Now, the tablet market has become a must-win segment. Companies like Dell (Nasdaq:DELL), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO) and Research In Motion (Nasdaq:RIMM) have been scrambling to get a piece of the action. (Check out my take on RIM's most recent implosion.)
But this is good news for MeLLmo, which has focused on the iOS platform. Consider that the company's Roambi Flow iPad app recently was named one of the best five apps for the business category, as voted by the Apple editorial team. The app displays corporate analytics in a magazine-style format.
So what does it take to develop a great iPad app? To get some insight on this, I talked to MeLLmo’s president, Quinton Alsbury. Here's what he had to say on various aspects:
Consumers at Heart: “At Roambi, we’ve found that in order to make a mobile enterprise product scale at all levels of an organization, content has to be easily accessible and consumable -- anytime, anywhere. As business professionals, who doesn’t want to be free from the constraints of tables and cells? Who wouldn’t want to turn boring, static data into beautiful visualizations that you can flip, spin or pinch? Roambi Analytics and Roambi Flow have a viral nature within companies due to their ability to turn data into something that people want to view and use. At their very core, enterprise workers are still consumers, and in order to improve productivity, enterprise mobile apps need to create environments where the experience of consuming data is intuitive -- and yes, even fun -- for employees.”
Design: “Perhaps the most important factor for successful enterprise iPad apps is one of the most basic: design. The best iPad apps are not replications of a laptop and desktop, but rather those that are truly designed from the ground-up for the iPad. People have a different way of interacting with every device -- from a PC to an iPhone to an iPad -- and a solution built for one device doesn’t fit how people would experience it on another device. At MeLLmo, our Roambi Flow solution was built only for the iPad because we believe there is not another device that could provide the experience we want for our users. With Roambi Analytics, we did not simply extend our iPhone solution to the iPad, but rather redesigned the product with new functionalities that not only take advantage of the larger screen real estate, but are in line with how people use the iPad vs. the iPhone, i.e., more time per session, studying information vs. taking a quick glance, and even presenting to coworkers or customers.”
Getting Secure: “Rarely do you hear ‘innovative’ and ‘security’ in the same sentence, but at MeLLmo we made the decision to view security as an exciting challenge and opportunity to be an industry leader. As personal phones and business phones are now one and the same for most people, it’s no longer practical for a company to shut off or wipe an entire device. As such, we believe app-level security provides the best solution for both IT and end-users of Roambi Analytics or Roambi Flow. We have a ‘triple-layer’ security solution that, among others things, includes the ability to recall files, block the app or wipe the app entirely -- sidelining any need to block or wipe an entire device.”
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPOPlaybook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “The Complete M&A Handbook", “All About Short Selling” and“All About Commodities.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli.
