MobiCloud Project to Develop a European Corporate Appstore

STOCKHOLM and BRUSSELS, January 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

European Consortium Receives EU Funding Contract to Develop Mobile Workforce Applications in the Cloud

The MobiCloud consortium announced today that it has successfully finalized negotiations with the European Commission Directorate-General of Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT). The MobiCloud project will be co-funded under the ICT Policy Support Programme (PSP) Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme (CIP) with a total budget of €4.45M.

The MobiCloud consortium is led by Appear (Sweden) and includes Nettropolis (Germany), EsperantoXL (the Netherlands), Costain (UK) and COMIT Projects (UK). The aim of the project is to stimulate the provision of new mobile services in the cloud and to support the emergence of a European ecosystem of mobile cloud application developers.

The reduction in the cost and complexity of mobile application development using cloud technologies is a strategic objective of the European Commission. With MobiCloud it will become feasible for smaller companies, and not only global ERP vendors, to quickly develop and market mobile extensions of their existing business applications. The Commission therefore aims at enabling and facilitating faster adoption of cloud computing throughout all sectors of the economy which can cut ICT costs, and when combined with new digital business practices, can boost productivity, growth and jobs.

The MobiCloud project delivers four showcase implementations addressing different industrial applications (city transit, rail operations, interim staff management and construction) where end-users equipped with smartphones or tablets can access a portfolio of services stored in the cloud. MobiCloud provides a composite screen (mobile mash-up) that aggregates data from various corporate IT systems. Depending on context (location, role, skillset, available colleagues, etc.), the application displays different services which react in real-time to changes (work orders, fault reports, alerts).

Analyst firm Gartner summarizes the challenges of enterprise application development in its recent Hype Cycle for Application Development, which featured Appear (MobiCloud project coordinator) as a selected vendor: "Many factors, including advances in cloud, mobile, information and social technologies, change how applications can be built and the value they can deliver to the enterprise. To keep their enterprises competitive, application development leaders must continuously embrace new technologies and disciplines."

Enterprises wishing to join the MobiCloud ecosystem are encouraged to sign-up for the early adopter program where they will gain access to a MobiCloud testbed to run their own trial projects: [email protected]

Contact:
Mia Falgard
PR Manager
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[email protected]

SOURCE Appear