dc.description.abstract | Cross-platform mobile development is a new area
of software engineering that allows the companies to reduce
development time and cost. The paper surveys major crossplatform
mobile development tools available on the market,
develops a framework for guided choice of such tools, and applies
this framework to an actual decision problem from within an
authentic industrial case. The paper’s main result is a framework
for choosing cross-platform development tools, for a specific
engineering context. The framework consists of four evaluation
stages and a taxonomy with seven evaluation parameters: tool’s
type, deployment mode, license, compatibility, mobile platforms,
documentation, popularity. The case considered, is a large IT solution
provider serving a range of manufacturers, design units, and
sales organizations within the Automotive sector. Our conclusions
are that, for this case, the most suitable tools were PhoneGap,
RhoMobile, Appcelerator Titanium, Sencha Touch or Xamarin,
with RhoMobile as the recommended choice. Availability of the
framework improves the quality of decision making in IT solution
providers, and thus the qualities and costs of their solutions. | sv |