Open cloud company Rackspace Hosting has given mobile app developers a push with the release of its new mobile cloud stacks.
The cloud stacks provide a preconfigured platform for developers to start building mobile apps without having to start from scratch.
A company blogpost by Joseph Palumbo, one of the managed cloud support team at Rackspace, says the cloud stacks also provide a scalable reference architecture for developers.
The first available stack is based on PHP scripting language and comprises the LAMP open source development platform and caching software. It has a number of configurations including Linux, Apache web server, MySQL and PHP.
Rackspace is also launching a new partner scheme with the aim of strengthening its mobile cloud platform. It will give developers access to software developer kits (SDK), push services, mobile backend-as-a-service, testing and monitoring capabilities.
John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, said: "Mobile technology is disrupting all industries. Businesses, from startups to enterprises, are aggressively building out their mobile presence. By launching a powerful new ecosystem, we are enabling mobile developers to innovate faster."
The news comes amid predictions from IT analyst Gartner that mobile apps will become increasingly important to business over the next few years. In recent days it has forecast that the number of CRM apps will grow by 500% by 2016, and that by the same year more than half of mobile apps deployed with be hyrbrid.
