{"id":651331,"date":"2013-04-09T08:35:17","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T12:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=629058"},"modified":"2013-04-09T08:35:17","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T12:35:17","slug":"salesforce-com-and-rackspace-gear-up-for-mobile-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/651331","title":{"rendered":"Salesforce.com and Rackspace gear up for mobile developers"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there was any doubt that mobile development is where the action is, witness two piece of news. First,\u00a0Rackspace, the infrastructure-as-a-service and hosting company, is launching a pre-packaged mobile \u201cstack\u201d specifically for mobile applications. Second, Salesforce.com is beefing up its mobile software development kit (SDK) and is coming out with \u201cquick start\u201d packs to jump-start HTML5 or hybrid mobile applications.<\/p>\n

\"Salesforce<\/a><\/p>\n

Salesforce says developers using its tools can build apps that tap into troves of legacy data from existing CRM customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Given these developments, and rumblings that public cloud king Amazon Web Services is gearing up its mobile development push,<\/a> it looks like legacy cloud giants are crowding into a space pioneered by smaller, more focused providers of mobile back-end services. (GigaOM Pro analyst Janakiram MSV has a good take on choosing an MBaaS here<\/a> \u2014 subscription required.)<\/p>\n

Who needs an MBaaS?<\/h2>\n

Salesforce.com\u2019s pitch is that, while there are tons of useful consumer mobile apps, enterprise apps to date are still lacking. \u00a0\u201dIt\u2019s hard to build mobile apps that don\u2019t just look nice but are engaging and that comes down to data. They need to be connected into your work data,\u201d said Adam Seligman, VP of developer relations at Salesforce.com. \u201cYou have to make it easy to build the apps, the client side stuff, but you also need those hooks into corporate data.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new mobile packs, which support three lightweight mobile frameworks \u2014 jQuery Mobile, Backbone.js and AngularJS \u2014 should help on the ease-of-development front.<\/p>\n

Salesforce, which backs both Force.com and Heroku Platforms as a Service (PaaS), subscribes to the school of thought that a specialized Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) \u2014 from Parse, Kinvey, Kii or Stackmob \u2014 isn\u2019t necessary. Those smaller competitors would no doubt argue that developers need to build applications that connect to myriad applications from many sources \u2014 not just those from one company.<\/p>\n

Rackspace wraps up mobile stack in an easily deployable package<\/h2>\n

Rackspace already hosts \u201ctons of mobile apps\u201d but it wants to make it easier for developers and companies to deply them, CTO John Engates said. So it\u2019s wrapped up a mobile-focused technology stack as a sort of prepackaged cloud for that type of user.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to streamline things. We put together a stack \u2014 including Linux, MySQL, PHP, Memcached, Varnish cache<\/a> in a sort of blueprint that we can deploy consistently and quickly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This backend runs in Rackspace\u2019s public cloud infrastructure, but on cloud servers that are dedicated to that customer. \u201cWe\u2019re basically running a single tenant infrastructure on a multi-tenant cloud,\u201d Engates said. \u201cHeroku is a multi-tenant platform that lives on Amazon, a multi-tenant infrastructure cloud. We\u2019re trying to build a single-tenant platform atop a public cloud. You can build your own deployment and specs and scale it for what you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rackspace<\/a><\/p>\n

Rackspace CTO John Engates<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The entire stack is open source and developers can use their SDKs of choice to develop for any mobile device. Rackspace has also signed up some partners to work with its stack: FeedHenry, New Relic, Sencha, SOASTA, StackMob and Trigger.io.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea there is you use our infrastructure but then SOASTA can test your application from many perspectives \u2014 not just Rackspace \u2014 and throw a load up there to make sure it scales before you deploy it,\u201d Engates said.<\/p>\n

As more of these bigger, broader \u201ccloud\u201d companies add mobile development and hosting capabilities, it may be time for consolidation in the MBaaS business<\/a> to kick off for real.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong>
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n