This is a very cool move by an old-school telecom player: Alcatel-Lucent today announced the acquisition of Open Plug, a company that makes a compiler that lets mobile app developers write an application once and then compile it into different mobile platforms--eliminating the need to rewrite the app for each different platform.
ALU will sell the software both to its service provider and enterprise customers, according to Laura Merling, ALU's VP of Developer Platforms. Service providers will be able to use it to make the same application available across all the platforms offered on devices it supports, and enterprises, by gaining the same capability will be better able to support a workforce using a diverse range of devices, she told me in a pre-brief.
Many enterprises lack the in-house development resources to support multiple mobile platforms, she noted, and so they wind up outsourcing development and support, which ends up being a costly recurring expense and one that has to be continually increased as new platforms or new releases of existing platforms need to be supported via third parties.
ALU's acquisition potentially addresses two pain points in enterprise mobility: Supporting diverse devices and mobilizing enterprise apps.
An increasing number of enterprises are wanting to migrate from corporate-liable and -standardized device support, to a system of letting users use whatever device they're comfortable with, and reimbursing them a set stipend. Being able to roll out enterprise apps on multiple platforms more easily and efficiently should help this along.
Laura Merling gave an example of this sort of enterprise: Enterprise trend: Harrah's, the casino company, has 80K employees, and 8,500 have mobile devices using multiple platforms. On top of this, Harrah's plans to start letting people bring in their own devices of choice, adding 3K such users.
The second point, as Michael Finneran noted in this recent blog, is that enterprises have been slow to use the mobile network to its full advantage by rolling out UC and other business apps to mobile workers. Again, this effort will be facilitated if enterprises are able to use internal development resources more efficiently by writing the app once for mobile and then compiling it automatically to all platforms.
ALU will market the Open Plug capability both to customers of its own platform, and to others, Laura Merling said.
