Sector Roadmap: Enterprise MBaaS platforms

1. Summary

Perhaps the biggest transformation in enterprise IT since the public cloud emerged is the move toward “mobile-first” application development. As mobility continues to become the new enterprise standard, developers are looking for frameworks that provide the tools they need to create innovative mobile applications without sacrificing their existing investments.

While there are proven, enterprise-ready frameworks and platforms for developing and deploying traditional desktop applications, the mobile application development landscape is still evolving. Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) attempts to fill the gap between traditional application platforms and mobile applications. It is the new middleware, exposing APIs and functions that enable developers to rapidly build new mobile apps and mobile-enable legacy enterprise applications.

The last two years witnessed unprecedented growth of mobile backend platforms. Facebook’s acquisition of Parse created a consumer-focused giant, with the social network’s thriving mobile ecosystem helping Parse attract the casual-focused mobile-gaming developer community. Other prominent startups and mobile specialists such as AnyPresence, Appcelerator, FeedHenry, Kinvey, Kii, and Kony are focused on the enterprise space, and traditional platform companies including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat are also vying for market share. At the same time, public-cloud service providers such as Amazon, Google, VMware, Pivotal, and Salesforce are adding mobile-friendly abstraction layers to their architectures, creating a market as cluttered as it is fast-moving.

This Sector Roadmap™ identifies and categorizes the principal disruption vectors at play and profiles a number of significant solution providers in the space. Key findings include:

• The MBaaS market is comprised of vendors from four key markets: pure-play mobile backends, traditional MEAP/MADP providers, PaaS vendors, and API enablers.
• Over the next 24 months, the MBaaS market will be disrupted by five Disruption Vectors: a convergence of features from multiple products, a growing importance of mobile-first development, a need for increased control of data assets, a need to unlock corporate data silos, and the growing influence of DevOps and Agile methodologies in mobile development.
• In the coming years, the lines between MBaaS and PaaS will blur, and vendors will create a more integrated development stack. In the near term, enterprises should meet their needs with MBaaS offerings that provide the greatest flexibility in deployment and tool choice.

Key:

• Number indicates companies relative strength across all vectors
• Size of ball indicates company’s relative strength along individual vector

Source: Gigaom Research

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