New Research Finds Fifty Percent of CIOs Think Mobile App Development Takes Too Long
What's holding up companies' mobile strategies? Lack of right tools and skills (50 percent) and lack of budget (67 percent)
BOSTON, Nov. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The number of enterprise-built apps continue to rise (Gartner predicts enterprises will have more than 1,750 mobile apps1). The time and money it takes to build them – and a lack of a mobile strategy– are holding companies back from making the most of mobile. More than half (56 percent) of companies spend 7 months to 1 year building a single app, and nearly 20 percent spend more than $500K on the development of each app. These are the findings of an independent study commissioned by leading enterprise Backend as a Services (BaaS) provider Kinvey (www.kinvey.com). The full report can be downloaded here and an overview of the findings can be found here.
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Ownership of App development needs to change
CIOs have spoken: they're not happy with the way apps are developed today. 50 percent think the process takes too long; 24 percent cite the app development process as a source of frustration. With 71 percent of app development currently led by product lines or functions (e.g., marketing, sales, etc.) rather than enterprise IT, businesses face a future of skyrocketing costs and unrealized mobile potential.
Lack of mobile strategy = formula for disaster
According to the study, one out of three companies does not have a formal strategy for mobile. 46 percent of CIOs say fragmentation is the reason why their mobile strategy lags behind, while 62 percent cite the challenging pace of change in mobile. This strategy-less approach leads to redundancy, inefficiency, and uncontrolled costs.
Driven by the need to support "mobile moments" with small, purpose-built apps, Gartner estimates that most enterprises will have between "1,750 and 3,500 mobile apps to develop and manage2." We believe this means that an enterprise could spend upwards of $500M on this next wave of enterprise apps if they don't address this fragmentation.
High hopes vs. grim reality
According to the study, 97 percent of CIOs have high hopes for what mobile can do for their businesses. 76 percent want to leverage mobile to reduce costs and increase employee productivity and 64 percent want to create new revenue opportunities, and 12 percent are planning to use mobile to disrupt the market.
Additional reasons contributing to CIOs' inability to advance their mobile strategy:
- 53% claim their infrastructure was built for Web apps (not mobile apps)
- 50% don't have the right tools and skills in-house
- 67% cite lack of budget.
"The research confirms that while mobile plays an important and critical business role, the process to build and deploy apps is broken," said Sravish Sridhar, founder and CEO of Kinvey. "These inefficiencies, redundancies and resulting high costs are preventing businesses from creating apps that disrupt or seriously change business processes. It's stifling mobile innovation, and it's disappointing to see."
Mobile drives cloud adoption
With so many CIOs frustrated by the time it takes to develop a single app, 63 percent say they'll be turning to cloud solutions to address their needs. In addition, 54 percent will be standardizing the development process and 42 percent will be consulting with external experts. The top reasons cited by mobile leaders for moving to the cloud include:
- Supporting mobile projects (67 percent)
- Efficiency (68 percent)
- Cost (71 percent)
"Enterprises that have realized true mobile success have two things in common. One, they augment their internal capabilities with a cloud platform to add new mobile features and speed up development. Two, they standardize this platform across all lines of business, gaining scale and repeatability for their enterprise," adds Sridhar.
To access the full report, please visit: http://kinvey.com/2014-mobility-survey.
To access the infographic overview, please visit: http://kinvey.com/2014-mobility-infographic.
Methodology
ResearchNow surveyed 100 CIOs and 100 mobile leaders who work at companies with more than 500 employees.
1,2 Gartner Presentation, "Magic Quadrant: Mobile Application Development Platforms, Van Baker, IT Symposium October 2014.
About Kinvey
Kinvey is the leading enterprise Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform that helps enterprises, agencies, and developers launch successful and engaging apps. Kinvey provides comprehensive support for native, hybrid, and mobile Web applications and out of the box enterprise capabilities including identity management, integration with enterprise data sources and a data store and file store for new mobile data, ability to run customized business logic, and a rich set of mobile engagement services. Kinvey runs in a multi-tenant cloud or in a dedicated public or private cloud. On average, Kinvey customers launch applications twice as fast and at half the cost of traditional methods. For more information, visit http://www.kinvey.com.
Media contact:
Kristin Parran Faulder (InkHouse for Kinvey)
(781) 966-4100
[email protected]
SOURCE Kinvey
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