Return on Mobility: How Enterprise Mobile Application Platforms Stack Up

BOSTON, Sept. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Yankee Group, a division of The 451 Group, announced today its Return on Mobility (RoM) scorecard, a new research methodology that calculates the value enterprises achieve from their investments in the platforms they use to develop, deploy and manage mobile technologies and services—an ROI specifically for mobility. With the increasing importance of mobile, social and cloud technologies enabling business success, it's crucial for companies to make the right, informed decisions concerning the solutions and platforms they use.

The focus of the RoM scorecard goes beyond total cost of ownership (TCO) to measure ROI for enterprises through benefits such as application integration, employee productivity and customer experience. In doing so, Yankee Group's RoM provides a forward-looking research methodology that focuses on:

• Evaluating providers against the current and future market trajectory
• Analyzing current and future RoM for enterprise investments
• Identifying where longevity exists for both vendors and hence enterprises making investments in these disruptive environments

To introduce this new methodology, Yankee Group has produced a pair of research reports focused on enterprise-class mobile application platforms. The reports score and rank 10 vendors in the mobile application platform space based on a custom survey of U.S.-based IT decision-makers that focuses on key areas such as how successful platforms are in mobilizing legacy business processes, in catering to a multichannel and cross-platform world and in delivering real business value. Yankee Group has analyzed which platform providers are delivering a strong RoM for their customers today, and which are falling short of providing measurable results and must catch up in the near future to be competitive. Scoring the 10 vendors based on the current RoM scorecard, Yankee Group determined:

• No one vendor has attained the ideal state, but several are leading the pack, including Salesforce, IBM and SAP
• Several vendors are hovering closely behind, including Sencha, Spring Mobile Solutions and Adobe
• Those following include Antenna Software, Xamarin, Kony and Appcelerator

However as the market evolves during the next three years, Yankee Group is forecasting that Appcelerator will join the leaders in moving closer to the RoM's ideal blueprint for success, Antenna Software will challenge strongly, while Adobe and Spring Mobile Solutions will be more niche players.

"As enterprise customers make greater investments into their mobile application platforms, companies feel growing pressure to justify the money being spent. It becomes more important for both vendors and procuring enterprises to demonstrate the return these platforms can provide," said author of the reports and Yankee Group Principal Analyst Chris Marsh. "Mobile application platforms are the perfect category to apply a RoM scorecard methodology to guide enterprises' tactical procurement and strategic decision-making."

To further explain RoM, specifically in the case of mobile app platforms, Marsh will also host a webinar, "Return on Mobility: Mobile Application Platforms," on Sept. 19.

--
About Yankee Group 
Yankee Group, a division of The 451 Group, is the preeminent research and advisory firm equipping companies to profit in a mobile world. The core of our content is proprietary research and analytics on the attitudes, behaviors and usage patterns of mobile users. We provide a range of actionable data, insights and advice to marketing, strategy and product executives driving the mobility revolution in leading companies worldwide. Visit www.yankeegroup.com.

SOURCE Yankee Group