Microsoft is launching a new service aimed at developers as well as any other individual who is part of an organisation and wishes to develop business apps. The new service is called as PowerApps and has been developed by the company to provide any lay-man an opportunity to develop apps without having to understand about the code language.
Incidentally, Microsoft has chosen the codename ‘Project Kratos’ for the PowerApps. Yep we know…but unfortunately this has nothing to do with God Of War.
Microsoft is slated to announce in depth about the features of PowerApps during the Convergence EMEA conference being held today. The PowerApps service relies on Microsoft cloud platform Azure for its operations. PowerApps is available as a preview, which can be accessed only through invites for now and has been designed on the framework of the erstwhile Project Siena business-development tools.
Google had announced a similar service earlier wherein it precisely bifurcated an employee’s personal apps and business apps. Google even provides companies its Nexus devices as a try out for during the testing stage. This way employees can keep guard of their personal data, while they use some of the business apps to connect to their colleagues.
While companies are increasingly turning to SaaS solutions for specific scenarios like CRM, travel and HR, using services like Microsoft Dynamics, Concur or Workday, most business app scenarios still remain locked on premises, dependent on corporate connected PCs.
Microsoft Corporate VP for application platform Bill Staples said earlier today.
An employee’s use of PowerApps has to be pre-approved by a company’s IT department. Once permission to access is approved, an employee can tap into the data readily available on the cloud or hardware storage devices to build apps and integrate these data into the app.
Using PowerApps, employees can also sync with Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Dropbox, OneDrive and SharePoint, Oracle, and SAP among others. The service has easy to use interface and also boasts of ready to use templates through which any user can develop apps in a short span of time, without having to master the complexity of code language.
Employees can share the apps they have created on the iOS app store, Android Play store and Windows app market.
Microsoft has not revealed much about the price of the service, and when it will be launching a full version into the market.
