| Appcircle Inc. | |
| Type: | Private |
| Area Served: | Worldwide |
| Industry: | Software |
| Services: | Product, Technical Support |
| Num Employees: | 20+ |
| Location City: | Dover, Delaware |
Appcircle Inc. (replacing Smartface Inc.) is a mobile technology company focusing on Mobile DevOps and mobile Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery for mobile application development, primarily in enterprise settings. Appcircle is headquartered in Delaware with offices in New Jersey, Palo Alto and Istanbul.
Appcircle had initially been set up as a spinoff product from Smartface Inc, a mobile technology company focusing on enterprise mobility in the cloud for mobile transformation in enterprises.[1] As the mobile landscape evolved, the main portfolio of products offered by Smartface Inc has eventually been replaced by the Appcircle mobile CI/CD platform, while Smartface Inc focusing on providing professional services for mobile and middleware technologies for enterprises[2] .
The superseding of Smartface by Appcircle stems from the fact that Smartface offered mobile CI/CD only for its own platform[3] while Appcircle offers a platform-agnostic mobile CI/CD environment[4] .
Appcircle is a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery platform specific for mobile app development.[5] As a mobile CI/CD platform, it enables developers to automate their mobile app build, sign and deployment processes. For automation and application lifecycle management, it uses a workflow-based system where developers can configure steps with a visual interface and add steps from a component marketplace called integrations.
The platform has integrated modules for:
It has a public cloud offering along with private cloud and on-premise/self-hosted deployment options.
Smartface Middleware Platform is a middleware specialized in frontend integration for modern frontends like mobile apps or chatbots. For this purpose, it can be categorized as "Backend for Frontend" (BFF) instead of a full-fledged middleware for communication between backend systems.
It includes features focusing on unifying cross-cutting concerns on a single platform to eliminate the repetition of work and to ensure frontend compatibility. It specifically focuses on rapid delivery and productivitization with its cloud-native architecture running on Kubernetes for scalability and availability.
Smartface Cloud is a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) with native iOS and Android app development and lifecycle management capabilities. It incorporates a cloud-based integrated development environment (Cloud IDE) that runs on the browser to develop native mobile apps with JavaScript. The apps developed in the cloud can be deployed directly on "on-device emulators" for iOS and Android, eliminating the dependency on a specific OS and hardware as well as physical connectivity for mobile application development (e.g. iOS apps can be developed without a Mac).[6]
As for the lifecycle management, it incorporates integrated modules for testing, enterprise and app store distribution along with the ability to update native iOS and Android apps remotely. As a JavaScript based interpreter framework, Smartface allows updating application code and assets from a remote resource and run the updated app without the need for recompilation (e.g. critical updates can be done without waiting for the App Store review).
Smartface App Studio is now deprecated and replaced with the Cloud IDE offered in Smartface Cloud. It is a cross-platform mobility framework (mobile application development platform) which offers its own integrated development environment to design, develop and publish native apps for Android and iOS.
Smartface App Studio offers a WYSIWYG design editor to design mobile apps and the design fits into Android and iOS devices without any additional effort. Coding is done with an integrated 100% JavaScript code editor. Native iOS and Android apps can be developed with a single JavaScript codebase.
Smartface App Studio is the only environment that allows whole native iOS development process to be done on Windows (as an alternative to Mac-only Xcode) with an on-device iPad/iPhone emulator for Windows PCs. The emulator also offers a full featured iOS debugger on Windows.[7]