Mobile business apps more important now

MANILA, Philippines - Enterprises should invest in mobile business application platforms amid increasing use of smartphones and tablets of individuals at work as well as customers.

Stephen McNulty, Progress Software’s vice president and managing director for Asia Pacific and Japan, believes that investing in a mobile business application platform has become more important now given the adoption of smartphones and tablets.

“People now are so used to using their smartphone or tablet. They’re migrating away from PCs (personal computers) and they want to be able to do everything they need to do using their mobile device,” McNulty said in an interview with The STAR.

The need to invest in the platform is even more apparent for businesses in the Philippines as it has the highest smartphone adoption than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, he pointed out.

The use of such devices in the Philippines is growing over 300 percent year-on-year, he cited.

Amid increasing use of smartphones and tablets, many individuals nowadays opt to bring their own computing devices to the workplace to connect on the company’s network, McNulty added.

Even outside the office, individuals want to be able to access their companies’ internal systems using their mobile device. Many customers planning to make a purchase also prefer to use their devices to place orders and they want companies to be able to respond to queries real-time, he said.

Given the changes, McNulty said that investing in a mobile business application platform that could be deployed in different devices would allow enterprises, whether big or small, to make their operations more efficient and thus more competitive.

Through the mobile business application platform, corporate information could be accessed and orders or queries of customers could be received even outside the office.

Progress Software, a global software company, helps enterprises develop, deploy and manage business applications in the cloud or any device through its platform OpenEdge.

OpenEdge has mobile capabilities that are easy to use and do not require a lot of programming skills. The application platform also uses the “write once, deploy anywhere approach” which can run on various devices regardless of the mobile operating system.

“The time (for this product) is right because things move extremely quick today,” McNulty said.

“The store that offers mobility will win some customers, depending on the industry...Not having mobility can put you out of business,” he warned.