HP Anywhere Goes Mobile, With New Development Tools For Partners

The new offerings come as mobile applications proliferate and business users demand tighter integration of their mobile devices with corporate IT systems.

"Mobile apps are enterprise apps. They're not toys anymore," said Paul Evans, worldwide lead for application transformation solutions with HP's Enterprise Services, in an interview. "Most companies are struggling with this. People's expectations are constantly increasing."

[Related: 10 Tough Questions: Partners Ask, HP's Top Executives Answer ]

The new offerings include an updated HP Anywhere platform for building mobile applications, with the goal of making business mobile applications as easy to use as most consumer applications through improved user interfaces. "This is all about design. It's not about coding," Evans said.

HP Anywhere now supports HTML5, a move he said will make it easier for IT departments to develop, deploy and manage mobile applications that run on multiple devices such as Apple's iPad and iPhone and Android-based devices. HP, Palo Alto, Calif., also debuted the online HP Anywhere Developer Zone where developers can access software developer kits, demonstration applications and other resources.

Also new is HP Performance Anywhere, a Software-as-a-Service tool for monitoring the performance and availability of mobile applications and wireless networks, and a new release of the HP Real User Monitoring software for monitoring the performance of applications running on Android devices.

"We like the idea of having enterprise apps on HTML5," said Jon Furner, president of Results Positive, a Chandler, Ariz.-based solution provider that partners with HP. Results Positive now develops apps for iOS devices, but the HTML5 support in HP Anywhere will help it reduce application development and maintenance costs, Furner said in an interview.

The HP Performance Anywhere tools also should help Results Positive expand its SaaS applications business, Furner said.

Meanwhile, the new HP Application Integration to Cloud, a set of services built on the HP Converged Cloud system, are aimed at helping businesses connect both on-premise and mobile applications with public, private and hybrid cloud systems. The services were built using Tibco and Red Hat integration platforms as reference architectures.

"This whole back-end thing isn't simple," HP's Evans said of the need to link mobile applications with corporate IT systems.

The new HP Anywhere release and other development tools are available now while the HP Application Integration to Cloud services will be available in September.

PUBLISHED MAY 29, 2013