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Sencha, a provider of a unified platform for building cross-platform web apps, announced it is now a Premier Level Partner of the Microsoft Visual Studio Partner Program.
Moreover, in support of the new partnership with Microsoft, Sencha launched early access to its Visual Studio Plug-in, which enables enterprise developers to use the Sencha web application frameworks within their preferred Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE), said Sandeep Adwankar, product manager at Sencha.
Sencha released a preview of both its Visual Studio plug-in and its Eclipse plug-in at the beginning of November. The Visual Studio Plug-in uses Microsoft’s standard VSIX file extension to install for the compatible versions of Visual Studio, Adwankar said in a blog post.
Sencha announced its new status in the Visual Studio ecosystem as well as its new plug-in at the Microsoft Visual Studio Live! event this week in Orlando, Fla., where the company also demonstrated the plug-in and its support for the Microsoft Edge browser via Sencha’s Ext JS and GXT frameworks that simplify and accelerate the design and development of feature-rich HTML5 applications using JavaScript and Java.
“Microsoft Visual Studio is the key tool for a very important segment of enterprise developers who are building highly sophisticated web applications,” said Art Landro, CEO of Sencha, in a statement. “The combination of the Sencha Web Application Lifecycle Management platform and the new Visual Studio plug-in will significantly enhance the productivity of developers and development teams in building mission critical business applications that will be delivered and supported across multiple browsers and devices. Our integration with Microsoft Visual Studio and the Sencha HTML5 framework support for the Microsoft Edge browser are the first in a series of initiatives that will expand on our role as a premier level partner in the Visual Studio Program.”
Landro said organizations are under more pressure than ever to deliver sophisticated web applications that can run across desktop, tablets and mobile devices. The promise of web applications is that line-of-business managers and IT departments can cost-effectively design, develop and deploy feature-rich applications across all devices and operating systems from one code base. The Sencha Web Application Lifecycle Management Platform uses the power of modern web technology to enable enterprises to design, develop, deploy and manage mobile web applications.
“I have a unique perspective on this tool as I was a Sencha customer for more than five years when I was doing ASP.NET and Silverlight development in the enterprise and I needed to find a replacement in the HTML5 world,” Marc Gusmano, a senior engineer on the Sencha team, told eWEEK.
He said he believes Sencha’s new Visual Studio Plug-in gives Microsoft developers an ideal set of tools to efficiently build web applications with Sencha Ext JS. Now, .NET developers can improve their overall productivity using Sencha tools to perform code completion, code navigation, and code generation inside of the Visual Studio IDE.
Using Visual Studio Plug-in, developers can develop ASP.NET web application projects for Sencha Ext JS from templates and consistent code completion experience inside the Visual Studio IDE; easily navigate through framework classes and even custom classes by clicking on corresponding references inside the Visual Studio code editor; and create templates to quickly generate code snippets for views, models, controllers, and stores, without having to type code manually.
The plug-in is compatible with Ext JS 4.2 and later. More than 10,000 customers and 60 percent of the Fortune 100 use Sencha to deliver cross-platform applications that help to drive their business. The Sencha Web Application Lifecycle Management Platform uses the power of modern web technology to enable enterprise developers to design, develop, deploy and manage cross platform web applications.
Meanwhile, as Sencha is committed to delivering cross-platform mobile web app development tooling across the enterprise, the company recently announced a partnership with Oracle to take its platform to Oracle developers.
At Oracle Open World last month, Sencha announced that the Sencha Web Application Lifecycle Management Platform could now interoperate with Oracle Mobile Cloud Service to help deliver mission-critical HTML5 mobile web applications to mutual enterprise customers, easier and faster.
“With nearly a decade-long commitment to web technologies, Sencha is a leader in delivering comprehensive and widely-used HTML5 frameworks for building and managing feature-rich mobile web applications,” Sencha’s Landro said in a statement. “Enterprise mobile web developers can now quickly develop and deploy HTML5-powered mobile applications across smartphones and tablets that easily connect to Oracle Mobile Cloud Service, regardless of OS or browser.”
The promise of web applications is that line-of-business managers and IT departments can cost-effectively design, develop and deploy mission-critical applications across all devices and platforms from one code base. By connecting Sencha’s Platform to Oracle Mobile Cloud Service, enterprises can easily tie their front end mobile web applications with Oracle’s comprehensive back end mobile cloud service including enterprise security, push notifications, authentication, data storage, diagnostics, and analytics.
“Enterprise customers are looking for the best solutions for their developers to build applications that scale across mobile devices,” said Chris Tonas, vice president of Mobility and Development Tools at Oracle. “We are working with Sencha to provide more choice to our mutual customers, enabling them to deliver robust mobile web applications.”