Google is broadening its reach into the mobile app development world today through a partnership with Kinvey, which will provide an enterprise backend-as-a-service (BaaS) layer on top of Google App Engine. With Kinvey, Google App Engine will support iOS, Android and HTML 5.
Kinvey, which will integrate with Google’s new Mobile Backend Starter, a basic backend platform for Android apps launched on Monday, offers a set of features appealing to enterprise developers who need to integrate their organizations’ data and authentication systems into their mobile apps.
Customers will be able to more easily integrate the Kinvey platform into Google App Engine: Kinvey will provide the integrations all the way down to the mobile device, and Google App Engine allows for the app to scale.
For example, as explained to me by a Kinvey spokesperson, if a developer wanted to build an app on Kinvey and host the web component, business logic or Data Links on Google App Engine, they’d have to first build the app on App Engine and then manually “wire it up” on Kinvey. Now, developers using Kinvey can deploy directly from Kinvey into App Engine. The reciprocal also holds true. Developers using App Engine can consume Kinvey’s services using the libraries the company built for App Engine. The integration will be completed in the next few months.
Kinvey, based in Boston, has had success with helping customers replace hand-stitched, backend systems running middleware on-premise with its service that manages the integrations for them in a cloud environment.
Companies like IBM, SAP and Antenna Software made a fortune in this market. Companies like Kinvey provide a cloud-based mobile SDK so companies can connect data sources such as Salesforce.com and Sharepoint.
Other companies that play in the BaaS market include StackMob, Usergrid, Appcelerator, FeedHenry, Sencha.io, Applicasa, CloudMine, CloudyRec, iKnode, yorAPI, Buddy and ScottyApp.
