Few companies can claim they have ridden the wave of mobile communication like Sencha, which has been doing so since 2008.  Starting with JQTouch and Raphael, the company’s contributions to open source expertise, they have been steadily building a community of developers (now numbering more than two million) who understand that the goal is to keep the code common when developing apps for a bring your own device (BYOD) world.

In the enterprise, BYOD is moving to the tablet.  In fact, I should remove the word ‘the’ and add an ‘s’ to ‘tablet,’ since today Android, Apple and Microsoft (News – Alert) Surface are all penetrating the enterprise market.  And while I am getting all plural, I should also mention the fact that in saying Sencha supports the enterprise, this includes over 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies, including leaders in the entertainment and financial sectors.   

OK, so we see the term “apps” being applied to the wrapper of the software systems, however the Enterprise requirement is to match the experience of computer to the tablet.  A direct migration, though, ends up looking crowded, and thus the objective is to bring the experience and the productivity via a better interface.  

Sencha’s latest enhancement to Ext JS provides a framework for migrating from the desktop with little or no code modification—but just because the code doesn’t change does not mean the experience doesn’t improve. Support for tablets includes customizable touch-centric themes and tap-able elements, with some of the tap-able events offering the ability to map mouse movement to similar touch gestures. However, many data intensive solutions (e.g., spreadsheets and charts) require more than mouse mapping, so the solution is to offer widgets that deliver progress bars, radio bars and sliders.

Ext JS 5 includes a collection of core codes that are available in both Ext JS and Sencha Touch, meaning that it matches well to the two million developers already familiar with the Sencha product line.

It was clear in my discussion with the Sencha team that they were working to match the requirements of today’s marketplace.  Like DevCon5’s audience, Sencha’s customer base consists of companies looking to support their own customers as they migrate to the massive and ever-growing mobile market.