Interview with NitroDesk, the team behind Android Exchange client, TouchDown

We recently had the chance to put a few questions to NitroDesk Inc., the development team responsible for the superb and hugely popular TouchDown, an Microsoft Exchange client for Android. Here’s what they had to say:-

Can you tell us a little bit about NitroDesk and your development background?

NitroDesk was founded by Goutham in the summer of 2008, with nothing as investment but a $2000 laptop, developing Windows applications with a focus on integrating web based services such as online photo sites. When the TMobile G1 was released, NitroDesk was the first to offer a solution for corporate email on the platform. For the past year and half, we have been working solely on exchange integration for Android, and we have come a long way. Goutham has been a software engineer for about 20 years, and has built applications on a variety of platforms, right from assembly language on the x86 platforms, and has helped build high performance and high security solutions for healthcare networking.  Ron has extensive experience with mobile applications and information security from his previous jobs and is our platform-loving in-house geek.

What was the inspiration behind TouchDown? Was it borne out of frustration at the poor support for Exchange integration on early Android devices?

Yes, when the G1 was released, media had jumped all over it for not having an exchange integration solution. We jumped in at that time primarily because we saw an opportunity to bring our integration and development background to build a solution that would make a big difference to people’s lives.

TouchDown is a very popular and highly regarded app, you must be very satisfied with how it’s been received? Has it been more or less successful than you’d initially predicted?

It has been more successful than what we had ever imagined. When TouchDown was first released, we did not even have an Android device to test it with. Since this was a completely self funded venture, we resolved to never buy a device unless the application could prove its fate by paying for itself. Two years and over a hundred thousand users later, we are somewhat confident that it has some significant teeth. It has ups and downs, we screw up once in a while, but we have been blessed with a few thousand users who have stood by us and provided us with valuable feedback on the application and the scores of betas we released.

What were the biggest stumbling blocks you had in developing TouchDown, and, how long overall did the development cycle take?

There have been some stumbling blocks along the way, some of them causing us tremendous grief over the past months. We had issues with Android performing uncommanded deletes on our databases, issues with manufacturers throwing out new devices with newer versions of the Android much before we ever get to validate the application on them (Froyo is probably going to kill us one of these days). The biggest frustration for us is not the 325 character limitation on android market descriptions. It is the way our customers swamp us with support requests even before we are able to get the devices. This happened for the Droid, the incredible and is right now about to happen again with Froyo. All part of the game we are in. The development cycle has taken us over a year to get us where we are, with a steady stream of updates and improvements. And we aren’t done yet.

How have you found the experience of publishing apps to the official Android Market? Do you feel that there are some features that are missing or could be improved upon to make the Market better for publishers?

Everyone knows what’s wrong with the market. The biggest problem for us lies in the way the market simply loses purchased applications when a user moves from one device to another, or sometimes when upgrading the device. There is no way for a user to transfer licenses, and we get a fair amount of support calls by users who don’t even know what gmail id was used to purchase the application. This happens a lot when customers walk into a store and the retail employee creates bogus gmail accounts for the customers to make application purchases when the customer is waiting. We simply get overwhelmed with such requests these days and it gets worse every day. Another issue is the fact that the market maintains one version of the application only, with no way for customers to roll back or forward, and no way for us to publish an app for new users only, and to suppress updating existing customers or stage such updates.

Which Android devices do the folks at NitroDesk use?

Between us we have 2 G1s, a Cliq, a Nexus, an Incredible, a Galaxy, a Droid, a Sprint Hero. Those are the devices we are allowed to talk about J.

Which are your favourite Android apps?

PureWidgets by Francois, SMS popup, Google Maps and of course TouchDown, which helps us monitor our support alias while shopping for milk.

Are there any Android developers or development teams out there whose output has particularly impressed you, and why?

Our favorite is Francois DESLANDES (http://koxx3.wordpress.com/), who has produced an impressive array of widgets that everyone likes. We also like the guys at K9, and think they do a great job.

And, finally, what’s next for NitroDesk, further updates to TouchDown or something entirely different?

We still have a long way to go before we can say that TouchDown is done. There are still features that we want to add, things like more specific support for Notes and conversations and Free-Busy lookup with Exchange 2010, integration with Office Communicator, and so on. We like to stay building applications for the enterprise, or with an “integration” twist to it. Since our livelihoods depend on what we build, and since at any given time we have over a hundred outstanding requested features in TouchDown, we tend to never get any time for “fun” and free applications.

TouchDown is available on the Android Market now as a free 5 day trial and the full license key costs $19.99.