I recently attended a Forrester webinar on the future of mobile apps. Although part of the webinar was about technical topics such as developing native, html5 or hybrid apps, it did cover several other topics that are very salient to the future of mobile cloud apps. These were:

1. It's all about the mobile user experience, because if the user experience is poor, people won't use an app more than once or twice. Further, the app user interface is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This is because mobile apps rely on a lot of infrastructure and if the infrastructure isn't up-to-snuff, the attractiveness of the user interface won't be able to compensate. If the app is slow, unreliable, crashes, takes too many taps or is lacking key features, the slickest user interface won't matter.

This was refreshing, if only because a lot of what distinguishes the quality of my company's personal cloud apps is often hidden. It's like plumbing. While the curb appeal of a house may be great, if the plumbing is not good, people won't be happy. The same applies for mobile cloud apps. Some might seem attractive at first blush, and to the uninitiated, it is difficult to discern good from bad. But once you use mobile cloud apps for awhile, it becomes apparent which are built on solid vs. faulty plumbing.

2. Analytics are huge for the future of mobile apps, because they can help optimize the user experience, but also they are key to customizing and personalizing app content and data to make it more relevant. The webinar showed that only 20% of mobile developers today leverage analytics, so this is a huge opportunity for improvement. My company has learned countless valuable things about mobile apps via analytics to make our current and future mobile cloud apps better.

3. The webinar showed a slide that particularly resonated with me as I thought it encapsulated well the essentials of mobile apps going forward. Its content is paraphrased as follows:

• omnichannel clients, to support all types of devices, computers, wearable tech, etc.
• deployed on elastic infrastructure (e.g. the cloud), for performance, scalability and cost
• based on aggregated discrete services, to avoid reinventing the wheel, and for security
• uses managed APIs, for ease of integration, customization, maintenance, etc.
• integrates open source as much as possible, for several reasons
• employs techniques that marry development and operations to streamline time-to-market
• leverages measurable feedback such as app store ratings and reviews

These are the holy grail of mobile cloud apps, that are required for a superior user experience, longevity and utility. If you are building a simple app, it doesn't need to incorporate all of these. But for personal cloud apps that are meant to simply people's digital lives, and by inference, will be used for a long time, these elements are not only important but are truly essential.

4. The webinar discussed the importance of establishing KPIs around key mobile use cases and  measuring these to ensure that apps meets their objectives. This is related to point 2 but it is worth highlighting as it all gets back to that ever-crucial mobile user experience.

Lastly, the webinar used a phrase that said that today's 'mobile roadmap is like a racetrack'. To me, this means it is all about delivering an awesome mobile user experience as quickly as possible, and everything this entails - that is the future of mobile cloud apps.