I met with John Ascroft and Craig Richardson this morning to hear about the JOOB Mobile Cloud Platform.

JOOB is basically middleware that makes it easier for you to connect enterprise systems to devices. It sits between an enterprise system—think of, for example, a CRM application—and an app on a device, such as a tablet or smartphone. It uses a built-in database that acts as plumbing to connect the two. I was told it provides a roughly 50 percent decrease in total developer effort across the server and device developers.

JOOB is not a platform to allow you to write a mobile app once and have it run on multiple platforms. Ascroft and Richardson said that those kinds of tools usually provide a "least common denominator" user experience—apps programmed specifically for their devices can provide a better, more native experience. By making it easier to connect apps to your enterprise applications, it gives your devs more time to make native applications.

An example of JOOB in action is a home nursing agency that uses JOOB to allow mobile apps to collect data from nurses and send it in, saving nurses the time and trouble of coming in to an office. It's also used in smartgrid applications, collecting information from devices that monitor electrical usage of homes and reporting it back to an enterprise application.

JOOB is usually licensed per active user, but an agency model is available. A free trial and more information are available on the JOOB website.