Appcelerator has ramped up its mobile platform offering with the launch of Titanium 2.0, which now features support for Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS) and HTML5 mobile web apps.

Following the undeniably strong trend for building cloud services into mobile apps, the company said that developers can use ACS as a route into all of the new Titanium 2.0 features and capabilities, or use it as a standalone selection of services in conjunction with a developers' own choice of development environment.

Appcelerator's Cloud Services enables developers to do three things really well: build, launch, and scale full-featured mobile apps without the headache of building the backend infrastructure and services that are typically required. By opening the playing field for developers, we anticipate a broad rollout of mobile cloud services," said Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator.

Citing IDC's "insightful" predictions that in 2012, 80% of enterprise apps are expected to be deployed on cloud platforms, the company is promoting its ACS offering as a means of integrating cloud services like push notifications or check-ins into mobile applications.

Appcelerator describes ACS as both "open and extensible" and, as such, details its compatibility for developers using Titanium, Objective-C, Java, PhoneGap, Sencha, and HTML5 technologies to create and configure a scalable server-side backend for cloud-driven mobile applications of all kinds without writing server code.

According to Appcelerator, "Tasks that usually require costly server programming or tedious integration with multiple SDKs are performed through one simple interface integrated into Titanium. Developers simply pick which APIs to use and Appcelerator takes care of deploying and maintaining a full server stack that includes a database, search engine, file storage, and application logic."

At launch, ACS is offering 15 of the most popular cloud-based mobile features in an attempt to drive user engagement. The available cloud services include: user management functions, photo and GIS "places" services, social integration channels to Facebook and Twitter, as well as custom data objects, push notifications, status updates, and discussion forums.

As part of the Titanium 2.0 release, Appcelerator also announced its mobile web SDK release candidate. The firm claims that this makes it the first mobile development platform to deliver an "integrated hybrid, native, and HTML5 solution" — all in one handful.

By offering both web and native development from a single platform, Appcelerator hopes to be regarded as a path for developers to create apps more quickly for what it perhaps quite reasonably describes as our “fragmented mobile OS and browser ecosystem” today.