow also provides a broad range of analytics
capabilities, including portfolio dashboards, real-time analytics and information about event funnels to support management of the
app portfolio.
Appcelerator's pricing is based on three different editions of its Studio product and is tied to developer seats per month. Its Arrow
offering is priced on a monthly subscription, based on usage variables. Typical costs for an initial mobile app development project —
in terms of direct licensing fees and related costs — are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year) just for developer
licenses, and more than that for projects leveraging mobile back-end service features (see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Appcelerator offers a strong set of developer-oriented front-end tools and frameworks, mobile back-end services, and API creation
and management capabilities that can address a wide variety of mobile app use cases.
Appcelerator has successfully built a large and growing community of developers that leverage the open-source Titanium
framework, which helps Appcelerator gain support from the bottom up in enterprises.
The Appcelerator platform provides a fully integrated and automated testing capability for fast, thorough assessments of app
quality and behavior across platforms.
CAUTIONS
As a result of the Axway acquisition, there is the potential for accelerated growth of the Appcelerator platform; however, there is
some overlap in API management, mobile back-end services and integration platform as a service (iPaaS) capabilities that might
cause some disruption from a product perspective.
Some Appcelerator customers indicate a slower-than-native performance for its apps, although there is the ability to write native
modules to add some new features or to support certain third-party libraries for a given OS platform.
The Appcelerator platform is starting to address low-code requirements, but the Studio user interface (UI) editor is still a code-
centric approach to developing mobile apps that falls short of the more seamless RMAD approach expected by mobile development
teams to accelerate their work.
Appian
Appian is in the Niche Players quadrant this year, based on its focus on enterprises looking to rapidly deploy process-driven and case-
driven multichannel apps. Appian is executing well in its market, but has not extended its vision to address broader MADP
requirements — such a mobile-oriented visual UI designer, broader push notifications support, and more sophisticated app analytics.
Appian's heritage lies in the business process management (BPM) space, which is obvious from the standards used in its mobile
platform — such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), which is designed to provide a communication medium between
business and IT for rapid solution delivery. Cross-platform apps can be created using the Appian Self-Assembling Interface Layer
(SAIL) framework, which takes declarative UI definitions to generate dynamic, interactive user experiences. Appian's Interface
Designer tool encourages collaboration between business and IT, being built on a visual composition methodology. This enables
business units to view and understand design concepts in order to ensure that solutions meet business requirements. This design
environment provides a single user experience (UX) for multiple apps, which reduces development time and end-user training while
generating hybrid apps using proprietary app containers for multiple devices and form factors.
On the back end, apps are supported by a broad range of cloud-based services, including authentication, role-based app security
controls, offline sync, and storage services. APIs are available to expose these functions (via REST) for consumption by custom apps.
Appian's Web API designer allows developers to create and expose APIs to other systems, as well as for other systems to trigger
changes or actions within Appian. The Appian development process is supported by a good range of application life cycle
management (ALM) capabilities, including validation testing and continuous integration. In addition, Appian introduced its App Market
during the past year, where extensions are available that have been created by Appian and its partners. These extensions are design
objects that form the UIs, logic, processes and data interactions that have been built on Appian's platform.
Appian's licensing objective is to include mobile as part of all its engagements. This is supported by a range of cost models based on:
monthly per named user, per occasional user, and app-specific user fees. These user-based prices include both front-end and back-
end services and the typical project size is at the enterprise end of the scale (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Appian's process modeler and rules designer tools offers a visual composition approach to minimize the need for coding and
decreases app development overheads
The Appian platform uses an interpreted development model that is ideal for agile development and deployment. The SAIL
architecture enables developers to easily make changes to app design and logic without disrupting core systems or requiring a
redistribution of mobile apps to devices.
In Appian's cloud architecture, mobile apps may be linearly scaled to support high user loads.
CAUTIONS
Appian's app layout designer does not provide mobile-specific previews of the app as it is being built; instead, the app needs to be
deployed to a physical device in order to view.
Appian is better-suited to process-centric and case-management-driven apps; its UI capabilities are not as extensive as those of
other MADPs.
Although Appian has updated its pricing model, customers with larger deployments have found its pricing a bit rigid and, at times,
costly.
Backbase
Backbase is in the Niche Players quadrant this year, based on its primary focus in the financial services vertical and its lack of
execution across other industries. Its vision for MADP capabilities has also lagged behind other vendors that have expanded their
visual RMAD tooling and back-end service capabilities such as mobile analytics and test integration.
The Backbase Customer Experience Platform (CXP) offers HTML5-based cross-platform development capabilities, and also supports
open-source NativeScript, React Native, and native iOS and Android technologies. A front-end client app is created using the Mobile
SDK, which is a collection of components enabling organizations to build, test, deploy and manage mobile apps based on out-of-the-
box templates and "widgets" that are used as a starting point for building (or extending) mobile apps. To assist with rapid app
development and scale up app development initiatives, CXP Manager offers a GUI for business users without programming skills to
edit mobile apps — including functions such as content editing, layout and navigation, setting targeting rules to run sales campaigns
and integrated analytics, and A/B multivariate testing.
The Mobile SDK acts as a bridge between CXP Server (mobile back-end services) and the mobile app. CXP Server provides robust
services for security and permission management, enterprise app integration, content management, personalization and targeting,
workflow, publishing, and editorial management. All CXP Server services are exposed via a new API gateway based on Zuul to deliver
REST endpoints.
Backbase CXP enterprise licensing has two options — server and client instances based on the number of registered app users, or an
unlimited end-user license based on the number of CXP server instances. Data center and cloud pricing is per user, per month. Typical
costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the
enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Backbase's app security is robust with out-of-the-box communication supporting JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Web Tokens
(JWT) with different encryption methods. Its Mobile SDK provides access to device-specific authentication features, such as Apple's
Touch ID.
Backbase separates the app life cycle into a development track and a business track, which streamlines app updates by allowing
business users to refresh and publish new content without having to redeploy the app.
Backbase supports standard native technologies, common web technologies and popular Model-View-Controller (MVC)
frameworks.
CAUTIONS
While CXP Manager provides a GUI interface, it lacks the ability to create a mobile app from scratch using low-code or no-code
techniques common in RMAD tools. The widgets are cross-platform UI components requiring coding by developers and need
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) styling to maintain the native look and feel.
Backbase does not use its own cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) to create native apps — developers must
be familiar with native IDEs, such as Xcode for iOS and Android Studio for Android, to create an initial native shell.
Backbase has a strong presence in the financial services sector, but its presence in other industries is not as established and
proven, particularly in terms of back-end connectors.
DSI
DSI is in the Niche Players quadrant this year, based on its market focus on mobile supply chain use cases — including data-driven
processes and those with significant mobile-to-machine requirements. It has shown good vision in keeping up with enterprise MADP
requirements, but has not demonstrated significant growth outside its core supply chain apps — although it has started to address the
B2C side of the market.
The DSI Mobile Enterprise Platform has traditionally integrated with existing enterprise systems to mobilize and optimize supply chain
functions, but DSI can create consumer-grade app user experiences by combining its supply chain expertise with new UX design
capabilities provided through its Wire framework. DSI provides UX designers and UI developers with tooling and its Wire XML-based
language to rapidly design and create a rich UX while maintaining the full manageability and security of DSI's supply chain solutions.
DSI also released a new HTML5 client, with full app life cycle management that leverages the DSI visual forms editor that can build
browser-resident apps for quick app launching — improving app performance without requiring the app to fully reload.
DSI also introduced its Transaction Analytics dashboard, which allows administrators to have a central visual representation for
monitoring activity, as well as adding App Analytics to report on app usage information such as activity abandonment. DSI offers
transaction-based connectivity into major systems of record with validated and certified mobile-optimized functional interfaces. In
addition, DSI supports RESTful APIs, SOAP-based web services and the use of custom connectors. DSI offers private, hybrid and
public cloud (via Amazon Web Services [AWS]) deployment options, but the vast majority of its customers have deployed on-premises.
DSI has a tiered, per-user pricing structure, with an option for casually connected users. Additionally, application server instances are
priced per production server for on-premises deployments only. There is no charge associated with the development tooling itself. DSI
also requires licensing of the requisite connector interfaces into back-end systems. Typical costs for an initial mobile development
project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are in the enterprise tier of pricing (more than $100,000
per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
DSI has enhanced its UI capabilities through the Wire technology (through its acquisition of RareWire in 2015). It has also created a
plug-in to the popular Sketch design tool to generate Wire code and upload directly to its Application Studio for rapid prototyping
and development.
DSI offers one of the broader back-end integration capabilities and sets of certified connectors available in the MADP market, with
many independent software vendors using and reselling its connectors.
Customer feedback consensus was highly positive regarding DSI's responsiveness to customer issues and suggestions, as well as
the high quality of its technical staff across the management, development and support teams.
CAUTIONS
Though customers have expressed satisfaction with DSI's customer support, they have also experienced issues around shortages
in resource availability for DSI's professional services, especially on larger projects that have higher demands.
With the addition of Wire, the DSI platform has the potential for broader use cases, but the domain expertise of the company and its
partners is primarily focused on supply chain solutions.
DSI has a relatively small presence and ecosystem outside of the U.S., so finding service delivery partners may be a challenge for
some customers not in the U.S.
Embarcadero
Embarcadero is in the Niche Players quadrant this year, based on its focus on the C, C++ and Pascal developer segments — which do
not represent the significant parts of the mobile developer market. Its vision for MADP capabilities also lag behind the market,
because of a lack of RMAD support and comprehensive mobile back-end services.
In October 2015, Idera (a provider of database and infrastructure management software) acquired Embarcadero for its technologies in
database management and app development. For MADP, Embarcadero offers RAD Studio 10 cross-platform development tools
geared toward sophisticated developers using the Object Pascal and C/C++ languages, along with support for HTML5 and JavaScript.
RAD Studio supports natively compiled apps that can be deployed to iOS, Android and Windows tablets (Microsoft Surface Pro), as
well as desktop Windows and Mac OS X. RAD Studio provides true compilation to machine code without a virtual machine layer or
middleware, unlike most other multiplatform approaches.
RAD Studio 10's newer framework supports Windows, Android and iOS. A key feature update in RAD Studio 10 is support for Windows
10. Features such as Windows 10 notifications can also be called through a wrapper for Windows Runtime (WinRT) APIs.
Embarcadero is also addressing the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) market and has added enhancements in the new RAD Studio 10
that include a new TBeaconDevice class for turning a device on one of the supported platforms into a beacon, and also improved
Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) support.
Embarcadero offers two middleware solutions for on-premises or virtual private cloud hosting to create and manage remote APIs —
one is SDK-based and the other contains prebuilt services with a runtime fee. Embarcadero also provides REST client connectors to
connect to virtually any back end. Embarcadero's pricing is multitier, catering to enterprise IT groups seeking development and
deployment licenses as well as separate licensing for the hundreds of independent software vendors using the platform to build apps
for resale. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor,
are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
RAD Studio 10 brings new Windows 10 platform features into enterprise apps. New VCL UI controls, WinRT and Universal Windows
Platform (UWP) components and APIs give developers access to new Windows 10 services.
RAD Studio 10 has a focus on the IoT and wearables, with features such as App Tethering, Bluetooth LE, and proximity-awareness
beacons to add both proximity and location awareness to existing apps.
Embarcadero has more than 200 partners that develop app components and add-ons to improve developer productivity.
CAUTIONS
RAD Studio does not have wide adoption and addresses a limited segment of developers — mainly Delphi/Object Pascal and C++
programmers. Enterprises without such developers may have a hard time finding resources familiar with these tools.
Embarcadero's platform is lacking some aspects of full life cycle support, including device cloud testing and robust mobile back-end
service capabilities that drive the management and orchestration of integration APIs and mobile services.
Some customers have expressed concern that Embarcadero's product release is so quick that software quality is affected.
Additionally, long-term support for MADP under Idera is uncertain — given its focus on infrastructure rather than development.
IBM
IBM is in the Leaders quadrant this year, based on its strong execution in the global market, particularly in larger enterprises and in its
partnership with Apple, which has yielded tremendous brand awareness and some high-profile deployments. IBM's vision continues to
be very strong as it relates to the app life cycle management of mobile apps and DevOps requirements.
The IBM MobileFirst Platform is a comprehensive MADP spanning the full software development life cycle and offering elements
addressing app design, development, testing, deployment and management for mobile hybrid apps (using Cordova). An extension of
the IBM MobileFirst Platform is IBM MobileFirst for iOS, where IBM has partnered with Apple to develop more than 100 template apps
with specific iOS feature support. IBM has added new App Builder and API Connect products to enhance front-end and back-end
productivity. The MobileFirst App Builder gives developers a visual development tool that generates native mobile apps, along with
Objective-C and Android Java code that can be edited in the native IDEs.
The MobileFirst platform leverages IBM's Bluemix cloud services for advanced mobile back-end services (such as Cloudant storage,
new mobile content manager, and Watson services) to create and deploy highly contextual mobile apps. IBM has also created a Swift
developer sandbox environment that allows developers to create and test server-side components to complement front-end Swift
development.
IBM charges client device and app license fees for its MobileFirst Platform software, plus software subscription and support fees.
Bluemix cloud services are available with both pay-as-you-go and enterprise licenses. Typical costs for an initial mobile development
project (in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor) are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than
$100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
IBM's MobileFirst for iOS has delivered a strong portfolio of mobile apps that can give many enterprises the ability to jump-start
their app development efforts by utilizing well-designed, well-thought-out apps that address known pain points in selected
industries.
The IBM MobileFirst App Builder has added a strong visual development tool to the platform while retaining the ability for the
developer to continue to utilize other third-party tools supported by IBM MobileFirst, such as Xamarin.
IBM shows strong vision in supporting full stack JavaScript and Swift, two of the more popular languages in mobile, which puts IBM
in a unique position to build an extensive developer ecosystem.
CAUTIONS
The IBM MobileFirst Platform is a complex development, deployment and management environment that may be more than many
enterprises need — especially if they are in the early stages of mobile app development.
Developing mobile apps with IBM can get expensive, because it often leads to additional investment in professional services as well
as potential product investments such as Watson services and other Bluemix services.
IBM's efforts to advance Swift in the open-source community for server-side app development are new and not yet proven; success
will depend on adoption of developers beyond the Apple developer community.
Kony
Kony is in the Leaders quadrant this year, based on its continued strong execution globally — particularly in building strong
partnerships with system integrators, including a global alliance with Cognizant — and its completeness of offering. Being the largest
independent MADP provider, Kony's vision also continues to be strong in relation to both the richness of its front-end development and
its forward-thinking back-end services and integration capabilities.
The Kony Mobility Platform is composed of Kony Visualizer and Kony MobileFabric. Kony Visualizer offers a sophisticated visual
development environment, with cross-platform design elements and controls that can be manipulated on a canvas editor that allows
for a fine-grained UI layout and design, including an Apple Watch canvas. It incorporates the previous Kony Studio Eclipse-based IDE,
so designers and developers can collaborate in the same environment. Kony Visualizer creates apps for mobile and wearable devices,
as well as web apps for desktop. Kony provides proprietary native app containers for cross-platform support, and the platform
autogenerates 100% of native iOS and Android API coverage. Kony has also added the ability to import Adobe Photoshop files into
Kony Visualizer, which converts layers into mobile app elements.
Kony MobileFabric can be deployed and managed across any combination of public cloud, private cloud or on-premises
implementations — including a partnership with AWS for deployment. Services delivered via Kony MobileFabric include data
integration and orchestration, authentication, offline sync, security token management, analytics and more. The Kony MobileFabric
offering supports a wide range of integration technologies (including REST and JSON as well as SOAP, XML, Open Data Protocol
[OData]). Kony MobileFabric also includes the capabilities needed to manage a full software development life cycle, including
integration with Soasta and AWS for test automation and Apteligent for extended analytics, plus support for continuous integration,
version and release management.
Kony's pricing strategy is to build a sustainable software tool/platform business through different pricing models, with per app or user-
based pricing. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the
vendor, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Kony Visualizer delivers a very strong set of capabilities that offers a feature-rich visual development environment in addition to
supporting development teams using JavaScript.
Kony MobileFabric has added the ability to create, bundle and orchestrate APIs to create an object-based interaction layer that
abstracts integration to back-end APIs for greater flexibility and productivity.
Kony offers one of the most secure platforms, with various certifications including Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)
certification. The platform also embeds advanced technology to add cryptography, obfuscation and app hardening.
CAUTIONS
The Kony Mobility Platform is comprehensive and may be more than some enterprises need, especially in the early stages of mobile
app development activity for simpler apps.
While Kony Visualizer is a powerful tool, it requires training for nondevelopers to learn its sophisticated feature set. Some customers
have commented on the need to improve training and documentation for Kony Visualizer and Kony MobileFabric services.
The Kony platform typically requires professional services to set up and implement, which may result in a higher initial cost of
ownership than other MADP offerings.
Mendix
Mendix is in the Visionaries quadrant this year, based on its growing capabilities to support the mobility needs of lines of business as
well as IT. It offers a broad development platform and continues to show good vision with respect to MADP capabilities.
Mendix is primarily known as an application platform as a service (aPaaS) vendor for supporting digital business initiatives from
ideation to management of applications across all channels. In the context of the broader Mendix offering, Mendix's MADP
capabilities enable rapid model-driven development of hybrid HTML5-based apps that execute within the Apache Cordova container.
Process-based models support a visual, codeless development process that can be extended with functionality written in JavaScript
and Java code. Mendix focuses on the collaboration between business and IT, offering a portal for sharing projects, capturing
requirements, tracking sprints and monitoring deployments. The Mendix Business Modeler allows nonprogrammers to add complex
business logic to the processes in an app without having to write code. The Mendix platform provides a model API and platform SDK
that give access to the core app artifacts and allow for publishing all app models in an open-model specification.
As a member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, Mendix supports Cloud Foundry-hosted cloud options as well as those hosted by AWS
and Microsoft Azure; it also offers on-premises and hybrid options. The platform offers data integration capabilities for OData, SOAP
and REST, as well as enterprise connectors. Its mobile back-end service capabilities include push notifications, storage, identity
management, and newly added mobile offline support including static resource storage, read access to data, data entry caching and
automatic image synchronization. Mendix also offers a curated App Store that contains app widgets, modules and components, with
contributions made by partners and customers that have been vetted by the Mendix team.
Mendix's pricing model is based on named users per app and does not charge additional fees based on service usage. Mendix
provides two commercial editions for end customers: Pro and Enterprise. Engagements are typically in the midsize and enterprise
tiers (greater than $25,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Mendix has a strong cloud focus and architecture based on Cloud Foundry, and is particularly suited to organizations seeking a
cloud-native solution.
Mendix's model-driven development provides a high-productivity tool for business analysts and developers to create apps without
the need for code, including the availability of industry-specific solution accelerators.
Mendix's App Store provides a useful repository of prebuilt app components and add-ons to accelerate web and mobile app
development.
CAUTIONS
Although Mendix offers capabilities to discover and connect to APIs, it currently offers a limited set of ready-to-use connectors to
popular packaged enterprise application and service providers.
The Mendix platform still has limited mobile analytics capabilities, which is becoming essential for supporting DevOps and business
decision making. However, Mendix integrates with third-party platforms (such as New Relic and AppDynamics) for this specific
need.
The Mendix platform added mobile offline support, but the complex conflict resolution handling necessary for transaction-oriented
apps requires manual modeling of workflows.
Microsoft
Microsoft is in the Leaders quadrant this year, based on strong execution with its Azure and Xamarin offerings within the sizable .NET
developer market. Its vision for MADP has also expanded drastically with its integration of Xamarin products and continued
enhancements of Azure's App Service and DevOps capabilities for mobile.
Microsoft's MADP is a broad omnichannel offering based mainly on Visual Studio, Azure App Service, and the Xamarin platform that
was acquired in early 2016. Hybrid apps are built using Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova. Native apps can be built using C# and
.NET with Xamarin in Visual Studio, which is now free and open-source as part of the .NET Foundation. Developers can use
Xamarin.Forms to build cross-platform UI elements for greater code reuse. Citizen developers, such as line-of-business analysts, can
create hybrid apps with Microsoft PowerApps, using a no-code authoring tool (PowerApps is fully generally available in 2H16).
Microsoft's Azure App Service delivers mobile back-end services on multiple client-side OSs. Azure App Service includes capabilities
such as push notifications, offline sync, identity management, SQL and NoSQL database integration, social media integration, and
location services. Additionally, Microsoft offers strong DevOps support for mobile: through HockeyApp analytics as well as Xamarin
Test Cloud, which are both fully integrated into Visual Studio Team Services.
Microsoft's pricing for Visual Studio is based on a per-developer seat subscription; Xamarin is now included in the license. Azure App
Service has five different tiers of licensing and is based on usage. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of
direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, start at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year; see Note 1),
but can increase significantly depending on the cloud services employed.
STRENGTHS
With Microsoft's MADP, Xamarin developers can design app interfaces to create fully native UIs customized for each platform —
using fully featured Android, iOS and Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform (UWP) designers.
For hybrid apps, developers can select their preferred JavaScript frameworks and workflows, which can integrate with Visual Studio
Tools for Apache Cordova.
Microsoft is a solid choice for enterprises with a significant investment and skills in the Microsoft ecosystem: Visual Studio, .NET
and Windows-based back-end systems.
CAUTIONS
Microsoft has struggled to attract large numbers of cross-platform developers to its development platform beyond its existing .NET
developer base.
Microsoft's MADP is a collection of developer-oriented tools and has not generated awareness or traction with higher-level line-of-
business buyers.
The PowerApps RMAD tool shows promise, but will remain in beta until the second half of 2016, so it has yet to be seen whether
broad adoption of PowerApps will be realized.
Oracle
Oracle is in the Challengers quadrant this year, based on its positive market execution and traction with its Mobile Cloud Service
(MCS) offering and a new focus on mobility at a corporate strategy level. Its RMAD vision and capabilities are still behind those of
other MADPs and some features have been delayed in coming to market.
Oracle's Mobile Platform offering is starting to gain traction across its considerable customer base as it begins to mature. The Oracle
Mobile Platform offers a suite of products — spearheaded by its MCS for mobile back-end services, its JavaScript Extension Toolkit
(JET) for web development, and its Mobile Application Framework (MAF) for cross-platform hybrid app development using Java-
based JDeveloper IDE, Eclipse and Apache Cordova. Having been released in beta during late 2015, Oracle's cloud-based no-code app
development tool, Mobile Application Accelerator (MAX), is finally publicly available with the release of MCS 2.0 in May 2016.
Internally, Oracle has used MAF to create and extend mobile apps for its enterprise application suites, such as Siebel, Oracle E-
Business and JD Edwards. For constructing brand-new apps with custom back ends, customers use Oracle MCS — which can work
with MAF, JET or a variety of front-end development tools, including a Xamarin SDK to support C# developers. Oracle MCS also offers
robust app life cycle management, including built-in versioning, automated deployment across environments, and hooks into
continuous integration and testing tools.
Oracle's MAF, JET and MAX products are available as part of MCS licensing. Pricing for MCS is based on the number of API calls
regardless of app or user count, while on-premises platform pricing is based on server CPUs and client licensing depending on either
the number of users or the number of apps. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees
and related payments to the vendor, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Oracle has elevated its Oracle Mobile Platform to one of its key corporate pillars, which means greater resources and focus in terms
of product and go-to-market strategy.
After just one year in the market, Oracle MCS has become a worthy mobile back-end service offering, with robust Node.js-based API
creation and management, offline support, and core mobile services such as push notifications and analytics.
Oracle offers extensive integration options to its own broad enterprise application portfolio, including more than 160 packaged
mobile apps in Apple's App Store, as well as connecting to third-party systems using Oracle middleware and service bus
technologies.
CAUTIONS
While Oracle's MAF has been in the market for years, its other mobile offerings are still relatively new and some customers have
expressed some growing pains as Oracle continues to integrate and improve the platform.
Oracle's long-awaited MAX visual app development product has been made generally available in May 2016, but the functionality of
this first release (limited device integration, for example) lags behind that of other more mature offerings.
Oracle's cloud deployments are not as extensive as those of other providers, with more than two-thirds of its mobile customers
utilizing its legacy MAF solution across both on-premises and cloud environments. Moreover, its MCS offering is available only on
Oracle's public cloud infrastructure.
OutSystems
OutSystems is in the Visionaries quadrant this year, based on its strong capability to support the needs of IT as well as line-of-
business users. Its vision for MADP shows a strong alignment with the needs of scaling app development through RMAD capabilities
and citizen development efforts.
OutSystems provides a visual, low-code rapid app development and delivery platform for developing mobile hybrid (using Apache
Cordova) and web-based HTML5 apps. It uses an indirectly executed metadata-driven model to generate code, which ultimately drives
the execution of the app. OutSystems Platform allows users to visually create cross-platform UXs, including device-specific
customizations for different target devices. The workflow modelling capabilities of this solution allow users to add complex business
logic without having to write code. It is also possible to leverage prebuilt apps and components that are available free in the
OutSystems Forge online repository to jump-start mobile projects.
For back-end development, OutSystems Platform allows developers to discover, consume and orchestrate multiple data sources,
cloud services, enterprise systems and social connectors. Functionality can be exposed via APIs to third-party front-end tools, and
deployed as C# or Java back-end code for full control as part of a standards-based server stack. OutSystems supports a continuous
integration philosophy and provides integrated testing across devices/channels as well as management of all services and apps
across platforms and channels.
OutSystems licensing is usage-based and determined by both the number of registered end users and the number of consumed
tables, screens and APIs. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related
payments to the vendor, are in the midrange portion of the spectrum (more than $25,000 per year and less than $100,000 per year; see
Note 1).
STRENGTHS
OutSystems Platform uses a model-driven approach to configure the app layers — UIs, data model, business processes, integration
workflows, web services and APIs — enabling high-productivity development. Developers can incorporate their own custom Java or
C# code or libraries, and compose them as part of the model, as well as custom JavaScript (and CSS) for the front end.
OutSystems supports a citizen developer approach and provides a number of sample apps and industry frameworks that
demonstrate how different components can quickly be brought together to build an app.
OutSystems Platform includes a number of APIs and offers API discovery with usage controlled by organization policies with
centralized security governance. It also enables a granular management of user accounts and access roles.
CAUTIONS
OutSystems Platform's metadata model to describe the behavior of an app does not give the developer complete control over the
generated code, as it limits the developer's ability to define how code is generated from the metadata model.
While OutSystems' model-driven approach to development accelerates the time to a solution, developers experienced in more
traditional app development approaches may struggle. They would need to understand how to balance the use of custom code and
libraries against using the model.
While OutSystems allows app deployment to the OutSystems cloud, on-premises environments, or to other IaaS providers (such as
Microsoft Azure or AWS), there is currently no option to directly deploy apps to Cloud Foundry-based environments.
Pegasystems
Pegasystems is in the Visionaries quadrant this year, based on its improved market execution and mobile product enhancements. Its
vision for MADP is driven by its BPM and CRM heritage, but has evolved significantly to address simpler mobile app use cases as well
as complex transactional app requirements.
Pegasystems' MADP offering is built into its Pega 7 Platform, which includes capabilities for BPM, case management and predictive
analytics. As part of Pega 7, Pegasystems introduced a fully integrated Pega Express RMAD tool that allows nondevelopers to build
cross-platform mobile apps using a visual, guided user flow and out-of-the-box screen and workflow components. Apps from Pega
Express can also be further refined by developers using the model-driven Pega Designer Studio development environment, which
provides deeper interfaces to its MADP functions such as back-end connectors, API creation, service orchestration and more. Both
Pega Express and Designer Studio can create hybrid apps that run in the proprietary Pega app container, or HTML5 web apps for
mobile and desktop.
Pegasystems' mobile app back-end service support development using Xcode and Android Studio, as well as popular third-party front-
end development tools and frameworks such as jQuery Mobile and Xamarin. Pegasystems offers its platform in a public, hybrid or
private cloud configuration as well as on-premises; nearly all its customers are on hybrid cloud deployments. Pegasystems continues
to offer strong security certifications, including: Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 for encryption; U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 11 for electronic signatures; and European Union Data
Privacy.
Pega Express is offered as a free SaaS product, while the ongoing platform cost is based on per user per month, and on-premises
deployments are typically priced as term or perpetual licenses. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of
direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than $100,000 per year; see
Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Pegasystems offers one of the most intuitive, yet powerful, visual and model-driven development platforms for building not only
mobile apps, but also desktop and mobile Web apps.
Pegasystems' platform offers a wide array of enterprise data connectors and enables a virtualized data layer that can transform any
data source to a common data model for mobile development using its tools or other third-party front-end tools.
Pega 7 enables citizen development with no-code app creation, while applying stringent development guardrails and maintaining
strict data governance and security.
CAUTIONS
Pegasystems has not effectively targeted or supported independent mobile app developers and its mobile developer community is
nascent compared with those of other major vendors.
Pega Express and Designer Studio make development more approachable for nonprogrammers, but there is still a learning curve for
its tools in understanding the case-driven data model when building more-sophisticated apps. Training has been cited as a
shortcoming by some Pegasystems' customers.
Pegasystems' pricing has been simplified to address smaller initial app deployments, but in general its pricing model is more
opaque and complex than those of other vendors.
Progress
Progress is in the Visionaries quadrant this year, based on its enhancements for supporting more robust enterprise requirements,
although not yet showing significant enterprise traction. Its vision is strong for MADP, but it needs to demonstrate a more cohesive
message and solution not just for developers but also for business stakeholders.
Progress' Telerik Platform provides a suite of products that addresses the entire mobile app development life cycle. This platform
supports development of hybrid apps using JavaScript, HTML5 and Cordova (including a curated repository of plug-ins) with its
AppBuilder IDE, or with plug-ins to Visual Studio and Sublime Text. AppBuilder provides visual screen designing capabilities, but can
also support Angular, Ionic, Kendo UI Mobile, jQuery Mobile and other UI frameworks. For building native mobile apps, AppBuilder
utilizes the open-source NativeScript framework, which uses JavaScript to access native UI libraries' device APIs, while also providing
cross-platform UI abstractions targeting iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Telerik Platform has comprehensive mobile back-end service capabilities that include push notifications, identity and access
management, social media integration, location services, app analytics, and monitoring. Telerik Test Studio Mobile provides tight
collaboration between quality assurance (QA) and developers for automated testing using emulators or a device cloud of 350-plus iOS
and Android devices. Progress also offers a verified plug-ins marketplace for Cordova and NativeScript components, which takes
advantage of the platform's open-source architecture for integration with third-party software. Progress has integrated Telerik
Platform with its other offerings, including OpenEdge development environment, Rollbase low-code aPaaS and DataDirect data
connectivity.
Progress continues to target independent mobile developers with Telerik Platform, but is also increasing penetration into the
enterprise through its digital transformation initiative, launched in May 2016. Pricing is based on a per-developer subscription and
enterprise-level pricing for back-end services. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees
and related payments to the vendor, are at the low end of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year), while enterprise-level pricing is
more than $100,000 per year (see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
Telerik Platform is one of the few platforms that can address mobile and desktop web, hybrid (Cordova) and native (NativeScript)
app development — all with its own tools.
DevOps support within Telerik Platform is very strong, with powerful app analytics, app feedback management, app life cycle
management and integrated mobile test automation.
Telerik Platform has very broad support for popular client and server-side technologies, frameworks and programming languages,
which makes it very modular and easy to work with in a best-of-breed environment.
CAUTIONS
While Progress enjoys a large and vibrant developer community, some enterprise customers have indicated insufficient support —
so ensure that mobile developers are self-sufficient.
Telerik Platform has some visual screen designing and building capabilities in its AppBuilder tool, but it falls short of being a full-
fledged RMAD tool for nontechnical professionals.
While the platform is capable of offline support, including files and images, the process of enabling offline app functionality and
conflict resolution is rather manual.
Red Hat
Red Hat is in the Visionaries quadrant this year, based on its integration of FeedHenry with core Red Hat products and the release of
the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform. Its vision for MADP capabilities is good, particularly for cloud deployment and Node.js
capabilities.
Red Hat has become a successful open-source software (OSS) vendor, with mobility becoming an important technology direction for
the company's platform strategy. The Red Hat Mobile Application Platform is a suite of products formed through the combination of
FeedHenry's MBaaS platform and other Red Hat technology such as OpenShift Enterprise. The Red Hat Mobile Application Platform
offers a no-code Forms Builder with drag-and-drop functionality to create simple hybrid apps that can be deployed to both mobile
targets and the web. Built-in functionality includes adding of field validation rules and offline capabilities. For native and hybrid app
support, Red Hat pursues an open toolkit approach with support for native SDKs, HTML5 and Cordova, cross-platform tools including
Titanium and Xamarin, as well as JavaScript frameworks. For code-centric IDE development, JBoss Developer Studio, which has
Cordova support, is now fully integrated with the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform.
Red Hat provides cloud capabilities both as a hosted public PaaS option (OpenShift Online) and an on-premises version (OpenShift
Enterprise) with life cycle management for both the client apps and the cloud code via integrated Git capability. The Red Hat Mobile
Application Platform supports collaborative development across multiple teams and projects, with centralized access control and
project visibility, the ability to create reusable microservices, build farms for generating app binaries, as well as integrated client and
cloud analytics.
Red Hat licensing is built on a subscription model of its hosted service and is based on the number of apps and the number of users
per app. Developers using the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform can use JBoss Developer Studio or bring their own tools and
integrate via Red Hat's SDKs for popular toolchains or via command-line integration. Typical costs for an initial mobile development
project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related payments to the vendor, are at the midrange portion of the spectrum (more than
$25,000 per year and less than $100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
With Red Hat's Mobile Application Platform, the combination of RMAD capabilities such as mobile forms creation, support for code-
centric development styles and SDKs for popular frameworks supports an agile and flexible approach to developing, integrating and
deploying enterprise mobile apps.
Red Hat's expertise in Linux, Java and security makes its offerings attractive to enterprises, and although Red Hat had a late start in
the mobile market, it now has a solid offering and is gaining market share.
Red Hat's JBoss software stacks are familiar to many enterprise developers, and OpenShift has good support for containers,
testing, continuous delivery and DevOps.
CAUTIONS
Red Hat's Forms Builder workflow capabilities are limited to basic forms submission functionality; the creation of more complex
workflows requires the Red Hat JBoss Business Process Management Suite.
Red Hat's Mobile Application Platform has limited built-in analytics and operational dashboards. Third-party analytics modules —
such as New Relic or AppDynamics for monitoring — are needed to augment these capabilities.
Red Hat's built-in deployment and management capabilities are fairly lightweight, although built-in integration with third-party mobile
application management vendors such as Apperian, MobileIron or AirWatch is available.
Salesforce
Salesforce is in the Leaders quadrant this year, based on its strong execution within its large enterprise customer base and its ability
to attract developers on its Heroku platform for mobile. It continues to show strong vision for MADP as it enhances its Lightning
technologies and addresses broad mobile app use-case requirements.
Salesforce's App Cloud contains all the essential elements of a MADP to address a spectrum of mobile web and app development
needs, from line-of-business users to experienced developers. Underpinning the newer capabilities of the multichannel App Cloud is a
set of Lightning technologies consisting of a UI Component Framework, Schema Builder, Process Builder and App Builder. Lightning
Schema Builder and Process Builder are used to build web apps without coding, using a visual point-and-click approach, while App
Builder offers a drag-and-drop editor to create and deploy hybrid apps via the Salesforce1 app container. For more custom-made app
development, mobile SDKs for native iOS and Android, React Native framework and Cordova are available, as well as watchOS and
Android Wear SDKs. Offline support has been available for apps built using the SDKs, but now Salesforce has added system-level
offline support for objects and files for Salesforce1 and Lightning-built apps.
App Cloud encompasses Force.com and Heroku back-end services, using Heroku Connect and custom APIs to integrate data between
them. Salesforce Connect offers OData and third-party API integration to bring in data objects from other back-end systems of record
such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Heroku offers tight integration with GitHub and an app pipeline process with review, staging and
production stages to facilitate distributed development across teams and continuous delivery capabilities. In addition to
containerization, Heroku Private Spaces provides complete logical network segmentation and single-tenant runtimes for security and
compliance, plus a choice of geographies and static IP addresses.
Salesforce charges for Force.com licenses based on a per-user per-month fee, while Lightning technologies are included as part of
Force.com licenses. Pricing for Heroku is based on utilization of services, computational power required for running the apps, and
other add-on components. Typical costs for an initial mobile development project, in terms of direct licensing fees and related
payments to the vendor, can start at the low-end portion of the spectrum (less than $25,000 per year; see Note 1), with pricing on a
per-user subscription ranging from $25 per month (per user) to $150 per month, depending on volume.
STRENGTHS
Salesforce App Cloud is supported by a very mature and growing third-party marketplace in AppExchange.
Salesforce offers a comprehensive self-service, developer training program called Trailhead — using gamification and social
features to onboard administrators, nonprogrammers and developers onto its tools.
Salesforce's Lightning Process Builder, Schema Builder and App Builder offer compelling tools for citizen developers to take the lead
on app creation and drive Mode 2 innovation in the enterprise.
CAUTIONS
While Salesforce Connect offers the ability to connect to third-party data sources, using OData, and interface with APIs, Salesforce's
out-of-the-box integration capabilities are not as flexible and extensive as those of other MADPs.
In the Salesforce App Cloud platform, mobile app testing support and its integration with third-party testing services are not such a
focus area as in other MADP offerings.
Customers must temper their expectations on RMAD capabilities, because the Salesforce1 container approach to deploying apps
created with App Builder poses UX limitations. Lightning app components are just starting to be delivered by Salesforce and the
AppExchange community, including the need to rebuild existing mobile apps in App Exchange over time.
SAP
SAP is in the Challengers quadrant this year, based on its continued execution on moving existing customers to its latest SAP Mobile
Platform (SMP) and SAP Hana Cloud Platform mobile services (HCPms) offerings. SAP's vision for its MADP has been realigned from
a corporate perspective and continues to evolve as SAP unifies its acquired, partner-provided and organically developed products to
catch up in areas such as RMAD and DevOps.
SAP has made considerable new investments and updates in extending its MADP product portfolio to support a unified mobile user
experience for SAP, based on its Fiori UX. The SAP Web IDE now takes center stage as the primary development tool for hybrid and
mobile web apps based on SAPUI5 and Kapsel plug-ins leveraging Adobe Cordova. SAP also announced Splash and Build (expected
general availability in 2H16), which are cloud-based collaborative design and prototyping tools that can generate UI5 starter code to
jump-start the development process. SAP also supports native and third-party development tools and frameworks, including Xamarin,
Sencha and Titanium, while a partnership with Apple will create a new Swift-based, iOS SDK optimized for SAP S/4HANA and HCP.
The on-premises SMP supports the Agentry metadata-driven development tool and also provides SAP mobile SDKs for custom app
development.
On the back end, SAP offers mobile back-end services through its HCPms. Although the on-premises SMP and HCPms deliver much
of the same functionality, some differences exist between the two — such as HCPms not supporting the Agentry components. SAP
also provides strong API management capabilities and mobile management functionality through integration with the SAP Mobile
Secure Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) product; for example, Mobile Place for app build services and distribution.
Additionally, SAP has integrated Mobile Secure with Keynote Systems to deploy apps to its device cloud for testing.
SAP's pricing for app development is based on a per-user perpetual license for SMP to build an unlimited number of apps, or a single
app perpetual license per user for a specific app. Pricing for its HCPms is based on a per-user license for an unlimited number of apps
(which includes the SMP SDK), or is based on outbound data per month (sold in 10GB units). Typical costs for an initial mobile
development project, in terms of attributable direct costs and related fees, are at the enterprise end of the spectrum (more than
$100,000 per year; see Note 1).
STRENGTHS
The SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) is often the default choice for organizations already invested in SAP back ends and SaaS
applications, given the tight integration through Hana Cloud Integration and prebuilt solutions for SAP modules that can significantly
accelerate the time to market.
Fiori is central to SAP's mobile strategy and developers have a choice of more than 800 Fiori apps as a blueprint for app
configuration and development.
SAP API Management provides robust API creation, orchestration and monitoring capabilities, based on OEM technology from
Apigee.
CAUTIONS
Although hybrid, native and Fiori app architectures are consistent across SMP and HCPms with a single programming model, SAP
customers using older Syclo and Sybase mobile products don't see the same level of support; while Splash and Build are still works
in progress to support full RMAD capabilities through integration with Web IDE.
Although SAP offers capabilities to discover and connect to APIs, it currently offers a limited set of ready-to-use connectors to
popular third-party systems and services via its SAP Hana Cloud Integration and new Content Hub products.
SAP's diverse mobile product portfolio — spanning SAPUI5, Kapsel, Web IDE, various third-party SDKs and the Agentry tool —
supports a wide range of app capabilities and architectures, but often leads to product confusion and licensing complexity for its
customers.
Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as markets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of
vendors in any Magic Quadrant may change over time. A vendor's appearance in a Magic Quadrant one year and not the next does not
necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore,
changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.
Added
We added two vendors this year:
OutSystems
Red Hat
Dropped
Five vendors that appeared in our 2015 version of the MADP Magic Quadrant were not included this year:
Click Software focuses on configurable apps for field service and therefore fails to meet the inclusion criteria for supporting broad
mobile app use cases.
Globo is no longer in business (see "What Globo's Downfall Means for Its Customer and Buyers for MADP and EMM" ).
MicroStrategy focuses on mobility for business intelligence and therefore fails to meet the inclusion criteria for supporting broad
mobile app use cases.
Xamarin has been acquired by Microsoft and is now part of the Microsoft vendor profile.
Zebra has ceased to offer its MADP solution commercially, making it entirely open source instead.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Vendors in this year's Magic Quadrant met the following criteria:
Must create apps for a broad range of use cases across multiple device platforms; at a minimum, for both iOS and Android.
Has demonstrated significant market impact, with at least one of the following:
MADP software revenue in 2015 of more than $30 million.
Significant global market presence and significant volume of inquiries from Gartner end-user clients.
Has at least 10 new paying enterprise implementations in at least two of each of the following geographic regions: North America,
Latin America, EMEA, Asia/Pacific.
We excluded vendors that:

Offer only mobile back-end services, without a tool to build app front ends.
Only sell their software coupled with development/professional services where the tool is used exclusively by company consultants.
Target only a single system platform, such as iOS only or Android only.
Do not sell a commercial enterprise offering (that is, only offer the solution as open-source software).
Honorable Mentions
The following vendors did not meet the inclusion criteria (typically because of revenue), but they are credible alternatives to the
vendors included in this Magic Quadrant. Several of these vendors are covered in "Market Guide for Rapid Mobile App Development
Tools" and "Market Guide for Cloud Mobile Back-End Services."
Alpha Software has robust enterprise integration capabilities and rich client-side workflow and custom logic creation in its coding-
optional development tool.
AnyPresence has strong mobile integration and API development capabilities, enabling developer productivity through a variety of
front-end SDKs and app libraries.
appsFreedom has a model-driven approach to app development, robust integration to enterprise systems, and solid core mobile
services.
Kinvey has extensive mobile back-end services and integration capabilities, along with a broad set of SDKs for various front-end
development tools and frameworks.
MobileFrame is capable of producing rich client-side apps using a visual point-and-click tool that also supports sophisticated back-
end workflows and integration to enterprise data sources.
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Product or Service: We are looking for breadth and depth of products and features across the mobile software development life
cycle including design and UX capabilities, simplicity of development, ease of integration, richness of back-end services, and
DevOps support such as analytics, testing, version and release management.
Overall Viability: We are looking for R&D spend and resources, growth of mobile business, and financial profitability or
funding/capitalization.
Sales Execution/Pricing: We are looking for broad sales reach across geographies and industries, effectiveness of sales — such as
long/short sales cycles — and simplicity of pricing models.
Market Responsiveness and Track Record: We are looking for how quickly products are released and adopted, and how new mobile
capabilities are supported both organically and through partnerships.
Marketing Execution: We are looking for general awareness of the vendor in the market, any negative or positive perceptions across
IT and lines of business, and how easily buyers understand its differentiators.
Customer Experience: We are looking for customer deployments across a variety of mobile app use cases, the ability of the vendor
to meet and exceed customer expectations, and the ease of onboarding and training on the platform.
Operations: We are looking for growth in mobile business operations and staffing, stability in leadership vision, and strength of
customer service.
Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Product or Service High
Overall Viability Medium
Sales Execution/Pricing High
Market Responsiveness/Record Medium
Marketing Execution Low
Customer Experience High
Operations Low
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: We are looking for an understanding of how to address the needs of IT and lines of business, as well as
third-party developers.
Marketing Strategy: We are looking for strong brand recognition, thought-leading product messaging, and outreach programs that
cut through a very fragmented and cluttered mobile market.
Sales Strategy: We are looking for a strong go-to-market strategy focused on selling mobile to enterprise IT, lines of business and
developers.
Offering (Product) Strategy: We are looking for a strong understanding of enterprise needs across the mobile software
development life cycle and provision of a coherent solution to address omnichannel UX requirements, high-productivity no-code
development, use of open and standards-based technologies, security and compliance, and DevOps support through analytics,
testing, and version and release management.
Business Model: We are looking for product revenue growth, ease of doing business with customers, and a strong partner
ecosystem amplifying the vendor's go-to-market strategy.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: We are looking for differentiating capabilities built for specific industries, vertical mobile apps, and a
focused go-to-market approach for any specific industries — including use of partners.
Innovation: We are looking for technology advancements in areas such as the IoT, wearables and omnichannel support, cloud and
microservices architecture, and RMAD.
Geographic Strategy: We are looking for diverse customer deployments across geographies, awareness within geographies across
the globe, and in-country vendor presence.
Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Market Understanding High
Marketing Strategy Low
Sales Strategy Medium
Offering (Product) Strategy High
Business Model Medium
Vertical/Industry Strategy Low
Innovation High
Geographic Strategy Low
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders must represent a strong combination of Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. In the MADP sector, this means that
Leaders are not only good at cross-platform development, deployment and management across the full life cycle, but also have a
good vision of the multichannel enterprise, support for multiple architectures and standards, a solid understanding of IT requirements,
and scalable channels and partnerships. Leaders must provide platforms that are easy to purchase, program, deploy and upgrade, and
which can connect to a range of back-end and cloud services — from both the same vendor and from third parties.
Challengers
Challengers in this market must have high numbers of enterprise clients, a large and growing base of seats in deployment, and the
ability to meet the needs of all departments in global rollouts. Challengers are vendors with a history of execution in the broad market,
but they may not yet have accumulated a substantial track record in the MADP sector across a range of scenarios. Challengers may
also lack a cohesive technical or business vision — or may have lingering gaps or confusing overlaps in their products or channels to
market.
Visionaries
Visionaries in this market have a compelling vision of products and the market's future, as well as the technical direction (and
necessary resources) to take them there. However, they have not yet demonstrated that vision in one or more of the following areas:
history of execution, revenue, size of client base, diversity of solutions or strong financial results.
Niche Players
Niche Players in this market are not as strong in one or more of the following criteria: product breadth/completeness or focus,
geography, or number of customers. Although they may be a good choice for a particular project, they are not well-suited as a broad
platform for all types of projects. Nevertheless, for specific scenarios an offering from a Niche Player may represent the optimal
choice.
Context
In a 2015 global Gartner survey on enterprise mobile app development, 34% of respondents indicated that they use a MADP, while 11%
use MBaaS products and 9% use one or more RMAD tools. In addition to these platforms and tools, 90% of respondents indicated that
native SDKs are employed to build apps, while 44% also make use of open-source tools such as Apache Cordova, JQuery Mobile,
React Native and other frameworks. The reality is that mobile app development in a complex enterprise environment requires a
diverse portfolio of front-end and back-end tools and services.
While a single MADP may not provide everything an enterprise needs, it can be used to bridge systems of record to systems of
innovation and enables a broader digital transformation platform that includes cloud, the IoT and analytics. Enterprises that are more
mature on the mobile technology curve (such as those with more mobile end users or more open device policies, for example) tend to
adopt MADPs. However, this doesn't mean that these enterprises have more mobile developers or even build the apps themselves.
The use of outsourced professional services from MADP vendors or from other service providers is still prevalent, although the trend
is toward more mixed sourcing and internal development through the use of low-code or no-code tools in the platform.
After reviewing this research, application and IT leaders need to take the following actions:
If you don't already use a MADP, evaluate and deploy one if your organization is starting to develop and deploy mobile apps at high
volume (such as more than six apps per year). A MADP will provide uniformity across app projects and enable a more scalable
infrastructure for back-end mobile app services, as well as higher productivity for front-end development.
If you already use a MADP (either listed in this Magic Quadrant or not) and are thinking of switching providers, consider whether it
may be better to supplement the missing functionality by adding RMAD tools or MBaaS offerings. The cost of switching from one
MADP to another could be high, depending on the amount of custom integration to proprietary mobile middleware and custom
client-side logic and UI work on the platform. Make sure the RMAD and/or MBaaS tools can easily integrate with your existing
MADP.
If you use a MADP that no longer meets your needs or that you feel may not be viable, start evaluating other platforms — not just on
current needs but also on future app requirements 12 to 18 months out, which may include wearable technologies and other IoT
smart objects. You may want to pick a platform that offers similar technologies (such as the use of Cordova) or supports similar
skill sets (such as JavaScript development), but don't lock yourself into these existing needs if your app requirements have
outgrown them.
If you use a MADP and are happy with it, you still need to assess its capabilities and roadmap features at least every six to 12
months to make sure that it continues to align with your organization's expectations and plans. Every three to four years, new
significant devices and OSs tend to disrupt the MADP market because architectures and standards are affected.
Market Overview
Mobile app development is at the forefront of digital business transformation strategies. Mobile apps are driving new compelling
interactions, profound business model innovation (or renovation), and deep insights to improve business processes and workflows.
Once an organization starts building and delivering mobile apps, demand across the enterprise inevitably grows. This potentially
disruptive situation typically leads application and IT leaders to evaluate and adopt MADPs for the purpose of unifying, governing and
scaling mobile app development activities.
MADPs serve four critical functions in this regard.

1. The platform offers a front-end development tool or IDE that increases productivity for multiplatform (devices and OSs) and
multichannel (web, apps, wearables) development.
2. The platform enables integration into multiple back-end systems and data sources, creating mobile-optimized RESTful APIs and
allowing for the orchestration and management of these reusable APIs across many apps.
3. The platform provides core mobile back-end services, such as offline synchronization and conflict resolution, push notifications,
geolocation services, authentication and certificate/token management, and file storage; these services are crucial building
blocks for every single app.
4. The platform serves as the central hub for the life cycle management of apps, supporting UI design collaboration, build services,
continuous integration, version management, test automation, deployment and release management, and analytics — all with
either built-in functionality or through third-party integration.
As mobile development converges with traditional web and desktop development, MADPs are continuing to evolve rapidly to be not
just silos for mobile app development. Indeed, nearly all of the MADP vendors listed this year can build apps for desktop and web, as
well as mobile, in the same tool. In a couple of years, mobile app development will morph into general-purpose app development.
To achieve this metamorphosis, these three important principles must be addressed in the MADP.
Decoupling back-end and front-end development — A MADP offers a full stack approach to app development, but the app use
cases across an enterprise are so diverse that a single front-end development tool cannot effectively address them all. The MADP
must therefore open up its back-end and integration services to be consumable by other front-end development tools, frameworks
and IDEs that are more suitable for specific app use cases. This decoupling means that a MADP will overlap with MBaaS, aPaaS and
API management products in providing the underlying mobile or digital services layer for development. This decoupling also is a
way to address digital transformation using a bimodal IT approach (see "Adopt a Bimodal Approach to Mobile App Development
Strategy" ).
Embracing open source and standards — In the early years of smartphone mobile app development, standards were virtually
nonexistent and proprietary languages and frameworks were the norm. Now the tide has turned. If a MADP does not embrace
standards-based technologies (such as HTML5, JavaScript or OData) and open-source software (such as Apache Cordova, Appium,
or Node.js), it may not be able to keep pace with changes in the market or foster broad developer community support for the
platform. The use of proprietary technology also causes vendor lock-in and, therefore, difficulty in migrating off a MADP.
Enabling self-service development — MADPs have traditionally served professional developers (such as programmers and coders),
but app development is becoming democratized with more tools adopting visual or model-driven app building paradigms. This trend
is influenced by the RMAD market, where simplicity and speed are the mantras and citizen developers (such as business analysts,
line-of-business professionals and application administrators) are the practitioners. App development — mobile and otherwise — is
increasingly initiated and supported by constituents outside IT, so MADPs must adapt to enable this self-service mode of
development.
Acronym Key and Glossary Terms

aPaaS application platform as a service
B2C business-to-consumer
BPM business process management
IDE integrated development environment
IoT the Internet of Things
MADP mobile app development platform

MBaaS mobile back end as a service
OData Open Data Protocol
RMAD rapid mobile app development
SDK software development kit
UI user interface
UX user experience
Asia-Pacific Context
Market Differentiators
The mobile app development platform (MADP) market exhibited brisk gains in 2015, growing 28.1% to a worldwide size of $973.1
million. We expect the MADP market to grow at 21.57% and reach $1,182.9 million in 2016. The Asia/Pacific region constituted 9.6%
of the total MADP market share, and grew at 18.6%, slightly below the market average. The Asia/Pacific region represents a mosaic of
countries with varied economies, regulations, languages and cultures that Gartner divides into two broad subgroups:
Mature Asia/Pacific: Includes Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Korea and Singapore
Emerging Asia/Pacific: Includes China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Southeast Asia (consisting of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Burma)
A consistent trend across all of Asia/Pacific is the rapid adoption of the latest smartphones, resulting in a diversity of handsets,
particularly low-end phones using Android, which also impacts the app performance. As a result, mobile apps built by enterprises
need to be tested for a variety of platforms used by digital-native users. However, bandwidth limitations, particularly in remote regions,
are a challenge in some areas of emerging Asia/Pacific. These connectivity concerns negatively impact the user experience and have
also spurred interest in offline sync capabilities for mobile apps.
Vendor Landscape Includes Small Specialized Vendors and Large Established Providers
As in developed markets such as North America, the MADP market in Asia/Pacific is also characterized by a mix of small specialized
software vendors and large established providers. However, many new mobile app development technologies are adopted in North
America before they become adopted by and mainstream for Asia/Pacific-based organizations. Hence, by the time the demand for a
functionality becomes commonplace in Asia/Pacific, global vendors have had the opportunity to fine-tune their offerings and bring a
more refined product to the market with several reference customers. Local vendors, on the other hand, have a pulse on the region-
specific priorities and leverage that is a differentiator as they play catch-up.
Importance of the UX Is Often Poorly Understood
As per the reference customer survey results from the 2016 MADP Magic Quadrant, user experience (UX) quality and capabilities are
the highest-rated requirement for customers choosing a MADP. In countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, UX
continues to be an important consideration, yet in a number of countries across emerging Asia, the importance of UX design in mobile
apps hasn't set in as a high priority for most organizations.
An optimized mobile UX that is distinct for different user personas typically requires dedicated mobile development resources with
specific expertise in UX design. However, most customers in Asia do not consider investment in the requisite UX skills and design
process of prime concern, and hence they compromise on the budget allocated for them, often resulting in apps with poor design and
usability. As a consequence of the poorly designed UX, adoption and user retention rates for enterprise mobile apps are often fairly
low.
Sustained Interest in Tools Having Targeted Industry-Specific Focus

Asia/Pacific organizations exhibit a sustained interest in tools that have a targeted industry-specific focus. Further, the standards and
regulations that need to be adhered to also vary across different verticals in different countries. Hence, vendors that have a good
understanding of the vertical-specific needs have accordingly packaged their offerings for targeted use cases; for example, i-exceed,
Kony, Salesforce and SAP offer packaged mobile apps with configuration capabilities. They use a successful implementation with a
prominent customer in a particular vertical as a reference for prospective customers.
Importance of Vendors' Local Presence, Price-Sensitivity and Extended Evaluation Cycles
Another typical behavior that characterizes the Asia/Pacific market is that for many customers, local presence of the vendor is an
important criterion. This preference has helped local MADP providers with a more-tailored approach to find their foothold in this fast-
growing segment. Multinational providers have responded by adding sales and support resources in the region as they attempt to
dilute geography as a competitive differentiator.
Moreover, Asia/Pacific is home to a large number of system integrators (SIs) that have large developer communities with diverse
development skills. Some multinational providers have built strategic alliances with local Asia/Pacific SIs and partners to deliver the
missing local angle, as well as to deliver vertical-focused solutions.
Vendors have found buyers in Asia/Pacific are more price-sensitive than other regions in the world. The buyers are apprehensive of
deals that do not offer an attractive ROI and associated payback period. The final purchase decision for organizations contemplating
MADP investments often comes down to price, and even the slightest difference between two vendors can influence the outcome. As
a result, vendors often need to focus more on competitive pricing and discounts to drive deal negotiations in Asia/Pacific.
An additional aspect that distinguishes Asia/Pacific organizations is that they have a natural inclination to evaluate a product for
extended periods before making a final investment, thus stretching the sales cycle. It often stems from the fact that they prioritize the
selection of a suitable solution with appropriate pricing higher than the time spent in evaluating it. This necessitates closer vendor
support throughout the evaluation process, making relationship-based selling very important in the region. For global vendors, this
implies that partnering with local system integrators and consultants can be an effective strategy.
China Presents a Few Additional Dimensions
The challenges are similar for vendors targeting China, but with a few additional dimensions.
Firstly, regulatory requirements in China include the need to utilize in-country data centers. As a consequence of China's firewall
impact, Chinese enterprises often encounter long network latency issues when using global MADP cloud-based offerings that aren't
based in a data center physically located within mainland China. This makes deployment of the cloud locally in China a critical factor
to facilitate a cloud-based delivery model for Chinese enterprises.
Secondly, customers in China prefer vendors that offer products, documentation, services and support in their native language. Global
MADP vendors will need local partners' support to cater to this requirement.
And thirdly, multinational vendors need to market against local Chinese providers they have very little experience competing against.
Considerations for Technology and Service Selection

Midsize Enterprises Have Distinct Needs
The bulk of the Asia/Pacific market is composed of midsize enterprises. Most of these enterprises that are from non-IT verticals lack
requisite in-house mobile app development skills. To address this, application leaders in enterprises should be willing to acquire or
outsource to access the appropriate skills, such as back-end integration and mobile user experience (UX) design, for their mobile
apps. In addition, they can also invest in mobile app analytics to aid an iterative refinement of the user experience.
Midsize enterprises' scale of demand is also smaller, mostly requiring a handful of simple apps with low-level functional requirements.
They can evaluate packaged mobile apps offered by vendors and customize or configure them to meet their specific needs. Clearly
defining a user-persona can help enterprises determine whether a custom built or a packaged app would be more suitable. In addition,
adopting a user-centered design approach will also help them deliver a compelling UX for their mobile apps.
Lastly, these organizations can leverage MADPs with built-in rapid mobile app development (RMAD) capabilities that include visual
app-building techniques, as these are easier to pick up and use for nontechnical users.
Growing Focus on Open-Source Software

Enterprise customers in Asia/Pacific share many aspects of their approach to mobile app development with those in mature
countries, such as a growing focus on open-source software. Open-source tools require skilled developers and their current adoption
stems mainly from the extensive use of Apache Cordova and JavaScript frameworks, such as Ionic, React and Angular, by web
developers transitioning to mobile.
Organizations can dabble in mobile app development using open-source software before making large investments in proprietary
MADP tools. They can also use open-source software to reduce costs, while concurrently investing in a commercial MADP platform
for specific complex needs such as back-end integration and services orchestration, and faster development time frames.
Selecting Partial or Full-Fledged MADPs

A full-fledged MADP tool provides functionality for front-end development and core mobile back-end services, enables integration with
enterprise back-end systems, and facilitates life cycle management of apps. All vendors profiled in this report offer tools that cover all
of these aspects, either as an in-built functionality or via third-party integrations. But every region has smaller vendors that offer partial
tools, often in response to specific client use cases. Their offerings may be highly specialized solutions targeting specific verticals or
local regulatory requirements.
Application leaders in the Asia/Pacific region should strategize and forecast their organizations' mobile app development needs for
immediate use cases as well as planned business initiatives in the future. They can accordingly evaluate the vendor's product focus
and determine the tool's suitability. It is also worthwhile to point out that no single development platform or approach solves all
different mobile app use cases. Gartner expects organizations to experiment with multiple front-end development tools as per specific
use-case needs, while standardizing on a mobile back-end services layer to leverage common and reusable integration and services.
Notable Vendors
Vendors included in this Magic Quadrant Perspective have customers that are successfully using their products and services.
Selections are based on analyst opinion and references that validate IT provider claims; however, this is not an exhaustive list or
analysis of vendors in this market. Use this perspective as a resource for evaluations, but explore the market further to gauge the
ability of each vendor to address your unique business problems and technical concerns. Consider this research as part of your due
diligence and in conjunction with discussions with Gartner analysts and other resources.
BlinkMobile
BlinkMobile is headquartered in Gosford, Australia. The Blink Mobility Platform offers a full development, management and
deployment ecosystem for enterprise mobility. On the front end, the Blink Mobility Platform offers a web-based integrated
development environment (IDE) that allows a developer to write one set of code that will then run on multiple devices and operating
systems. A separate but integrated point-and-click forms builder also allows for the rapid creation of large and complex forms.
Server-side code is hosted on the Blink Mobility Platform, allowing the developer to write integration code into existing web services
and APIs. Additionally, custom web APIs can be built and deployed onto the Blink Mobility Platform as a middleware integration
between client-side code and the client's back-end systems. The APIs can be specific to a single app, or reusable across any and all
apps. As a middleware service, the Blink Mobility Platform mobile back-end services and API layer interface to the underlying data
services of host applications.
BlinkMobile currently has 70 paying enterprise customers spanning multiple verticals, including state government, local government,
finance, manufacturing, utilities, education, healthcare, community care, construction, airports, transport, and logistics and business
services. It has a healthy R&D program that draws on the varied use cases and requirements of these different verticals to broaden its
mobility platform. BlinkMobile is most active in Australia and New Zealand via a growing number of channel relationships, with activity
and opportunities in India as well.
BlinkMobile has found success with ANZ-based organizations as these companies are drawn to the fact that BlinkMobile
differentiates itself from larger MADP vendors by being based locally, owned by the directors, has all development in-house, and can
offer direct, personalized and responsive support.
BlinkMobile continues to grow as it expands its number of existing channel/reseller partners. It is working with Amazon Web Services
(AWS) to engage more of what they term "consulting partners" to allow such partners to introduce higher-value application-centric
services based around the cloud infrastructure decisions those clients have already made.
IBM
IBM qualified for the MADP Magic Quadrant featuring in the Leaders Quadrant for 2016. Headquartered in New York, USA, IBM has a
significant breadth of global presence, including in Asia/Pacific. It sees intensified demand for mobile app development requirements
focused on security, hybrid cloud services, microservices and APIs from enterprises in this region. South Korea, Australia, New
Zealand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka are the regional countries where IBM
is actively engaged in the MADP business. It has more than 130 customers for the IBM MobileFirst Platform in Asia/Pacific, and has
consistently invested in acquiring local support personnel, building local language support, and partnering with local SIs to address
the accelerating demand it is witnessing in the region.
Banking, insurance and retail are the verticals that are leading adoption for IBM MobileFirst in Asia/Pacific. The company sees a
strong focus on digital transformation from enterprises in these sectors, as it targets urban as well as a large section of rural
customers with its mobile app initiatives.
According to IBM, many customers in the region have their preferred front-end development tools, and IBM provides them with the
flexibility to use different integrated development environments for different use cases while leveraging IBM Bluemix for mobile back-
end services. To grow its MADP user base in Asia/Pacific, IBM plans to emphasize its MobileFirst Foundation offering on Bluemix as it
provides an easy access point for entry-level projects with its turnkey implementation, scalability, DevOps support and multiple
licensing models.
IBM also plans to promote MobileFirst's integration with IBM API Connect, its primary API management offering for governance and
life cycle management of APIs. As a global provider with multiple points of presence across the Asia/Pacific geography, IBM is in a
position to meet the "in-country" hosting criteria in some countries and verticals in order to address regulatory or perceived security
requirements. For a more detailed evaluation of IBM's MADP offering, please refer to the main body of the 2016 Magic Quadrant and
corresponding Critical Capabilities reports for MADP.
i-exceed
i-exceed is headquartered in Bengaluru, India. Its flagship offering, the Appzillon development platform, provides functionality for
front-end development, mobile back-end services, integration with enterprise back-end systems and life cycle management of apps.
Appzillon offers a proprietary IDE on the front end for building omnichannel mobile apps.
To facilitate integration with enterprise back-end systems, Appzillon provides an automation functionality that allows a user to import
enterprise service definitions and automatically create app screens and mobile-optimized RESTful API connectors for the services. It
also allows users to package the services into a middleware archive and reuse them across different mobile apps, thus facilitating a
quicker time to market.
Additionally, Appzillon's administration module offers core capabilities such as offline synchronization, push notifications and
multifactor authentication. For life cycle management of apps, Appzillon has capabilities in areas such as version management, build
services, continuous integration, test automation and app usage analytics.
Globally, i-exceed has offices located in India, the U.S. and Singapore, and within Asia/Pacific it is actively engaged for business in
India, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. It has 25 paying enterprise customers in Asia/Pacific that have used its platform to
build B2C and business-to-employee (B2E) apps. It offers both a perpetual license and an annual subscription based on the number of
developers and users, as well as enterprise-level pricing. It sees maximum adoption in verticals, including banking and financial
services, retail and pharmaceuticals.
i-exceed has set aside a sizeable R&D budget for its platform and plans to bring in new features in the areas of DevOps, app life cycle
management and chatbots. i-exceed sees a buyer preference for prebuilt apps and templates in the Asia/Pacific region, and has
responded to this purchase behavior by providing a digital banking offering that has led to notable adoption for Appzillon in the
banking industry. The company plans to enhance the capabilities of this packaged offering further to build a stronghold in the banking
vertical.
Kony
Kony qualified for the MADP Magic Quadrant featuring in the Leaders Quadrant for 2016. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, Kony
provides a unified solution, called the Kony Mobility Platform, which enables front-end development via Kony Visualizer, while mobile
middleware and integration services are offered via Kony MobileFabric. The decoupled front-end and back-end tools enable Kony to
offer customers that have existing investments in other MADPs or ongoing do-it-yourself (DIY) open-source initiatives the flexibility to
start engaging with Kony in parallel. Kony also offers free versions of its products, allowing organizations to try before they buy.
In addition, Kony aims to attract small or midsize business (SMB) organizations, which make up a large portion of the Asia/Pacific
market, with the recently introduced managed services offering and entry-level pricing packages starting at $30,000 per year.
In Asia/Pacific, Kony is actively pursuing business in countries including Australia, Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, the
Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia, and has regional offices in a number of these countries. It is focused on understanding the regional
nuances as requirements vary by country and industry, and is accelerating its investment in new sales and technical experts in the
region.
In addition to its local teams, Kony has also established a strategic global partnership with Cognizant to jointly develop and deliver
solutions across enterprise mobile applications, mobile app design and back-end services. It has also built regional partnerships with
SoftBank and Telstra, both of which are Kony investors as well. These partnerships help Kony make inroads into countries as well as
verticals where it desires to increase its presence as a provider.
Currently, banking and insurance services, transportation, and manufacturing industries are the key verticals that are leading the
adoption of Kony in Asia/Pacific. For a more detailed evaluation of Kony's MADP offering, please refer to the main body of the 2016
Magic Quadrant and corresponding Critical Capabilities reports for MADP.
Microsoft
Microsoft qualified for the MADP Magic Quadrant featuring in the Leaders Quadrant for 2016. Its headquarters are located in
Redmond, Washington, USA. Microsoft has a significant presence in all global regions, with regional offices located in multiple
countries across Asia/Pacific that offer expertise in its mobile platform, implementation, and ongoing professional services and
maintenance for organizations located in Asia/Pacific countries. By using existing teams, it allows Microsoft to scale in the
Asia/Pacific region compared with other smaller MADP vendors.
Within Asia/Pacific, Microsoft's MADP has been deployed in a number of verticals, including financial services, retail, telco,
manufacturing, healthcare and government. Within mainland China specifically, many western-based organizations have struggled
with performance and latency issues in accessing cloud services of MADP vendors that aren't physically based within China. To
overcome this issue and deliver mobile app services to China-based clientele, Microsoft has managed to deploy Azure within China's
borders by forming a strategic partnership with local provider 21Vianet. This gives organizations within China access to Azure App
Service to build web and mobile apps that connect to data anywhere, in the cloud or on-premises, and covers web apps, API apps,
mobile apps and logic apps.
For a more detailed evaluation of the Microsoft MADP offering, please refer to the main body of the 2016 Magic Quadrant and
corresponding Critical Capabilities reports for MADP.
Retriever Communications
Retriever Communications is headquartered in Frenchs Forest, Australia. The Retriever mobile platform offers Retriever's Application
Development Environment (RADE) on the front end to provide a drag-and-drop feature for quick UI creation. RADE provides part of the
mobile app life cycle management, including UI design, build services and version management. RADE has integrated layout and
scaling management that allow apps to run on multidevices and multiplatforms.
There is also a cloud-build service for creating installation binaries for all supported platforms. Retriever mobile supports both
incoming and outgoing integration to external systems through FTP file transfer and SOAP/RESTful web services. Retriever mobile
allows users to work offline by providing a local database; synchronization with the server is resumed on reconnection. The built-in
synchronization protocol ensures data is synchronized correctly.
Retriever Communications has accumulated $20 million in funding over several rounds since 2000. Gartner estimates that Retriever
has between 5,000 and 7,000 users in Asia/Pacific, EMEA and North America, primarily in companies that perform electrical
maintenance. It also has a presence in oil and gas as well as medical and some industrial manufacturing and service providers.
While Retriever's growth has been steady and profitable over the past decade, it remains a small organization relative to most of the
qualifying vendors it competes with. Retriever does not generally use implementation partners, which limits customer choice. For
further details of Retriever's Mobile Platform, please refer to the "Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management."
Salesforce
Salesforce qualified for the MADP Magic Quadrant featuring in the Leaders Quadrant for 2016. Its headquarters are located in San
Francisco, USA. Salesforce had more than $6.5 billion in revenue in fiscal 2016 and employed about 24,000 staff members worldwide.
Salesforce products, including its MADP offering called App Cloud Mobile, has attracted support from all of the world's biggest
system integrators and consulting companies, which allows Salesforce to provide ongoing support to clients based in Asia/Pacific.
Salesforce's Asia/Pacific operations are centralized with offices in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. This
allows Salesforce to provide support and services to its customers located across the region. Salesforce has built a strong network of
local partners to support its Asia/Pacific customers in countries where it does not have physical offices.
Salesforce's App Cloud Mobile offering has been sold in Asia/Pacific across multiple industries, including financial services,
healthcare/life sciences, retail, manufacturing, communications, media, government, automotive, higher education and nonprofit.
Salesforce plans to grow its App Cloud customers and users in Asia/Pacific in two ways: expanding the footprint of current Salesforce
customers (primarily of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud) that are not yet using App Cloud Mobile, and by raising awareness and selling
App Cloud's MADP capabilities to non-Salesforce customers.
There are also data center locations for App Cloud to run apps in certain areas, including Singapore and Sydney, to meet in-country
compliance requirements. For a more-detailed evaluation of the Salesforce MADP offering, please refer to the main body of the 2016
Magic Quadrant and corresponding Critical Capabilities reports for MADP.
SAP
SAP qualified for the MADP Magic Quadrant featuring in the Challengers Quadrant for 2016. It is headquartered in Baden-
Wurttemberg, Germany. With Asia/Pacific enterprises recognizing mobile as one of the dominant interfaces to digital business, SAP is
positioning SAP Mobile Platform (SMP), an on-premises mobile app development platform, along with SAP Hana Cloud Platform for
mobile app services (HCPms), as important facilitators of the digital transformation for client organizations.
Fiori is central to SAP's mobile strategy and its portfolio of ready apps is in line with the preference for prebuilt apps that SAP sees
from many Asia/Pacific clients. As in other geographies, SAP continues to market and bundle its MADP in Asia/Pacific with its
broader business application portfolio that includes ERP, supply chain management, CRM, e-commerce and so forth, and it recognizes
the joint buying decisions being made within the enterprise as a result of integrated SAP offerings.
SAP sees maximum adoption for its MADP from organizations that have already invested in SAP back-end enterprise applications. It
has approximately 45 office locations spread across the Asia/Pacific region. In addition to direct sales, SAP goes to market in
Asia/Pacific through SIs, regional value-added resellers (VARs), mobile consultancies, management service providers and cloud
service providers.
In order to deliver cloud-based mobile app services to Chinese enterprises, SAP is planning investments in new data centers for
hosting HCPms in China. Its upcoming mobile investment areas include mobile UX innovation, citizen developer focus, mobile DevOps
and ready-to-use mobile back-end services. For a more detailed evaluation of SAP's MADP offering, please refer to the main body of
the 2016 Magic Quadrant and corresponding Critical Capabilities reports for MADP.
Note 1
Pricing
To provide guidance to organizations about pricing for different MADP offerings, Gartner has defined a coarse-grained three-tier
structure, as follows:
A low-cost tier of less than $25,000 per year for an initial mobile development project
A midrange tier of between $25,000 and $100,000 per year
An enterprise tier of more than $100,000 per year
Note 2
Vendors Considered
Adobe, Alpha Software, AnyPresence, Appcelerator, Appery.io, appsFreedom, Appian, Backbase, BlinkMobile, Catavolt, ClickSoftware,
DSI, EachScape, Embarcadero, i-exceed, IBM, Kinvey, Kony, Mendix, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, MobileFrame, Movilizer, Oracle,
OutSystems, Pegasystems, Progress, Red Hat, Retriever Communications, Salesforce, SAP, Webalo, WebRatio, Xamarin, Zebra.
Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This includes current product/service
capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the
market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of
the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the
product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal
management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities
develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of
responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to
influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with
the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional
initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products
evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary
tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational
structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and
efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into products and services.
Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those
with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized
through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and
communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer
base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation,
functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual
market segments, including vertical markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation,
defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside
the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and
market.
(https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/mobile-application-development-platforms?
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4/11/2017 Gartner Reprint

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Magic Quadrant for Mobile App Development Platforms

Strategic Planning Assumption

Source: Gartner (June 2016)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Vendors Added and Dropped

changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

We excluded vendors that:

Product or Service High

Overall Viability Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing High

Market Responsiveness/Record Medium

Marketing Execution Low

Customer Experience High

Source: Gartner (June 2016)

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Market Understanding High

Marketing Strategy Low

Sales Strategy Medium

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Offering (Product) Strategy High

Business Model Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy Low

Geographic Strategy Low

Source: Gartner (June 2016)

MADPs serve four critical functions in this regard.

Acronym Key and Glossary Terms

BPM business process management

IDE integrated development environment

IoT the Internet of Things

MADP mobile app development platform

MBaaS mobile back end as a service

OData Open Data Protocol

RMAD rapid mobile app development

SDK software development kit

Sustained Interest in Tools Having Targeted Industry-Speciﬁc Focus

Considerations for Technology and Service Selection

Growing Focus on Open-Source Software

Selecting Partial or Full-Fledged MADPs

Evaluation Criteria Deﬁnitions

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