Partner Article

Progress Accelerates Mobile Application Development

With Progress and NativeScript, MeWatt cut iOS and Android app development time from two months to two weeks

Progress today announced that MeWatt Corporation, creators of a revolutionary IoT device for near real-time energy monitoring and analysis of appliance energy usage, is leveraging the NativeScript® open source platform to enable customers to become more knowledgeable about their energy consumption.

Developed and supported by Progress, NativeScript enables the cross-platform creation of native applications for iOS and Android devices. It is unlike traditional hybrid or web apps, as it leverages platform-native UI to deliver maximum performance—even on older Android devices and makes it easy to share code between platforms. Developers using NativeScript can use their existing skills in JavaScript, without the need to learn new coding environments, expediting time to market.

Serving both commercial businesses and personal consumers alike, MeWatt created a device that could IoT-enable any appliance, with actionable recommendations and alerts to empower users to reduce energy costs and control their carbon footprint. MeWatt needed to build a mobile app capable of quickly pulling and analyzing data from potentially hundreds of thousands of appliances – without negatively impacting performance. NativeScript, the open source framework from Progress, provided MeWatt with the tools needed to not only create the app, but do so in a matter of weeks, compared to traditional native approaches that could take months and requires specific development skillsets and technologies.

“We needed a mobile app that would run on any device and we didn’t have the time to create individual native apps. If you know JavaScript and you want the best performance possible in native, the NativeScript framework is an excellent product to use,” said Lino Tadros, CEO and President, MeWatt. “We didn’t have to write everything from scratch using a different language to support each device. We did it once, which helped us bring the app to market faster—in weeks instead of months.”

After developing mobile apps using the NativeScript framework, the MeWatt team plans to use NativeScript for future energy saving ideas. “Our development team likes how easy it is to re-use components and code from existing projects, which is pivotal in a world where time to market can make or break the success of an app. If the project calls for JavaScript, then NativeScript will be the go-to framework for building the app,” Tadros said.

“The NativeScript framework is paving the way for mobile application development,” said Faris Sweis, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Developer Tooling, Progress. “Developers want native, high quality, high performing apps, and they want to reuse as much of their code as possible to build native mobile apps faster. NativeScript empowers developers to deliver maximally performing and elegant applications with a minimal amount of effort.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Progress Corp .