Telerik Launches New Development Platform For Web, Hybrid And Native Apps

Telerik has long made a wide range of tools for developers, ranging from the Kendo UI jQuery framework to the cross-platform development service Icenium and numerous related backend services for mobile and desktop apps. Today, the company is combining all of these tools under the “Telerik Platform” moniker.

The new platform allows developers to create native, hybrid and web apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows and Blackberry. The service is also pretty agnostic as to the languages developers want to use. It supports .NET, JavaScript/HTML5, Java and PHP.

Using Telerik’s AppBuilder, developers can either use the company’s own web-based IDE to create their apps or use Visual Studio with the AppBuilder extension. The online version features a very robust set of tools, including online simulators for iOS and Android, as well as version control tools and built-in git support.

Building on its existing tools, the company argues that it has created an end-to-end solution for developers that allows them to reuse their existing skills, tools and workflows. The Telerik Platform includes support for multiple IDEs, user interface libraries and APIs, as well as tools for creating interactive UI prototypes, debugging, automated testing, deployment and real-time analytics. It also features numerous back-end services that range from social authentication services to push notifications.

Making all of this work, the company says, involved over 200 people who worked for six months to integrate five different product lines.

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As Steve Forte, the company’s chief strategy officer told me, consolidating all the services into a single platform was a logical step for the company. “With so many new technology choices over the past few years, enterprise developers were patching together apps with technology from multiple stacks and vendors,” he said. “Too many mobile app development solutions offer ‘cookie-cutter,’ ready-to-deploy apps or ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions.” Telerik, on the other hand, wants the industry to move from “good enough” apps to a more robust mobile experience.

Developers who already use the company’s services, Forte says, ” will see a large amount of collaboration and productivity baked right into the platform.” For individual developers, however, the changes won’t be quite as drastic.

The new platform offers a free starter tier for users who only want to build a Kendo UI-based mobile app and don’t need Telerik to deploy the app to an App Store. Anybody who wants to use the platform to create cross-platform apps and get access to most of the company’s tools, however, will need to subscribe to a paid plan. These start at $119/month per user for teams with up to 10 users. The full toolset, however, is only available for $224/month per user. The company offers significant discounts for companies that subscribe to an annual subscription.