Retriever Communications Unveils RADE3, a Ground-Breaking Platform for Mobile Application Development

Retriever Communications, a global provider of mobile field force automation, today announced RADE3, the latest version of its advanced and proven Retriever Application Development Environment (RADE). RADE3 allows businesses to create and deploy device agnostic native applications to iOS, Android and Windows Mobile directly from the development platform, without having to adjust or write code outside the application.

Traditionally, developers have faced a difficult choice; to spend time building separate native applications with a rich and intuitive user experience for each device or design web applications that run on any mobile browser. Solving this dilemma, RADE3 writes to an abstraction layer above the OS specific API that enables application developers to build a native app once and deploy it to all mobile devices and tablets running Windows, iOS or Android. 

RADE3 also allows developers to integrate device specific capabilities such as GPS, barcode readers, inbuilt cameras and RFID scanners into the application, allowing field service crews to take full advantage of their handset capabilities.

“As more businesses choose to adopt a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, it is crucial for developers not to limit their applications by operating system,” said Mary Brittain-White, co-founder and CEO of Retriever Communications. “For consumer applications, the success of Apple App Store shows the demand of users for rich native apps without compromise. Using RADE3, developers can satisfy these demands in complex business field worker environments whilst still retaining fast deployment cycles.” 

Retriever’s Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) has a unique write-once, deploy natively approach. It avoids the weaknesses of HTML5, which is intuitive and a good fit for B2C apps, but lacks app functionality and security in a complex field force environment, particularly when moving in and out of coverage. 

By contrast, Retriever can easily be tailored by a business to enable true mobile field collaboration within vertical markets. A local Graphical User Interface (GUI) delivers a rich experience, even when working offline. By moving field force automation tasks from the IT department to the field itself, Retriever empowers the mobile worker to do more in less time.

Retriever was recently named the winner of the Smarter Planet, Smart Work Award at the IBM Australian Business Partner Awards. The award is awarded to a single IBM business partner nationally, for their outstanding work in improving the dynamic processes in which people work. 

About Retriever Communications

Retriever Communications has been providing field force automation technology internationally since 1996. Privately-held with corporate headquarters in Sydney, Australia and North American headquarters in Houston, Texas. Retriever’s wireless field solutions improve productivity and automate processes for field workers - from scheduling to wireless in-field applications operating on rugged and consumer-grade mobile devices. Retriever supports Windows mobile, iOS and Android operating systems. Differentiated by the breadth of its product capability, scalability, reliability and high quality of service, Retriever maintains local offices in Sydney, Milan and Houston, and supports deployments in over 21 countries.