IBM has been cultivating a wide range of strategic alliances in the mobile world as it seeks to exploit the convergence of IT and telco platforms. It is an important partner in Nokia Siemens’ LiquidApps strategy, and now it has tied with AT&T on enterprise mobile applications, and with 10gen to open its databases to modern mobile developer languages.
It will collaborate with AT&T on helping large companies to develop apps which are kinder to mobile networks and deliver a strong experience to business users.
Announced at this week’s IBM Innovate 2013 conference, the jointly unveiled technology promises to help enterprises conduct comprehensive testing and analysis of how their apps use the network, and how quickly they drain the battery in mobile devices. The aim is to improve the quality, performance and usability of apps. The solution is based on the integration of AT&T’s Application Resource Optimizer (ARO) and IBM’s software development solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM).
This would benefit operators, as they seek a more strategic role in large companies, by making them key partners for large firms, and saving strain on their networks. IBM customers will be able to determine how an app is performing on any wireless network, and then enhance performance through development tools.
“ARO tackles a fundamental coding challenge developers face today’finding and fixing performance and power bottlenecks that detract from a great user experience,” said Carlton Hill, VP of developer services at AT&T, in a statement. “ARO can help developers create apps that conserve battery life, load pages faster and consume network resources in a smarter way, all of which improve the customer experience.” ARO is a free, carrier agnostic, open source diagnostic tool for business and consumer software, which is used by more than 1,500 developers. The carrier said users have seen apps run up to 60% more quickly, and ARO has saved its users more than 500 terabytes of data in its first year.
The tool claims to identify previously undetectable inefficiencies in the way an app interacts with the network. It can identify the events happening at multiple layers within an app and pinpoint inefficient resource usage, then make recommendations on how developers can optimize their software.
Meanwhile, IBM is pushing its influence in another area of the mobile enterprise, working with 10gen on a would-be standard to make it easier to write apps that can access data from MongoDB as well as relational databases like IBM’s venerable DB2.
This could see the IT giant lending its weight to another open language, as it did with Java, Linux and SQL, and so increasing its ability to mould important developer trends, in this case mobile apps, while apparently promoting standards. It will also benefit its own DB2 database, and WebSphere eXtreme Scale grid platform, by providing new ways for it to integrate with new mobile systems.
The collaboration will certainly provide a new fillip for MongoDB, allowing apps built on top of its NoSQL database to connect with relational data and business critical systems. The language is very popular among web and mobile developers dealing with unstructured data, but is seen as lacking the transactional integrity to be used for critical apps.
The new specification combines the MongoDB API (application programming interface), data representation, query language and wire protocol. IBM said in a statement: ‘Customers can begin to use these new features later this summer by pairing eXtreme Scale with MongoDB, and by running their MongoDB applications on DB2 directly.’ The companies are also seeking participation from other parties interested in developing standard methods for interacting with MongoDB.
In a bigger move to keep its back end systems relevant in the mobile and cloud worlds, IBM last week announced plans to acquire cloud provider SoftLayer, which already partners with 10gen to host MongoDB apps.