Xamarin acquisition amplifies Microsoft's comprehensive mobile development strategy

Yesterday Microsoft announced that it is acquiring Xamarin. Terms were not disclosed. This move makes Microsoft a must-consider option throughout the stack when it comes to mobile development. For those not familiar with Xamarin, here's what Microsoft is getting:

    Cross-platform native mobile app development, in C#. Xamarin's origins include Mono (remember that?), and it represents the expansion of the .Net runtime to other platforms, including iOS and Android. Developers write C# code that will be natively compiled to these devices, which runs at similar speed as apps written in Objective-C, Swift, or Java.

    Automated acceptance testing for mobile apps. Xamarin develops and maintains the Calabash open source project for mobile acceptance testing. We've seen growing popularity of Calabash amongst enterprise mobile dev teams, especially Global SIs, like those we reviewed in last year's Enterprise Mobile App Services Forrester Waves.

    A device cloud for system and performance testing. The Xamarin Test Cloud automates app testing on more than 2000 real devices in the cloud. We expect to see this service folded into Azure in short order, with a low cost on-demand model to compete with Amazon Device Farm, Google Cloud Test Lab, and PerfectoMobile.

    On device analytics to measure mobile apps. Measuring apps is just as important as building them. While the importance of analytic instrumentation is still a work in progress for many enterprise developers, experienced mobile devs get it. Xamarin Insights provides a basic working set of technical and engagement level measures for mobile app dev teams.

See also: Microsoft is buying mobile tool vendor Xamarin

At Forrester we've been expecting this acquisition for a while -- it just makes too much sense for both parties and their customers. Here's why:

    Building apps twice is once too often for enterprise development shops. We still get regular inquiries from clients on "Native vs Web. vs. Cross-platform". And many of these requests come from clients that have already made significant investments in one strategy or the other. The bottom line: very few mobile dev shops are comfortable with their current status quo. Everyone wants native look and feel and speed, but without multiple code bases to maintain. Xamarin gives Microsoft a strong cross-platform front-end development approach that allows mobile teams to have their cake and eat it too.

    Xamarin's biggest sales objection is now removed. In our (frequent) conversations with clients about Xamarin, a recurring question pops up: "Should we trust this highly strategic technology decision to a small vendor?" In the past six months we've seen mainstream buyers become less concerned about this objection as Xamarin has stood up enterprise mobile app case studies, but today's acquisition removes that concern entirely.

    Microsoft gets a better front end development story. Microsoft is well on its way to building a strong mobile infrastructure services portfolio on the back of the Azure public cloud. But the front-end message was a bit jumbled between native + Xamarin or Microsoft's first class Apache Cordova tools. We think this acquisition makes the cross platform approach the preferred one for Microsoft, although it does not signal Microsoft's move away from the web -- Cordova remains an option for app development, and TypeScript is the underlying technology behind AngularJS 2.0, the latest version of the dominant web development framework.

Xamarin is a solid cross-platform mobile app development play if you already have in house .Net skills or have invested in the Visual Studio set of development and application lifecycle tools. The next shoe to drop will be the existing Xamarin partnerships with IBM, Kony, Oracle and SAP. We don't think this acquisition will exclude these prior partners from leveraging Xamarin from a technology perspective; but we also wouldn't be surprised if it altered the attractiveness of the relationship to these firms.

We've previously written about how Satya Nadella has righted Microsoft's ship over the past two years. Now the company is making a strong move to be the development platform of choice for all mobile platforms, not just for Windows 10. Azure now supports multiple languages for back-end cloud development, including NodeJS. Development tooling is *much* more accessible by all audiences, both .Net shops and otherwise thanks to VS Code and lighter-weight Visual Studio development suite offerings.

Microsoft has established a strong set of digital application platform services and developers are responding. This acquisition is yet another sign of the new cross-platform, public-cloud focused Microsoft. We don't expect it will be the last.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/xamarin-acquisition-amplifies-microsofts-comprehensive-mobile-development-strategy/

Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft

As the role of mobile devices in people's lives expands even further, mobile app developers have become a driving force for software innovation. At Microsoft, we are working to enable even greater developer innovation by providing the best experiences to all developers, on any device, with powerful tools, an open platform and a global cloud.

As part of this commitment I am pleased to announce today that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Xamarin, a leading platform provider for mobile app development.

In conjunction with Visual Studio, Xamarin provides a rich mobile development offering that enables developers to build mobile apps using C# and deliver fully native mobile app experiences to all major devices – including iOS, Android, and Windows. Xamarin’s approach enables developers to take advantage of the productivity and power of .NET to build mobile apps, and to use C# to write to the full set of native APIs and mobile capabilities provided by each device platform. This enables developers to easily share common app code across their iOS, Android and Windows apps while still delivering fully native experiences for each of the platforms. Xamarin’s unique solution has fueled amazing growth for more than four years.

Xamarin has more than 15,000 customers in 120 countries, including more than one hundred Fortune 500 companies - and more than 1.3 million unique developers have taken advantage of their offering. Top enterprises such as Alaska Airlines, Coca-Cola Bottling, Thermo Fisher, Honeywell and JetBlue use Xamarin, as do gaming companies like SuperGiant Games and Gummy Drop. Through Xamarin Test Cloud, all types of mobile developers—C#, Objective-C, Java and hybrid app builders —can also test and improve the quality of apps using thousands of cloud-hosted phones and devices. Xamarin was recently named one of the top startups that help run the Internet.

Microsoft has had a longstanding partnership with Xamarin, and have jointly built Xamarin integration into Visual Studio, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and our Enterprise Mobility Suite to provide developers with an end-to-end workflow for native, secure apps across platforms. We have also worked closely together to offer the training, tools, services and workflows developers need to succeed.

With today’s acquisition announcement we will be taking this work much further to make our world class developer tools and services even better with deeper integration and enable seamless mobile app dev experiences. The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure delivers a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything a developer needs to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device. We are really excited to see what you build with it.

We are looking forward to providing more information about our plans in the near future – starting at the Microsoft //Build conference coming up in a few weeks, followed by Xamarin Evolve in late April. Be sure to watch my Build keynote and get a front row seat at Evolve to learn more! 

Source: https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/welcoming-the-xamarin-team-to-microsoft

Xamarin vs. Hybrid HTML: Making the Right Choice for the Enterprise

We want to thank Kevin Ford at Magenic for helping us present a thorough comparison of cross-platform native vs. hybrid HTML approaches for mobile development for the enterprise.

Kevin’s team built a functionally identical sample app utilizing Xamarin and hybrid HTML (in this case Cordova) to understand the differences in user experience, performance, developer experience, and TCO.

Some of the key findings:

    Hybrid HTML approaches couldn’t deliver on key functionality without previous knowledge of Objective-C and Java to write custom, platform proprietary plugins
    Cross-platform native apps started 25% faster and loaded large datasets 62% faster
    Cross-platform native apps utilized 50% less memory and 76% less CPU time
    During development, Hybrid HTML apps compiled faster, and app sizes were smaller
    Hybrid HTML did have higher code reuse, but was not able to deliver required functionality in the required timeframe of 6 weeks

We have made the presentation available for everyone to view below.
On-Demand Recording

The webinar recording is available below and on YouTube if you weren’t able to catch it live, or if you want to forward on to your colleagues. There are several demos showing the differences between Xamarin and hybrid mobile that you’ll want to see.

Slides

Many of you also requested the presentation slides, which you can find here. They don’t have the demos and screenshots from the video, but they’re a good conversation starter or building blocks for your own presentations.
Q&A

Q: How does Xamarin.Forms promise 90+% code re-use?

A: Xamarin.Forms provides a UI framework for describing the layout of a screen element, which can be defined in either C# or XAML (XML syntax). At runtime, each page and its controls are mapped to platform-specific native user interface elements, so it renders native platform UI while still offering native performance. All business logic and backend code code is also completely reused between platforms.

Q: How does Xamarin compare to other mobile cross-platform native frameworks?

A: There are other frameworks that also take a cross-platform native approach. RoboVM does this with Java; in 2015 they became part of the Xamarin family so for Java developers this might be an alternative.

Other cross-platform native approaches utilize JavaScript to define UI and business logic and translate that to native controls. Although many developers know JavaScript, testing and maintaining mobile apps built on an interpreted language can be more challenging. While solutions like Xamarin Test Cloud can help, you’ll also need to test for errors that could have been caught during compilation.

Secondly, Xamarin has a big ecosystem of developers, components, and partners. There are over 1.6M C# developers worldwide, with thousands of components available from NuGet, the Xamarin Component Store, the ability to bind to CocoaPods, and 100% API access to iOS, Android, and Windows. There’s little you can’t do, and if you need help either our support or community sites like StackOverflow will usually have an answer.

Q: Are there any situations where hybrid HTML should be your first choice?

A: If your developer’s primary skill set is in web development, they may initially be more productive utilizing a hybrid HTML approach. However, you need to really think about future-proofing your app to stay on top of changes in iOS, Android, and Windows, and whether you’ll need more advanced access to a device’s sensors or the platform APIs, such as iOS’ 3D Touch, payments, or fingerprint recognition for example.

These features require contributions by a community to provide the necessary plugins, which sometimes require enhancement and testing, or else you’ll need to write your own custom extensions with Objective-C, Swift, or Java.

Xamarin, on the other hand, provides 100% API access to all the platforms, as well as many cross-platform plugins you can utilize. We also have world-class training through Xamarin University to accelerate development and teach best practices.

Source: https://blog.xamarin.com/webinar-recording-xamarin-vs-hybrid-html-making-the-right-choice-for-the-enterprise/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=hybrid-webinar-link&utm_campaign=march2016&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRolu6%2FAZKXonjHpfsX56eUrX6G%2Bi4kz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMT8tmN6%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7nCKc1q1c0QXBfr