Background

Bungee Labs Corporation was organized to advance the state of world-wide Mobile computing by allowing enterprise developers to build mobile software applications (CRM, Messaging, Work flow, Financial Reporting, Dashboards etc.) that run on multiple targeted platforms and form factors from a single code base.

With the proliferation of powerful and highly interactive mobile devices, including smart phones and tablets, demand for mobile software is escalating rapidly. The first wave of this expansion has been primarily consumer applications. Enterprise development is way back, but poised for significant growth. Forrester estimates that "Enterprise business opportunities for apps will grow significantly over the next four years with companies spending $17 billion creating apps for their products and working with third party services and companies that manage these apps."
('Mobile App Internet Recasts The Software And Services Landscape')

As they consider going Mobile, Enterprise developers face a varierty of difficult questions including:

• Which of the half dozen viable mobile platforms should be supported?
• Which of the multiple form factors (iPhone/iPad) should be supported?
• Should we build native application or web applications?
• Is it more cost-effective to try to modify current applications for the new platforms and form factors or should we just start over?
• How much will it cost to maintain our apps on numerous platforms and form factors?
• Can I get the performance and interactivity my apps need in order to be usable?
• How will I respond to an ever evolving array of platforms and form factors?
• Can I retool my internal skill set for mobile without disruption, and how long will it take?
• Will this be a distraction from my central mission?

Unfortunate tradeoffs among the above concerns must be made. Re-writing and then maintaining corporate apps on multiple disparate mobile platforms and form factors is prohibitively expensive and time consuming, even if the company has the expertise in house. It is reasonable to believe that the Mobile landscape will change materially over the next few years, adding much uncertainty to the mix.

BungeeConnect is a new Eclipse-based application development framework for Java programmers who want to build mobile applications for the leading (iOS, Android, Windows 8, etc.) mobile platforms. It enables them to build applications (POJO) that run natively on all Bungee-supported platforms, from a single Java code base. Additionally, BungeeConnect automates the connection to data through any backend service (IBM Worklight, Microsoft Azure, SAP, Salesforce Service Cloud, etc.) supported by Bungee, creating an end to end solution for mobile apps. Applications built with BungeeConnect run at native speeds on each platform. An application built with BungeeConnect for one platform will also run natively on other targeted platforms.

Existing cross-platform development tool technologies ‘normalize’ (AKA least common denominator) platform-specific access, resulting in applications that have diminished user experience and product differentiation, and fundamentally lack the ability to address different form factors. From one code base, BungeeConnect enables Java developers to customize and adapt to each target platform, thus utilizing the full range of native look, feel and functionality. Bungee also supports the ability to tailor interaction for each specific form factor, (iPhone/iPad) even as completely different interactive mechanisms are required or preferred. Bungee’s unique "Connection" technology offers developers the ability to maintain a single set of application-specific logic where all multiple platform-specific assemblies are connected and configured through a simple design process.

For each platform and form factor “targeted” or supported by Bungee Connect, developers can produce programs from the same code base, eliminating the need to rewrite or extensively modify applications in order to run on different platforms.

Who can use Bungee Connect

Java developers who are familiar with Eclipse will be most successful with BungeeConnect. The learning curve consists largely of learning Eclipse, since BungeeConnect is a plugin extension to Eclipse. The developer defines his/her application code in Java using Eclipse. The developer defines the user interfaces for each target and form factor with BungeeConnect's form designer. The form designer automates the connection between views and the underlying application Java code.

Developers can extend Bungee Connect to address a new target not supported out of the box, and can add custom controls for any platform.

While Bungee Connect is a new product, it is based upon technology created under a five year, $25 million investment program established to address the needs of enterprise developers as they transition to Mobile and Cloud Computing. David Mitchell, CTO and Chief Architect is one of the country’s most experienced development tools and GUI professionals.