Saturday, 14 September 2013

Best way of building suite of internal mobile apps for Android and iOS

Best way of building suite of internal mobile apps for Android and iOS

My company has created a team to build internal business apps for iOS and
Android devices. The aim is to deliver a suite of applications to assist
with business tasks (expenses, leave, room booking that sort of thing) and
more specific workflow tools that hook into existing systems.
Most of the actual development work will be farmed out to contractors,
freelancers and app development companies. The team will manage the
lifecycle of the apps and the business requirements.
It seems to me that there are a couple of approaches here. I know this
might be subjective, but I feel there are at least a definite list of
options with definite positives and minuses which is why I ask the
question here.
My thoughts are:
Develop native apps for each platform using native tools. I suspect it
might be possible to build up a set of graphics and frameworks to simplify
development of apps as we go and standardise look and feel, but I've found
very few documented examples of this. I suspect this will result in a much
better user experience, but I'm worried this would be a prohibitive amount
of work. Are there any methods or strategies beyond what I've said that
could make this more possible?
Build web apps in HTML5 and Jquery These would, of course, be truly
multi-platform, but we wouldn't be able to take full advantages of all the
devices features and the user experience or performance probably wouldn't
be as good.
Use a system like Phonegap or Appcelerator This seems like a good idea,
but I believe the apps wouldn't perform as well as 1.) and I suspect we
might struggle more outsourcing development. It also ties us into one
system. Are there any particularly good or bad things about this sort of
approach?
Use some sort of MEAP or MAP system I'm thinking something like FeedHenry,
Antenna, Sybase. But I'm worried that this could tie us into one provider
and limit our options. It could also be expensive, so we might be better
spending the money on 1.)
My gut feel is that 1. is the best option, but probably the most expensive
and might not be possible.
My question really is: are there any other options I've missed, are my
assessments and theories correct and are there any other strategies we
could be using? Is there any agreed best practice in this area yet?

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