Tuesday, February 5, 2013

How does mobile acceleration impact service delivery and user expectations

Hi, again, it's been a while.
I wanted to mention a few words about two interesting recent announcements:

So what does that really mean?
I remember a RIM executive yelling at me and my boss, roughly 10 years ago "No application should crash. Errors are unacceptable, the least you can do is provide a graceful solution". He was right. In mobile, at the time, crashes were unacceptable and came with high support cost.

Times have changed though. According to HP/Capgemini world quality report Performance is the key to success:
"...the need for mobility has reset expectations of what constitutes application quality. With traditional software, users expect flawless functionality first and foremost, but mobile users are seeking convenience. They expect robust performance and usability on the move, and are more inclined to tolerate the occasional glitch along the way, as long as the application performs well and is user- friendly."

Thus, focus is on functionality, performance, and rapid release cycles. That's (IMO), how Crashlytics, and in general, the acceptance that applications will crash in production, has come to fruition. It The market need drives continuous, faster delivery cycles. This is headed by by mobile development.

I anticipate the proliferation of both performance and crash detection/analysis features in all analytics and APM tools such as Google, Localytics and others.
Interesting times indeed!