Beyond Native: Why Cross-Platform is the New Enterprise Standard

Why Should Your Enterprise Opt for Cross-Platform Solutions?

In today's time, enterprises represent an integrated ecosystem of multiple devices, operating systems and different types of users. From employees working in different locations to customers using your product globally, this ecosystem is responsible for innumerable responsibilities that keep your business functioning and thriving. 

However, it can only be achieved if your systems are seamless, scalable, secure and compatible with the growing needs of your expanding business. As the market and customer demands continue to evolve and expand rapidly, enterprises require robust systems that can adapt and cater to diverse audiences faster and dynamically. 
 

And cross-platform solutions can be the key to creating such a robust ecosystem. 

Whether your business is in its nascent stage or it's a fully thriving enterprise with large-scale operations, cross-platform solutions offer you an upper hand in terms of flexibility, cost-efficiency and accelerated development. 

How so? 

Such applications excel in providing multi-device support with a single codebase. This means, you only have to develop it once and enjoy it on multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and more. 

If that sounds intriguing to you, keep reading to discover more about how cross-platform solutions can help your business drive innovation and streamline functionality.

Key takeaways of what you'll learn in this blog:

1. What are cross-platform apps?
2. How do cross-platform apps provide you with a significant advantage as an enterprise?

3. Popular frameworks for developing cross-platform apps.

4. When should you opt for native apps?

Understanding Cross-Platform Apps

As a business, you need a coordinated and uninterrupted approach for systems between your employees, resources, stakeholders, and customers. This means maintaining a smooth flow and cohesiveness between a plethora of devices, platforms, and multiple operating systems for the organization to operate successfully and efficiently. Cross-platform applications offer an integrated approach to managing all your parties with a system requiring only a single codebase.

Developing applications exclusive to specific systems is not just a time-consuming and resource-intensive process, but is impractical if you're looking for a comprehensive answer to handle all your technological requirements in a fast-evolving market. 

That doesn't mean native apps are not meant for you. 

They do rank high in providing functionality-specific performance and are great in terms of reliability. Later in the blog, you'll learn when to opt for native over cross-platform apps.

But if you need a strategic solution for multi-device support across your business ecosystem, cross-platform apps provide you with a greater advantage in terms of:

1. Accelerated Time-to-Market: 

Code Reusability, hot reloading and pre-built components are a few of the major advantages that allow cross-platform apps an accelerated market entry through speedy development. Cross-platform apps allow developers to reuse components including business logic, data logic and numerous UI components of a single code base multiple times. This reuse feature helps them to focus on integrating platform-specific features and optimizations, which significantly reduces development time. 

Moreover, hot reloading is now supported in a major number of cross-platform apps. This allows developers to create the best versions of their products through rapid iterations, as all improvements are reflected immediately without recompilations, saving upto 30-40% of their time. 

Pre-built components such UI components, navigation systems etc provided by frameworks help ensure timely product development. CI/CD integration, automated testing and more along with the previously mentioned factors greatly facilitate a quick and successful entry into the market. 

2. Unified User Experience:

A consistent user experience across diverse business platforms is crucial to ensuring a strong brand identity among its customers. Cross-platform integration alleviates development efforts in maintaining uniform experience across multiple platforms with their essential UI solutions such as UI component libraries, platform-specific adapters, responsive design techniques and state management solutions. 

UI component libraries drastically reduce designing and development time by providing pre-built components including buttons, navigation fields and text fields that already adhere to platform-specific guidelines. 

Additionally, features like platform-specific adapters and responsive design techniques seamlessly adjust and integrate UI components across multiple platforms specific to their layouts, and screen sizes, giving the apps a superior native look and feel. React Native Paper, Flutter Material, and NativeScript UI are some of the prominent examples that contribute to ensuring a consistent user experience across diverse platforms for an engaging brand identity. 

3. Easier Maintenance and Resource Optimisation

One of the core strengths of cross-platform apps lies in their ability to make changes once and it automatically get deployed to platforms across the business ecosystem. This capability not only saves developmental efforts but also directly correlates with easier maintenance and resource optimization. 

From updates to bug fixes, all changes only need to be deployed once and rest assured, they will be implemented across multiple platforms automatically. CI/CD pipelines further streamline the process through automated testing and centralized troubleshooting, enabling developers to collaborate effectively and accelerate development.

Cross platforms offer a centralized approach to resource management with the help of shared knowledge bases, common API interfaces and unified testing frameworks leading to efficient savings for businesses.

4. Broader Market Coverage:

Reaching a diverse user base is a significant advantage businesses can achieve with cross-platform apps both quickly and effectively. The multi-device support, fueled by easy adaptation to numerous operating systems, provides the flexibility to offer products and services to a wide range of audiences, whether they are using iOS, Android or Windows. 

Platform abstraction layers and progressive enhancement techniques make adaptation to multiple platforms seamless, eliminating the need to develop separate applications for different system requirements.

Server-side rendering is a feature that generates the initial HTML of the web app on the server and improves accessibility by enhancing SEO, performance and user experience. Additionally, responsive user design ensures that the apps adapt to different screen sizes, irrespective of their OS, seamlessly.

All of these provisions allow developers and businesses to cater their products to larger audiences, significantly increasing revenue compared to platform-specific apps.

Section Recap:

To summarize, cross-platform apps can offer the right strategic solution for your enterprise with:

• Accelerated time-to-market with features like code reusability, hot reloading and pre-built UI components.
• A consistent user experience with the UI component libraries, platform-specific adapters and responsive design techniques.
• Easier maintenance and resource optimization with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and centralized troubleshooting.

• Wider reach with the help of multi-device support, platform abstraction layers, server-side rendering and progressive enhancement techniques.

   

Best Frameworks For Cross-Platform Efficiency

Once you have chosen cross-platform solutions for your enterprise, it is essential to understand which frameworks can best support your business requirements optimally. Below, we discuss some of the popular cross-platform frameworks that can help you achieve a multi-platform ecosystem tailored to your organization's needs:

React Native

Developed by Facebook, React Native provides its users with a powerful framework to build mobile apps across platforms, whether Android or iOS. It offers extensive third-party libraries, a large community and robust reliability features that empower seamless cross-platform development. Ensuring a native-like performance and feel, React Native is a preferred choice among developers for building cross-platform apps and establishing a strong digital presence.

Flutter

Flutter is a cross-platform framework created by Google which utilizes Dart programming language to build natively compiled applications for multiple platforms. Powered with pre-designed widgets, hot-reloading features and a high-performance rendering engine, developers need to create only a single codebase with Flutter to implement changes across applications in multiple devices. 

NativeScript

NativeScript is an open-source framework for building cross-platform mobile apps where developers can use JavaScript, TypeScript or Angular to build native apps for Android and iOS with a single codebase. Direct access to native APIs allows developers to ensure exemplary performance and true native experiences, while its extensive library of plugins helps to maintain flexibility, contributing to accelerated development and cost efficiency.

Ionic

Ionic is also an open-source framework that leverages web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript for creating cross-platform apps for Android, iOS and web. Key features provided by Ionic include native device integration, reusable UI components, an extensive plugin ecosystem, easy testing and debugging and more. The framework utilizes Apache Cordova for packaging web applications into native apps, which allows for more native-like features without investing resources to build separate apps for each platform and aiding in faster development.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap, also known as Apache Cordova is a versatile and popular open-source framework used for building cross-platform mobile apps using standard web technologies including HTML, CSS and Javascript. PhoneGap mainly operates by wrapping web applications into a native container,  which is then utilized to access device-like features through a series of plugins. It offers a compelling solution for businesses seeking to deploy cross platform mobile apps with minimal resources.

When Should You Opt for Native App Development?

1. When you're seeking platform-specific features for your app: If the app is heavily dependent on the unique capabilities of the platform (e.g., Android, iOS, or Windows), and cross-platform frameworks cannot fully support them, native apps would be better option to leverage those features. For instance, access to biometric sensors, AI assistants, NFC/Bluetooth features etc.

2. If your app requires specific hardware integration: If your application requires deep hardware integration or customized components to function properly, native apps are a more suitable choice than cross-platform solutions. For example, proprietary sensors, camera specifications etc.

3. Regulatory Compliance: If your app operates in an industry governed by strict regulatory requirements, native apps offer easier customization to meet government-mandated guidelines for security and data handling—for example, encryption protocols, regulations like HIPAA etc.

 

Conclusion

Cross-platform solutions are a no-brainer for enterprises seeking a multi-platform presence in the digital ecosystem, especially as they offer such a time and cost-efficient alternative for development. With powerful frameworks like React Native, Flutter and more featuring robust capabilities such as code reusability, hot reloading and pre built components, cross-platform app development ensures top performance and efficiency while maintaining a native look and feel. In a fast-evolving landscape, cross-platform solutions can be implemented swifter with lfewer teams and resources, making them a preferred choice for businesses operating with limited budgets and time. 

Why Choose Oodles For Mobile App Development

With over 15 years in the industry, we've successfully launched 100+ mobile apps, transforming visions into reality. Our deep expertise allows us to deliver high-quality, scalable, and user-centric solutions tailored to your specific business needs. Whether you're a startup or an established enterprise, Oodles can help you achieve your goals and stay ahead in the competitive market. Partner with us today to start your digital transformation journey and turn your visionary idea into an industry-leading success.