Cross-platform mobile development platform Xamarin is increasing its power, building on a closer relationship with Microsoft, to add a new agreement with IBM.
For the first time, IBM has decided to partner with a third party mobile development platform, in an attempt to make it easier for developers using C# to integrate mobile apps with back end databases and software. This is increasingly important as enterprises adopt mobile strategies and push key applications out to smartphones. Xamarin allows Microsoft C# programmers to build native apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows, and reuse code between them.
IBM, as its recent mobile agreement with Apple showed, still has massive power to influence enterprise software strategies, so its latest move is a “big deal” for Xamarin, as CEO Nat Friedman put it. IBM’s latest software developers’ kit (SDK) lets programmers integrate apps with any back end system, directly from either the Xamarin IDE (integrated development environment) or from Microsoft Visual Studio.
This integration relies on IBM’s Worklight Server, which acts as a gateway between the mobile apps and the back end, handling synchronization and data access, and converting files to mobile-friendly format. It also includes Studio, a platform that supports HTML5 and native apps as alternatives to C#.
The two companies are already working together on apps with about a dozen customers, according to Xamarin, which has recently enhanced its toolset in various ways, in particular Android Player, a hardware-accelerated emulator which aims to solve a key problem. “Our users have consistently told us the emulator that comes with Android is the most painful part of building an app,” commented Friedman at Xamarin’s recent developer event.
The firm has also added Xamarin Insights, which brings app analytics to its development platform, tracking the stability and performance of apps in real time.
Earlier this year Xamarin, which has often been rumored as an acquisition target for Microsoft, announced a close partnership with the Windows giant. The pair will create a new .Net Foundation, to manage elements of the .Net framework and languages which Microsoft decides to place into open source. These consist of 24 current and future technologies, including the ASP Net, Windows Phone Toolkit, Entity Framework, forthcoming Compiler Platform (codenamed Roslyn), Visual Basic and C# languages, .Net Micro Framework and .Net Rx. Xamarin will contribute a range of tools including MimeKit and Mailkit libraries and the Xamarin Mobile platform.
This is Microsoft‘s second open source foundation, the first being Outercurve. Going forward, it expects to open source more .Net components and will seek contributions from commercial vendors and members of the .Net community.