For the second consecutive year, software developer michaels, ross, and cole, ltd. (mrc) has delivered unmatched results in the annual CommonGB development showcase.

For the last two years, CommonGB and the NiSUG User Group have hosted a one-day IBM i & Power themed event in London. The highlight of the event is the development challenge, in which vendors can prove their software's capabilities to the event's attendees in a friendly competition.

This year's "Data Challenge" competition focused on mobile application development. It was designed to show event attendees that opening up the IBMi environment to mobile apps is both straightforward and secure. The rules were simple: Each participating vendor had one week to build mobile applications over the same sample database.

Only a few of the vendors chose to participate in the challenge, and mrc UK was one of them. The results: While vendors were only required to create a simple data retrieval app (at minimum), mrc UK went above and beyond expectations. Using m-Power, one mrc UK developer:

Created a full mobile extranet, complete with:

• Advanced, user-based security,
• A secure shopping cart,
• An interactive report,
• A ranking report, and
• An executive dashboard.

Built cross-platform tablet and smartphone versions of the app.

Used m-Power's built-in translation feature to deliver the application in three different languages (English, French, and Chinese).

In the end, m-Power once again delivered unrivaled results, as no other participant could match the total range of features found in mrc's completed mobile application.

"I am blown away by how easy it is to make data available securely over the internet in different formats to PCs, Android, iPhone, tablets and even with language translation harnessing the power of Google translate, like a Wiki," says Steve Bradshaw, Managing Director of Rowton IT Solutions Ltd., and moderator of the Data Challenge. "Developing mobile applications is not difficult, it's not going to stop your business, you can innovate without huge effort and without huge expense".