Appcelerator

Appcelerator
Private
Industry Software
Founded Atlanta, Georgia (2006)
Founder Jeff Haynie and Nolan Wright
Headquarters Mountain View, California, United States
Products Titanium, Appcelerator Platform
Number of employees
 160[1]
Website www.appcelerator.com

Appcelerator is a privately held mobile technology company based in Mountain View, California. Its main products are Titanium, an open-source software development kit for cross-platform mobile development, and the Appcelerator Platform, an enterprise software suite for mobile app development, testing, deployment, and analytics.

As of 2013, it had raised more than $68 million in venture capital financing and employed about 160 people.[1][2]

History

Appcelerator's founders, Jeff Haynie and Nolan Wright, met at Vocalocity, an Atlanta-based VoIP company which Haynie had co-founded.[3] After Haynie sold Vocalocity in 2006, the pair founded Hakano, a company focused on developing web 2.0 applications.[4][5] By 2007, Hakano had shifted its focus to creating an open-source platform for developing rich Internet applications, and in October changed its name to Appcelerator.[6] In December, Marc Fleury, the founder of JBoss, joined the company as an advisor.[3][7]

In mid-2008, Appcelerator relocated from Atlanta to Mountain View, California in order to benefit from Silicon Valley's technology-savvy business networks and venture capitalists, which sparked debate in Atlanta about the city's difficulty nurturing and retaining entrepreneurs.[8][9] In December 2008, Appcelerator released a preview of its RIA platform, Titanium, which drew comment as a possible open-source competitor to Adobe AIR.[10][11] At the same time, it closed a $4.1 million series A round of venture capital funding led by Storm Ventures and Larry Augustin.[10][12]

Appcelerator began to shift its focus to mobile apps during 2009. In June, it released a public beta of Titanium which added support for creating Android and iOS apps to its existing support for web and desktop applications.[13] Titanium 1.0 was officially released in March 2010.[14][15]

Appcelerator's co-founder and CEO Jeff Haynie, giving a talk at a February 2013 conference in Valencia, Spain
Appcelerator's co-founder and CEO Jeff Haynie, giving a talk at a February 2013 conference in Valencia, Spain

In April 2010, during the Apple–Flash controversy, Apple banned applications that used any "intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool" from its App Store, raising concerns about the status of iOS apps built with Titanium.[16][17] Apple never applied the policy to Titanium-built apps and five months later reversed it entirely.[18] In October, Appcelerator raised $9 million in series B funding from investors including Sierra Ventures and eBay.[19]

Appcelerator grew quickly during 2011. In January, it bought Aptana in order to take advantage of Aptana's popular Eclipse-based integrated development environment, which it rereleased as Titanium Studio.[20][21] By the time it acquired Particle Code, maker of an HTML5 mobile gaming development platform, in October, it had 100 employees, five times as many as a year before.[22] By November, it had raised $15 million in a Series C venture round led by Mayfield Fund, Red Hat, and Translink Capital and become the largest third-party app publisher in Apple's App Store and the Android Market.[23][24] According to Inc., its revenues during the year totaled $3.4 million, up 374% from 2008.[25]

By early 2012, Appcelerator had shifted focus from the desktop to mobile and decided to end development of Titanium's desktop application toolkit.[26] It spun off the toolkit into an independent project, which adopted the name TideSDK and became an affiliate of Software in the Public Interest.[27][28] In February, Appcelerator purchased Cocoafish, a backend as a service company that provided prebuilt features like push notifications and photo uploads for mobile apps.[29][30] Appcelerator incorporated Cocoafish's features into Appcelerator Cloud Services, a new product released alongside Titanium 2.0 in April.[24][31]

In November, Appcelerator bought Nodeable, a big data analytics company, seeking to strengthen its mobile application analytics offerings.[32][33]

In early 2013, Business Insider reported that Microsoft was considering buying Appcelerator,[34] but the rumor was never confirmed.[35] In May 2013, Appcelerator announced the Appcelerator Platform, launching a foray into the mobile enterprise application platform market.[35] In July, it raised a further $12.1 million of funding in a round led by EDBI, the venture fund of the Singaporean government's Economic Development Board, and announced that it would open an Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore.[36][37]

In August, Appcelerator acquired Singly, a company that had created a framework for integrating third-party APIs into web and mobile apps, and announced plans to merge the framework into its own products.[38] According to VentureBeat, the acquisition fit with Appcelerator's ambition to "be the next Oracle ... a key component of the mobile ecosystem for every developer." The company also began migrating its operations off Amazon Web Services into its own data center, citing cost savings and increased flexibility.[2]

The Appcelerator Platform

The Appcelerator Platform is a cloud software suite that extends Titanium with features including a mobile backend as a service, test automation, debugging tools, an analytics and performance management suite, and a service level agreement.[35][39] The platform is intended as enterprise software; the price of licenses starts at $5000 per user per year.[35]

As a mobile application development platform, the Appcelerator Platform competes with SAP's SAP Mobile Platform,[40][41] Verivo Akula,[40] Antenna Software's Antenna Mobility Platform,[40][42] IBM's MobileFirst,[43][44] and Kony Solutions's KonyOne.[45][46]

Awards & Recognition

See Also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Julie Bort (7 February 2013). "25 Enterprise Startups to Bet Your Career On". Business Insider. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Devindra Hardawar (22 August 2013). "Why did Appcelerator buy Singly? Because it wants to be the next Oracle". VentureBeat. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 John Foley (12 January 2008). "Startup Of The Week: Appcelerator Promises Faster RIA Development". Information Week. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  4. ↑ Michelle Markelz (July 2013). "The Dawn of a Digital Ecosystem". Profile. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  5. ↑ "Atlanta's Hakano now Appcelerator, changes strategy". TechJournal. 31 October 2007. Retrieved 2 July 2013.
  6. ↑ "Hakano Changes Name to Appcelerator; Launches Open Source Rich Internet Application (RIA) Development Platform Company". Appcelerator. 30 October 2007. Retrieved 2 July 2013.
  7. ↑ Dana Blankenhorn (12 December 2007). "Fleury's back and SOA's got him". ZDNet. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  8. ↑ Urvash Karkaria (9 February 2009). "Haynie: ATL's entrepreneurs must give back". Atlanta Business Chronicle. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
  9. ↑ Peter Cohan (14 September 2012). "How Jeff Haynie Built It—With Help From The Silicon Valley Start-up Common". Forbes. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Anthony Ha (9 December 2008). "Appcelerator launches open source platform for desktop apps". VentureBeat. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  11. ↑ Dave Rosenberg (9 December 2008). "Monetizing open source and killing Adobe AIR". CNET. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  12. ↑ Mark Hendrickson (9 December 2008). "Appcelerator Raises $4.1 Million for Open Source RIA Platform". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 July 2013.
  13. ↑ Paul Krill (8 June 2009). "Appcelerator enables iPhone, Android app dev". InfoWorld. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  14. ↑ Paul Krill (8 March 2010). "Appcelerator releases Titanium cross-platform app dev technology". InfoWorld. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  15. ↑ Sarah Perez (7 March 2010). "Titanium 1.0 Launches: Build Native Apps for Desktop, Mobile & iPad". ReadWrite. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  16. ↑ Dana Blankenhorn (21 June 2010). "Appcelerator warns Apple on possible tool ban". ZDNet.
  17. ↑ Cade Metz (16 April 2010). "Steve Jobs bans all apps from iPhone (or thereabouts)". The Register.
  18. ↑ Christina Warren (9 September 2010). "What Apple's Guideline Changes Mean for Developers". Mashable.
  19. ↑ Christina Warren (26 October 2010). "Appcelerator and PayPal Team Up for Mobile Commerce". Mashable. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  20. ↑ Ryan Paul (20 January 2011). "Appcelerator buys Aptana, strengthens mobile dev solution". Ars Technica.
  21. ↑ Darryl K. Taft (16 June 2011). "Appcelerator Releases Titanium Studio IDE for Mobile, Desktop and Web Development". eWeek. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  22. ↑ Darryl K. Taft (25 October 2011). "Appcelerator Bolsters Mobile HTML5 Expertise With Particle Code Acquisition". eWeek. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  23. ↑ Sarah Perez (1 November 2011). "Appcelerator Raises $15 Million Series C Round". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Devindra Hardawar (17 April 2012). "Appcelerator gives devs a gateway to mobile cloud services with Titanium 2.0". VentureBeat. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  25. ↑ "Company Profile: Appcelerator". Inc. 5000. Inc. 2012. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  26. ↑ Kevin Whinnery (20 January 2012). "The Future of Titanium Desktop". Appcelerator Developer Blog. Appcelerator. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  27. ↑ Boydlee Pollentine (10 April 2012). "What's Happening? - 10th April". TideSDK. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  28. ↑ David May (29 September 2012). "TideSDK Project Update". TideSDK. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  29. ↑ Sarah Perez (9 February 2012). "Appcelerator Acquires Mobile Cloud Services Startup Cocoafish". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  30. ↑ Jolie O'Dell (9 February 2012). "Fueled by mobile madness, Appcelerator acquires Cocoafish". VentureBeat. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  31. ↑ John Cox (17 April 2012). "Mobile apps can feature ready-to-use cloud services". Network World. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  32. ↑ Sarah Perez (7 November 2012). "Appcelerator Acquires Nodeable, Makers Of Real-Time Big Data Processing Tool StreamReduce". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  33. ↑ Arik Hesseldahl (7 November 2012). "Appcelerator acquires Nodeable, boosts big data". AllThingsD. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  34. ↑ Julie Bort (1 February 2013). "Microsoft Might Buy A Startup That Powers 10 Percent Of The World's Smartphones". Business Insider. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 35.3 Kevin McLaughlin (21 May 2013). "This Cloud Startup That Mobile Developers Love Is Now Going After Enterprises That Build Their Own Apps". Business Insider. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  36. ↑ Josh Ong (16 July 2013). "Appcelerator picks up $12.1M to grow its mobile enterprise platform and open Asia HQ in Singapore". The Next Web. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
  37. ↑ Kim-mai Cutler (16 July 2013). "Appcelerator Raises $12.1M To Expand Into Asia And Help Enterprises Build The Best Apps". TechCrunch. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
  38. ↑ Alex Williams (22 August 2013). "Appcelerator Acquires Singly, A Developer Platform For Integrating Third-Party Services". TechCrunch. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  39. ↑ Alex Wilhelm (21 May 2013). "Appcelerator brings real-time analytics to its mobile app platform, boosting developer intelligence". The Next Web. Retrieved 28 June 2013.
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 Ian Finley, Van L. Baker, et. al. (7 August 2013). "Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms". Gartner. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
  41. ↑ Dawn Kawamoto (9 February 2012). "Could this little fish splash SAP?". The Motley Fool. Retrieved 31 July 2013.
  42. ↑ Nancy Gohring (21 February 2012). "Antenna service supports full lifecycle of mobile app". IT World. IDG News Service. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  43. ↑ James Niccolai (21 February 2013). "IBM makes big mobile push with MobileFirst". ComputerWorld. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  44. ↑ Paul McDougall (31 January 2012). "IBM Acquires Mobile Specialist Worklight". InformationWeek. Retrieved 31 July 2013.
  45. ↑ Thor Olavsrud (8 August 2012). "10 Top Mobile Application Development Platforms". CIO. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  46. ↑ Chris Marsh (28 July 2013). "Scorecard for Mobile App Platforms". Mobile Enterprise. Retrieved 31 July 2013.
  47. ↑ "Skyhigh CloudTrust™ Program Establishes Industry’s Most Objective and Comprehensive Security Assessment for Cloud Services". Retrieved 30 April 2015. Text "publisher" ignored (help); Text "SkyHigh Networks" ignored (help)
  48. ↑ "Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms". Retrieved 30 April 2015. Text "publisher" ignored (help); Text "Gartner" ignored (help)
  49. ↑ "The 2014 OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies". Retrieved 30 April 2015. Text "publisher" ignored (help); Text "AlwaysOn ALPHA" ignored (help)
  50. ↑ "The 2014 OnMobile 100 Top Private Companies". Retrieved 30 April 2015. Text "publisher" ignored (help); Text "AlwaysOn" ignored (help)
  51. ↑ "2013 OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies". AlwaysOn ALPHA.
  52. ↑ "Appcelerator Wins Software Category". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  53. ↑ "Looking for the ‘Next Big Thing’? Ranking the Top 50 Start-Ups". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  54. ↑ "Emerging Vendors 2012: Software Vendors". CRN. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  55. ↑ "Announcing the 2012 AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies". AlwaysON Alpha. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  56. ↑ "Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms". Gartner.
  57. ↑ "Red Hat Innovation Award Winners". Red Hat.
  58. ↑ "CTIA Announces 2012 E-Tech Awards Finalists". CTIA.
  59. ↑ "Appcelerator Winning Streak Continues With Honors From OnMobile and Momentum Index". Reuters.
  60. ↑ "MobileTrax Announces the 2012 Mobility Award Winners". Mobility Wire.
  61. ↑ "2012 Edison Award Winners".
  62. ↑ "2012 Red Herring North America: Finalists". Red Herring. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  63. ↑ "Best Places to Work Finalists Revealed". Silicon Valley Business Journal.
  64. ↑ "Lead411 Launches “Hottest Companies in Silicon Valley” Awards”". Lead411.
  65. ↑ "Winners 2012". Global Mobile Awards. GSMA.
  66. ↑ "2012 Jolt Awards: Mobile Tools". Dr. Dobb's.
  67. ↑ "Magic Quadrant for Mobile Consumer Application Platforms". Gartner.
  68. ↑ "2011 CODiE Award Winners". Software & Information Industry Association.
  69. ↑ Michael, Yuan. [Jolt Productivity Awards: Mobile and Web Development #2http://www.drdobbs.com/joltawards/jolt-productivity-awards-mobile-and-web/227600012 "Jolt Productivity Awards: Mobile and Web Development #2"]. Dr. Dobb's.
  70. ↑ "Cool Vendors in Enterprise Mobility, 2010". Gartner.
  71. ↑ "Appcelerator - Mountain View, CA". Inc.

Bibliography

External links