Implementing Mobile Applications for smartphones and tablets within the enterprise are inarguably getting a lot of attention these days. It would further seem that there are quite a number of products and services which claim to provide a step-by-step suggestion for the way to best develop and deliver these mobile applications.

Either that, or there are claims for “the only approach to consider.” This despite the fact that there is a huge amount of often conflicting information and advice for which of the three strategies is the “best” one to commit to. This has made understanding all of the risks, costs and issues which surround mobile application development, deployment and management very hard to understand for the average business user and other decision makers, technical or otherwise.  So which of these three strategies is really “best”?  The answer–as in many things in life–is: “it depends”. Anyone telling you otherwise is likely either not trustworthy or does not fully understand all of the nuances across the entire life-cycle of a mobile application from initial planning and inception, through deployment and ongoing maintenance.

For each product company or service provider that insists that native applications are the only way to go, there are at least as many who will assert that HTML5/CSS3-based applications are a safer bet. There are still other companies and service providers (perhaps not quite as many as the other two) who advocate a “middle-of-the-road” approach: the so-called “hybrid” application.

So how does a company interested in either planning a mobile application development strategy, or growing the one they have decide which of these 3 approaches (HTML5/CSS3, Native, or Hybrid) to take? The truth is that there is no “one size fits all” advice to be given here, though there still seems to be a lot of recommendations out there to oversimplify the mobility decision to these three.

The best approach starts with a discussion, continues with an increasing level of collaboration, and should culminate in a series of quick-win pilot and proof-of-concept solutions. The selected solution providor should clearly understand the benefits, strengths and weaknesses of each approach. As a guideline, consider the following when looking for products, assistance and solutions:

1.) Do you already know which solutions you want to build or have built for you? If so, have you prioritized them and thought about how they might evolve over time? What impact will changing standards and evolving technologies have on your applications?

2.) Will all of your users be able to access all of your applications, or might there be some level of permission or role-based access needed? Are there other security considerations?

3.) How will your applications be deployed? How will the management of this process be administered?

4.) Do you expect to be building these applications in-house or will you need some help to build them?

5.) Is it possible that you may need to develop some native applications, while pursuing different approaches for others? What long-term effects might this have for your company?

6.) Do you understand the factors that influence both the short-term and long-term costs as well as the level of each of these 3 strategic approaches to mobile application development?

A selected vendor, whether to build the solutions for you, simply advise you, provide a development platform for you, or some combination of all of these should be able to help you much more easily if you’ve given significant thought to these questions. In fact, you just might find that you will end up developing solutions base on more than one or even all three of these approaches.

By Rick Farris