Digital transformation is, without a doubt, one of the most crucial journeys every modern enterprise needs to embark on today. It is fundamentally changing how organizations create value and gain a much-needed competitive edge in the industry they’re in.

But while a digital transformation strategy can cover a wide range of technologies, the development and deployment of enterprise mobile applications is increasingly playing a key role in achieving digital transformation goals.

SourceForge recently caught up with Dan Wilson, the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Mobility Technology at Progress, to discuss the state of enterprise mobile application development. Wilson also talks about NativeScript, Progress’ open-source cross-platform framework for iOS and Android, and how it is empowering teams to build high-impact and high-performing mobile applications.

Q: Please give our readers a brief overview of your company (year founded, size, solutions, industries you serve, etc.).

A: Founded in 1981, Progress has always delivered the platform and tools that organizations need to develop and deploy mission-critical business applications. With new devices and interfaces emerging all the time, the number of systems that need to be connected is rising and the amount of data that needs to be harnessed continues to skyrocket. As a result, many organizations are looking for a modern platform that will enable them to quickly and easily develop and deliver tomorrow’s applications.

Progress tools and platforms enable the world’s leading businesses to deliver new technologies that are adaptive, connected and cognitive. Progress offers flexible frontend tooling for delivering an engaging, multi-channel UX, a scalable, secure backend for building and running microservices as well as leading data connectivity capabilities for harnessing data from business systems and other cloud or on-premises data sources. Over 1,700 independent software vendors, 100,000 enterprise customers and 2 million developers rely on Progress to power their applications.

Q: In your opinion, what are some of the most notable changes in enterprise mobile app development in recent years? How has Progress empowered (and continue to empower) developers to create high-impact and high-performing applications?

A: The expectations of users over the last 20 years have evolved. In years past, users may have been satisfied with limited choice, but now they expect companies to provide relevant applications wherever and whenever the user finds it convenient.

The dawn of handheld computing devices gave users the power to use data and applications free from the constraints of the desktop. With that came increased demands on optimal UI form factor, data security, data availability, compliance and an ever-increasing appetite to service needs digitally. Companies that get this right can guide users to self-service capabilities and let users solve their needs in the least-expensive manner.

On the other hand, companies that get it wrong are faced with overspending on technology, reactively dealing with security issues/breaches or losing customers to better equipped competition.

Progress continually stays at the forefront of modern applications. We have solutions for systems of record, enterprise data access, chatbots, award-winning web and mobile tooling as well as best-in-breed mBaaS and mobile application development platforms. We were one of the first companies to offer componentized application development tools for augmented reality. By investing in new tools and technologies, we help our users stay ahead of the curve, delivering applications that will make their businesses leaner and more competitive.

Q: According to Gartner, 95% of mainstream IT organization now leverage OSS assets. What are your thoughts on the way the open source market is growing? And how is your company equipped to be part of the growth story?

A: Progress is both a consumer and a producer of open-source technologies. One of our more visible open-source contributions is NativeScript. NativeScript enables developers to write truly native iOS and Android applications using JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular or Vue.js. NativeScript users get to continue using the tools, frameworks and languages they love, and deliver native mobile experiences that provide native performance and user experiences.

NativeScript is an Apache 2 licensed product that is truly free, no “gotchas” on the other side. We enjoy offering NativeScript to the JavaScript and mobile communities because we get to give back to the rich open-source ecosystem. As a company, it provides an outward demonstration of our creativity and intellectual horsepower—Progress may be corporate, but it’s also very cool!

Q: NativeScript 4.2 has just recently landed. Tell us about your latest release. What’s new and what features should the community be excited about?

A: NativeScript 4.2 brought improvements to the developer experience. We care a lot about how our product feels to our developers. Is the developer able to debug quickly and intuitively? Are we respecting the developer’s time by delivering fast features? Are we taking on more of the mundane tasks of development?

With that in mind, NativeScript 4.2 brought major updates. One feature every NativeScript developer uses is LiveSync, a process that syncs your source code changes with an instance of the app, giving instant feedback as you build your app. We shipped an entire rewrite of the application that had a lot of great ideas, but could get unstable under certain situations. Since no one wants to debug their debugger, we decided an entire rewrite was in order. The new LiveSync now uses sockets and works very fast while maintaining its stability. Also, we shipped the ability to debug with WebPack, something highly desired by our community.

We also shipped a brand new, user-focused design for our documentation website, which improved the usability and findability of the NativeScript documentation. Many people really like the lighter, fresher look. There is a rumor of a rebrand for NativeScript.org coming in a few months—stay tuned!

One thing I’m very excited about is our integration between the NativeScript Marketplace and the NativeScript Playground. The NativeScript Marketplace holds free samples, screens and templates for NativeScript apps. The NativeScript Playground is a real-time environment to load NativeScript apps on your device from the cloud. We’ve integrated both of these, so our developers can try out Marketplace code on their own device and tweak the code in the browser. The developer can then download the code to their local machine and use it, which really saves a lot of time designing and building out applications.

Lastly, NativeScript 4.2 shipped compatibility with the latest Angular framework version, setting the stage for us to release our Angular CLI Schematic-based Code Sharing feature. The Code Sharing feature is a way to either start a new Angular web and mobile project from scratch or convert an existing Angular web project to be a web and mobile project. The Angular CLI and Schematics will handle the conversion and set the project up to be able to share up to 70% of the code across all three platforms. Of everything we’ve done this year, Angular Code Sharing is my favorite feature because it helps our developers build more applications and reuse more of the code they’ve already designed, developed and tested. The cost and labor efficiencies are really impressive and compelling.

Q: NativeScript is already 4 years old. Since its initial release in 2014, how has the platform grown and evolved? What are you most proud of?

A: As NativeScript has grown, we’ve focused on three main ideas:

1 – Deliver a first-class mobile experience using the tools and techniques that web developers prefer.

2 – Provide a stable, performant foundation so users of all types can build critically important applications for their end users.

3 – Continually strive to make NativeScript the highest productivity platform for mobile development.

While all three facets are important to us, and we’ve made great strides in each category over the last four years, I’m most proud of our work on developer productivity. Let’s face it, mobile app development is expensive. At the beginnings of mobile development, it was necessary to deliver two custom applications: one for Android and one for iOS. This reminds me of web development back in 1999. Any interactivity from JavaScript would need custom versions written for each browser vendor—and often browser version! This complexity and custom code hampered how much interactivity could be provided, given the existing budget and timelines. Web development moved past this obstacle with improvements in browsers and frameworks.

There is a similar shift in mobility. While there have been many platforms that aim for cross-platform mobile development, NativeScript is the only one that gives direct access to all Native platform APIs, directly from the JavaScript layer. This saves a lot of time for the developer who wants to use native functionality and doesn’t want to learn Java, Kotlin, Objective-C or Swift. Further, NativeScript enables the developer to use open-source frameworks and languages like Angular, Vue.js or TypeScript. This accelerates native development because developers can use the programming concepts they prefer to standardize on.

An emerging capability for us is code-sharing. This concept allows code written for a web application to be used in a mobile application. Almost all non-visual code (Services, Business Logic, etc.) can be shared between web and mobile. We’ve just released an integration with the Angular CLI that will properly set up a new web and mobile project, or even extend an existing web project for mobile. The developer can write for web, iOS and Android from a single codebase using the Angular framework. We’ll be working on code-sharing for Vue.js coming soon.

Q: In general, how does NativeScript compare to other similar platforms on the market today? What makes it special?

A: First, NativeScript is free, open source and licensed under the permissive Apache 2 license.

Next, NativeScript applications are truly native apps. They run in a native context, unlike hybrid apps, which can only run inside of a WebView component. Then NativeScript provides integration with JavaScript frameworks like Angular and Vue.js.

We also provide integration with tools like Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, WebStorm, Chrome Developer Tools and others. This combination of tooling and frameworks provides the most familiar and powerful cross-platform mobile development ecosystem for web developers.

Q: Looking ahead, what trends and technologies do you think will shape enterprise mobile application development in 2018 and beyond?

A: We think organizations will continue to have issues meeting the internal and external demand for apps. Customers, partners, employees and end users all want data and capability wherever they happen to be. Many industries have a LONG way to go to catch up.

For instance, I needed to make an appointment to renew my driver’s license. I spent 45 minutes on hold, just to find out the next appointment was five months away! This information could have been delivered quicker and in a less expensive fashion (both for me and the Driver’s License Bureau), if the task was handled through an app or chatbot.

Thus, enterprise mobile app development will make a push toward solutions and techniques that enable developers to deliver more, higher quality apps in a less expensive manner. Also, emerging technologies like chatbots and augmented reality haven’t yet made broad impact. These “alternative UIs” have great potential when used well.

Q: What can we expect from Progress and, in particular, NativeScript in the future?

A: Progress has a rich history of helping our customers build excellent applications to solve business needs. We’ve made smart acquisitions recently to be prepared for the application needs of tomorrow. You can expect us to use our powers wisely and deliver an integrated platform that will help application developers meet cross-channel expectations from customers, partners and users.

About Progress

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) offers the leading platform for developing and deploying strategic business applications. We enable customers and partners to deliver modern, high-impact digital experiences with a fraction of the effort, time and cost. Progress offers powerful tools for easily building adaptive user experiences across any type of device or touchpoint, award-winning machine learning that enables cognitive capabilities to be a part of any application, the flexibility of a serverless cloud to deploy modern apps, business rules, web content management, plus leading data connectivity technology. Over 1,700 independent software vendors, 100,000 enterprise customers, and two million developers rely on Progress to power their applications.