Kony Introduces the First Free Solution for Designing Mobile App Prototypes and Full Featured Native Apps

Kony, Inc., the leading enterprise mobility company, recently announced a major update to Kony Visualizer, the visual application design and development solution of Kony’s Mobility Platform. The new release of the cloud-based Kony Visualizer 7.0 includes significant updates to simplify and accelerate the mobile app development process, enabling users to build powerful connected, omni-channel apps for phone, tablet, web, or connected devices. The new release, which enables cross-platform mobile app development, also supports voice input for Apple Watch apps or intelligent control of smart homes using new Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities.

Kony is offering two versions of Kony Visualizer: the Starter edition and the Enterprise edition.  The Kony Visualizer Starter Edition is downloadable at no cost, opening up the opportunity for a broader group of users, such as designers, developers and non-technical line of business users. With Kony Visualizer Starter Edition, users can visually design fully interactive, native mobile apps for their organizations. It also allows them to collaborate with stakeholders across the organization to get immediate feedback on the mobile apps they’ve designed, which creates better alignment between business and IT as part of the innovation process. The free version for unlimited use for mobile app design and prototype creation can be downloaded at https://www.kony.com/products/visualizer. Once users design a mobile app using the Kony Visualizer Starter edition, they can also choose to easily move the app to production using the Kony Visualizer Enterprise edition subscription to deploy and connect the app to back-end services and APIs (Application Program Interface) via Kony MobileFabric.

“Enterprises are struggling to bridge the gap between business demand for mobile apps and the ability to quickly and effectively deliver them,” said Dave Shirk, president of Products, Strategy and Marketing, Kony, Inc. “With the enhancements we’ve made to the Kony Mobility Platform, we are addressing this issue head-on. Kony Visualizer democratizes the process of mobile app development and enables existing web developers and designers, and those with no background in programing or coding skills, to easily and quickly build rich, innovative mobile apps.  The most exciting part of this announcement is that we have created a fully featured edition of Kony Visualizer and made it available to anyone who wants to experience the power of this product and what it can do for their business.”

Kony Visualizer 7.0 provides new capabilities for rapid prototyping, design and advanced multi-channel development for business, designers and developers. Benefits include:

• Instant, Native App Prototypes - Import existing Adobe Photoshop designs to jumpstart the mobile app design process.
• Cross-platform Design and Development – Provides a visual design environment across all major device and operating systems.
• Rapid Iterative Development – Empowers developers to rapidly build apps using either low-code visual techniques or drop into full JavaScript development when required through a modern integrated environment for agile multi-channel development.
• Business and IT Collaboration - Publish and share native prototypes and app designs with real-time app previews and annotation support for capturing input from key stakeholders.
• Integrated API Development – Seamlessly build and reuse Application Program Interfaces (APIs) (through integration with Kony MobileFabric for backend API management and integration) as part of front-end design activities.
• Omni-channel Support – Take advantage of the latest new devices, such as visually building Apple Watch apps, new iOS APIs like WatchKit and HealthKit for connecting to smart devices and wearables, Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform (UWP) support and more.

• Advanced Security at the Core – Provides new automated protection of Kony apps with automatic Source Code Protection (to protect source code and business logic), Code & Control Flow obfuscation, White Box Cryptography and Binary Protection against static and runtime attacks.

Kony Visualizer 7.0 is integrated with Kony MobileFabric 7.0, the industry’s leading mobile middleware (mobile backend as a service) offering. The new Kony MobileFabric 7.0 release features new mobile middleware capabilities to optimize the process of integrating the mobile app to backend systems, further extending Kony’s category leadership in mobile backend as a service (MBaaS). Together, Kony Visualizer 7.0 and Kony MobileFabric 7.0 deliver the highest levels of speed and productivity through low-code tools, simplifying the process of building microservice-based mobile applications. 

“Kony has by far the best cross-platform development tools in the industry.  Where speed-to-market with solid performance is an absolute necessity, Kony brings the most innovative expertise and solutions,” said Thomas A. Dolan, president, QRS Music Technologies, Inc. “We’ve built the QRS Music wearable app for the Apple Watch on the cloud-based Kony Mobility Platform. We look forward to Kony’s newest capabilities to insure our mobile strategy and apps lead the industry.”

Gartner states that “using development tools that can produce apps more rapidly is crucial for enterprises to help bridge the gap between mobile app demand and supply. Significant innovation is driving this market and replacing traditional coding approaches, such as native development tools, with more effective RMAD tools.… These approaches are allowing those with no programming skills or coding ability, such as people in business roles, to rapidly assemble mobile app prototypes and continuously iterate on these designs.” (Gartner: “The Enterprise App Explosion: Scaling One to 100 Mobile Apps”, May 2015)