By Bill Loss, CEO, WebApps, Inc. a.k.a. SaaShr.com

Delivering Human Capital Management solutions under a SaaS model to the SMB market, we’ve recently stepped up our mobile strategy as a result of the competitive landscape. One interesting aspect to the mobile strategy challenge is the software industry is lumping “mobile” into one bucket, but from our perspective there are really two distinct buckets – the smart phone and the tablet. Given the inherent differences in screen real estate, decisions around the volume of data and number and complexity of functions allowed can greatly impact development efforts.

Equally challenging, is the decision to go browser-based or leverage a fat client architecture where code resides on the device itself. In the case of Android, we understand it’s easier to load apps directly to the app store as a result of a more limited verification process, so a fat client architecture might be preferred. In the case of iOS, frequent update cycles appear to be more difficult because in some cases we’ve heard it could take months to get the latest version of an app approved. Additionally, from an architectural perspective, we believe Apple restricts dynamic communication between the server and the device itself, in that some core functions which are better off residing on the server side may very well need to be coded on the fat client. These limitations can add complexity to an organization’s mobile strategy and may create a tug-of-war between whether fat client or browser-based is a better longer-term direction.

For many organizations, including ours, these are just some of the device/platform challenges which can potentially impact app compatibility and acceptance within the marketplace. With the goal of minimizing our internal R&D investment, events like All About Mobile help assist in identifying the appropriate subset of core functionality to deploy, when, and to what device and/or platform.