raw engineering has announced the general availability of built.io, its flagship mobile backend that lets developers build killer enterprise mobile apps in record time. In addition, the company named Matthew Baier, a seasoned high-tech marketing leader who most recently helped establish Salesforce.com’s presence in the mobile Backend-as-a-Service (mBaaS) market, as its Chief Operating Officer.

First unveiled at DEMO Mobile 2013, built.io powers the entire backend for enterprise applications (servers, cloud infrastructure, database structure, scaling), so developers can focus their talents on building an incredible user experience. Most importantly, by providing all the necessary building blocks for an enterprise app, built.io cuts development time down from months to weeks.

“Using built.io, our team was able to build variations of Twitter and Google Docs in under a week. That kind of timeframe really changes the game for enterprise apps. It’s now cost-effective for businesses to experiment and create really interesting, powerful apps, even for short-term needs like a seasonal customer promotion or internal sales meeting,” said raw engineering CEO Neha Sampat.

“By taking care of all the heavy lifting involved with building an app backend from scratch, built.io gives businesses a way to finally meet the pent-up demand for apps sparked by today’s mobile workflows, ‘app store’ culture, and BYOD trends,” Sampat added.

In conjunction with the move from beta to general availability, built.io is releasing with several new features, including:
• A new management console that improves content management by making it easier to enter and validate data
• New built-in geolocation, such as capturing the location of active app users
• Intelligent notifications that allow for highly targeted messages to be sent; for example, an event app can push notifications to people who have not only registered to attend a conference, but are actually on-site
• Powerful new analytics that help developers better understand how and where people are using their apps
• Social logins via integration with Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, and tibbr
• Cloud Extensions: Add powerful business logic to applications without adding unnecessary server complexity. Use built.io APIs to extend your app with new features or to trigger custom workflows.

built.io is the first mobile product from raw engineering, a services company that has been developing and deploying mobile/web/cloud apps for Fortune 10 companies for years. The mobile backend was first developed as an internal tool to help its own teams deliver enterprise apps faster. However, after recognizing the universal need to develop better enterprise apps faster, the company spun off built.io as a standalone product that enterprises and third-party developers can leverage.

“We challenge our students to find a real world problem to develop a fully functional mobile solution and viable business plan — all in one semester,” says Ken Singer, Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, who teaches the Mobile Applications and Entrepreneurship course at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering. “built.io, with its simple-to-use interface and powerful features, enables our young entrepreneurs to jumpstart their mobile app development and reach the finish line with a full-featured, market-ready app in time for a show-and-tell with potential investors.”

While the market is already crowded with app development tools, including Backend-as-a-Service platforms, built.io stands out by leveraging its team’s deep expertise in enterprise applications. Key enterprise features include analytics, security, integration with social intranets and content management systems, authentication, and targeted notifications.

“built.io gave us the ability to deliver internal applications in a fraction of the time of previous equivalent projects,” said Brent Heslop, Senior Web Technologist, TIBCO Software Inc. “Besides saving development time, built.io empowered us with simple scalability, excellent user control, solid security, and deep analytics.”

raw engineering’s new COO, Matthew Baier, will help lead product and business growth in this red hot space. Baier most recently served as Senior Director of Product Marketing for Salesforce.com’s platform product portfolio. Prior to that, he led database product marketing at Oracle.

“raw engineering is an innovator in the mobile enterprise market and I am thrilled to be joining at this pivotal moment,” said Matthew Baier, COO at raw engineering. “built.io’s public launch is just the beginning. We’re in the process of lining up partnerships with major players in industry and academia to power the next wave of mobile and web apps, and the built.io platform is uniquely positioned to become the leader in this exciting arena.”

Pricing and availability

built.io is now generally available, with tiered pricing that lets businesses of all sizes choose a plan that fits their needs. For more information, visit our pricing page at http://built.io/plans.