Antenna Software, a provider of mobile development solutions, acquired Volantis, also a provider of mobile software solutions, in January. It also recently announced adding devices to the Antenna Volantis Framework application device database.
The Antenna Volantis Framework allows developers to create a mobile application codebase once, then deploy it to all devices, OS environments and browsers, according to Jennifer Bursack, vice president of product management and cofounder of Volantis.
She said that Framework allows developers to create applications and optimize mobile websites in HTML. Framework has been available through an open-source license for the past two years and is now available as a commercial SDK.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, Antenna announced the addition of the Dell Streak 7, Samsung-SGH-I987 and Viewsonic-ViewPad 7 to its database, which Bursack said also includes PCs and Web-enabled TVs.
The database component is what makes the Framework software work: When a developer creates an application or writes a website enhanced for the mobile Web using the Framework, it renders the proper version of the site or application based on the device that is being used to access the site or application.
Bursack said each device has about over 800 distinguishing “attributes” in the Antenna Volantis database, and as each device “calls” to the database, the software solution scans the device for these attributes and matches it up with the proper rendering of the site.
Enterprise developers can also use Antenna Volantis’ Volt solution to manage their applications and provide automatic updates to apps already downloaded by their employees or consumers.
A trend in application stores, according to Forrest analyst Jeffrey Hammond, is the personalized app store, such as those provided by Apperian or JackBe. “Self-service [in the enterprise] is clearly the trend because of consumer habits,” Hammond said.
The Volt application, according to Bursack, allows a website to be easily updated for future changes HTML, devices and applications.