Saying goodbye to Axway Amplify Platform for Mobile 😢
🪦 RIP Axway Amplify Platform for Mobile (2010 - 2022)
"Everything has to come to an end, sometime."
- L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
Axway announces the end to their Axway Amplify Platform product for managing APIs in mobile applications. The End of Life for product is in March 2022.
I first met Titanium Mobile a long ago, before she was married to Axway...
Back then she was known by her maiden name:
Appcelerator
It was over 10 years ago and she was so full of life!
But first, a little background...
My name is Brenton House and I ❤️ APIs
There. I said it.
Wait! I thought this was about Titanium and mobile??
It is. But to understand mobile (I mean REALLY understand it), you have to understand APIs.
I had invested my career in APIs.
Designing, Developing, Architecting, and Evangelizing APIs.
I loved seeing the web being created and taking shape.
Communication standards and APIs (of various shapes, colors, and sizes) appear (and disappear).
But mobile was going to change everything.
I realized that mobile apps were going to EXPLODE the API market as there was suddenly going to be a massive growth in the number of API consumersin the world!
I never left the API world but I realized that expanding my horizons to include the mobile app economy was essential to being successful with APIs and Integrations in the future.
But... I am getting ahead of myself
Let me back up a bit...
The year is 1989
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, while working at CERN.
Wait… let’s not go back that far!
The year is 2007
although it feels like it was just yesterday.
The mobile development market was suddenly revolutionized with the introduction of the first iPhone by Apple.
The first Android phone also released a short time after that and it became clear that developers were either going to have to become experts in both Objective-C for iPhone and Java for Android or some other solution was going to have to appear.
PhoneGap and similar hybrid "web" mobile apps appeared but most people realized that they were never going to be a serious solution due to the lack of features and performance issues that were inherent to non-native mobile apps.
The year is 2011
I was introduced to Appcelerator Titanium Mobile.
She had already hit her 1.0 version milestone and had quite an active development community.
I still remember the first time I saw her.
Write once. Run Everywhere.With Appcelerator Titanium Mobile, I could write JavaScript code and it would create a native mobile app using Objective-C and Java for the appropriate platforms.
WOW!!
Could it really be that easy??With the introduction of the Appcelerator Alloy library for Titanium, the JavaScript features expanded to include an MVC framework with even more options for using JavaScript to access native iOS and Android features! Titanium Alloy hit version 1.0 and everything seemed like it was going so well!
The year is 2015
Facebook released a new product: React Native, a mobile JavaScript platform that seemed to have a similar set of features to Titanium.
Also in 2015, another JavaScript platform, NativeScript, was also released to the community.
The plans for Titanium Alloy 2.0 got pushed out and suddenly there was a lot more diversity (and competition) in the cross-platform native mobile market.
The year is 2016
Axway acquired Appcelerator and integrated it into the Axway Amplify Platform.
You may recognize some of the different variations used to reference the Titanium products over the next few months that followed!
Appcelerator TitaniumAppcelerator Titanium SDKAppcelerator Titanium AlloyAxway TitaniumAxway Titanium MobileAxway Appcelerator TitaniumAxway Appcelerator Titanium SDKAxway Appcelerator Titanium AlloyAxway Amplify Appcelerator TitaniumAxway Amplify Appcelerator Titanium SDKAxway Amplify Appcelerator Titanium AlloyAxway Amplify Titanium AlloyAxway Amplify Titanium MobileAxway Amplify Titanium
The year is 2018
Given my ❤️❤️❤️ for APIs and Integrations -- combined with my personal experience using Axway Amplify Titanium, I joined Axway as an API Evangelist!
Over the next couple of years,
I was able to get creative with a lot
of fun blog posts and YouTube videos!Who can forget, Breaking the Build and important topics like Tabs vs. Spaces? 🤣
With API Cookery we covered API Management and Integrations!
Axway Amplify Titaniumfeatures continued to be added to the SDK over the next couple of years!
Although Axway Titanium Alloy v2.0 never materialized, I did end up forking Titanium Alloy v1 to add in a bunch of v2 type features to make Titanium easier to use with APIs and Node.js.
It kinda spun off into its own open-source product Titanium Turbo.
It was super cool and I was able to use Titanium Turbo to create native mobile apps faster than I could ever imagine doing before!
It also made integrating with APIs a snap (which was very important, given my ❤️ for APIs )
You can see an example of using Titanium Turbo in a complete API and Mobile App solution for managing the return of employees to the office, that we open-sourced last year!
(SPOILERS: given the recent news, Titanium Turbo will probably die a nice, quiet open-source death with very little fanfare...)
The year is now 2021
We have now caught up to present day but unfortunately, it also means that we've reached the end of our story.
A few weeks ago, Axway announced the End-of-Life for Axway Amplify Titanium.
It's sad saying goodbye!
Although Axway will be shutting things down in March 2022, because it is an open-source product, forks of it will still live on in the community!
There are very few products I have been able to closely observe from cradle to grave. It has been a pleasure to work with such an innovative and active community!
API Integrations are sometimes difficult for people to wrap their heads around and Titanium made it easy to be able to see the power of APIs in the palm of their hands!
Titanium had a great run and
I am grateful there are so many
in the Titanium community,
both past and present,
that I can call great friends!On a personal note, I have decided that the timing was right for me to begin a new chapter in my career and I will be leaving Axway this week. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Axway and have worked with some truly amazing and talented people!
My love for APIs and Integrations has only grown stronger over the past few years and I am going to continue following my passion for evangelizing them to the community!
Connect with me on LinkedIn or on Twitter as I continue to share what I learn about this crazy digital world we integrate with everyday!
