Appcelerator Makes Mobile App Dev Faster, Better, Stronger

Company:

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Titanium

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: 8 partners worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider

Why You Should Care: If the explosion of mobile device applications has created an unprecedented level of opportunity for developers, count Appcelerator as a specialty vendor that knows how to strike when an iron is hot.

The Lowdown: Founded in 2006, Appcelerator has earned plaudits for Titanium, an open source app dev framework that uses a single codebase. The hook is that users can build applications for Web, desktop and mobile using standard languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and Titanium does the legwork of tailoring those apps to different platforms for them.

The original Titanium debuted in December 2008, and the mobile version, Titanium Mobile, was released in beta in June 2009 for popular platforms like Google's Android and Apple's iPhone OS.

Appcelerator's partner program, launched in October 2009, is targeted to advertising agencies, systems integrators and other solution providers who want to offer mobile, Web or desktop app development as part of a solution set, but don't want to contract out the work to expensive developers or spend time training their staff on individual, device-specific platforms.

"It's all about 'how I can I take advantage of opportunities now but not let my choice be antiquated when the next big platform, or wave, or device or whatever comes out?'" said Scott Schwarzhoff, Appcelerator's vice president of marketing.

The partner program includes the "Quick Start" version -- partners get the basic platform so they can get up and running and building apps quickly -- and other elements like sales and marketing assistance and lead generation. Appcelerator also provides cloud services through which partners can package and distribute software developed on Titanium.

Appcelerator intends 90 to 95 percent of its business to go through channel partners, Schwarzhoff said. The idea is catching on fast.

"We were primarily a Ruby on Rails company so a lot of our developers have experience with HTML, and JavaScript," said Brendan Lim, director of mobile solutions at Intridea, a Washington, D.C.-based solution provider. "This experience has made developing applications with Titanium very easy."