Salesforce steps up its push to make everyone an app developer
IDG NEWS SERVICE: App Cloud Mobile combines several existing tools with new back-end services to speed up the process.
Salesforce has already rolled out several tools that aim to let business users create their own mobile apps, and on Tuesday it unified them into a suite and added some new services on the back end.
The new App Cloud Mobile suite includes Salesforce's Lightning app creation tools, which require little to no coding and are supposed to make it easy enough for everyday business people to create their own iPhone and Android applications.
It also includes the development services of Force and Heroku, and the ability to bring Wave Analytics and Lightning Snap-ins to any mobile app.
The new back-end functionality includes services for security, data integration and scalability -- the complex parts of development that often derail or delay a new app.
The security features include user identity, two-factor authentication, encrypted offline database, and transaction security policies. Integration features allow users to bring contextual data to apps from an Oracle or SQL Server database, for instance, or streaming event data from connected devices via REST APIs.
Apps and services are hosted on the Salesforce infrastructure, meaning they should scale well.
Unilever and Barclays are among the companies currently using the technology, Salesforce says. App Cloud Mobile, and the new services, are available now.
Also Tuesday, Salesforce announced the general availability of its Pardot Engagement Studio tool for business-to-business marketing automation.
