Software AG, a provider of business-process software, announced the acquisition of Metismo, a U.K.-based provider of a cross-platform mobile application development solution. Matt Green, vice president of project management for Software AG, said the acquisition helps extend the company’s existing webMethods integration platform to mobile solutions, allowing developers to create applications that leverage the applications to share data within their company.
“We needed something to help expose the business data created by our business process management suite,” Green said, adding that Metismo’s technology allows for a mobile application to be created once (in Java), then natively deployed to a variety of devices, including BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 devices.
Metismo’s platform is a cross-compiler, which allows the deployment of multiple native applications to be automated, according to Green. He said that the native applications created in the one-step deployment process take advantage of native device features, such as GPS or screen size.
Green said the tool helps developers create an application once, test it in the device simulator (which is available for every device Metismo generates a native application for), and then deploy it to all devices at once. This deployment process can be done repeatedly with different updates and will continue to update every native application developers create, based on the devices a company supports.
“Our integration servers are fully REST and JSON compatible,” Green said, explaining that those two protocols are easily accessible to mobile devices.
Metismo’s technology has already been used to create applications for Android, iOS and other platforms in the BlackBerry and Windows marketplaces. The code compiled by the technology is human readable and easily maintainable, according to Green.
