Kony mobility-platform

Kony is a Mobile Application Development Platform for professionals who want an integrated solution for the quick deployment of mobile apps in different marketplaces. Kony is along the lines of Xamarin and MobileEngine but with a different approach. Let’s take a look at the features as well as its pros and cons.

FEATURES

Some years ago, enterprise mobility was an advantage and those companies using mobility apps for their employees were a step ahead of their competition. This has changed now and, if you aren’t using mobile apps for your employees you are just out of the league. Deploying mobile apps for enterprise employees is a need and where there is a need, there are companies willing to offer a solution. Mobile Application Development Platforms (MADP) meet the needs to deploy and maintain the apps needed for the staff. This is a growing market because enterprises are noticing they will be out of the picture if they don’t use this technology and, at the same time, these clients are giving feedback to vendors who, in return, are creating more modern and reliable solutions for their needs. Getting the right MADP for your company may be a difficult choice because it is a large investment and each of them has its own pros and cons.

Using a MADP has a lot of advantages when compared to buying pre-made solutions. Of course, when you are using a MADP and you are creating your own apps you are suiting your own needs so, the app is made just right for you, with all the features you need and without the features you don’t. But that also goes for the regular application development. The true advantages of MADP solutions like Kony is to have everything integrated in one pack, from design to deployment, including management and testing. By having it all together in a single environment you save a lot of time and resources. On the other hand, a MADP solution only makes sense for big or medium enterprises.

Kony has tackled the problem in a different way than other MADP solutions. They supply tools for every step in the mobile app development. They have tools for designing apps, to manage them and to deploy them. It is what they call “Kony Multichannel experience cloud”. The main difference with other MADP solutions lies in the ability to create the needed apps from just a single code base with two main options. With the Studio platform, you will have a lot of drag and drop widgets to make an app in a very simple way. These widgets are reusable and customizable for a better experience. You can create your own widgets with JavaScript as well. Mobile Fabric puts a development platform, a mobile backend as a service (Mbaas) and the API management together so you can create your apps in a more visual way. This graphical interface can create mobile solutions with all the needed features like layering and animations. According to their own sources, this method saves up to 65% of the time.

Learning to use Kony is very easy. All you need to do have is JavaScript experience and you are all set. The main language is JavaScript, which is a very spread programming language so, finding developers for this language is easy. There are a few tutorials available but actually, using the mobile fabric is so easy that sometimes it is not necessary to go through them.

When it comes to deployment, Kony has their own way to do it. Kony uses the Kony Management Cloud and, by using its management console, you can deploy and manage your apps and mobile devices. In this cloud service, you can test and support your app so you will save quite a lot of money in on-premise hardware. Testing an app is always a tricky part in the development process and this is greatly improved with Kony. You can just select the device you want to try your app on, and you test it remotely on the cloud, no need to have the device with you.

So, what is the cost of this service? It is not clear. As many MADP solutions, Kony is reluctant to show their prices in the website. You can take a free test with them and, if you like their service, you can ask them about the price. As it is usual in companies not showing prices, they will try to get as much money from you as possible by studying your company’s revenue.

Kony has many advantages when compared to other MADP solutions, but it also has some disadvantages and the first one is the cost. The cost to use Kony escalates very fast because of the cloud service. They also offer the whole pack, take it or leave it. This means you may have a lot of unused features you are paying for.

PROS AND CONS

PROS

• Easy to escalate
• Well integrated
• Easy to use and manage
• Deployment is faster
• Their cloud service is outstanding
• Different approach to a big problem for enterprises

CONS

• Price escalates very fast as well
• Many features may not be used and you have to pay for them anyways
• It is a new player

CONCLUSION

A MADP solution is not something everybody needs. It is a very special need of big and medium enterprises to keep their staff with the latest technology and the apps they need for their own specific business. Buying these apps pre-made isn’t a good idea if you need customization and paying somebody else to make them may put your proprietary data at risk so, it only makes sense to build them in-house. But having each developer working on their own isn’t the best idea so, having a cloud environment to connect all your developers and deploy your apps while you test them and create them seems like a good solution. The main problem is price, MADP solutions don’t come for cheap and Kony is no exception.