At Google I/O, Google showed off its new Mobile Backend Starter, which helps businesses get their mobile apps up and running on Google App Engine. Today, Google officially announced the tool.

Mobile Backend Starter was shown in the session “From Nothing to Nirvana in Minutes: Cloud Backend for Your Android Application”:

The product provides businesses with a “ready-to-deploy” general purpose backend and client-side framework for Android.

Product manager Brad Abrams explains, “Mobile Backend Starter gives you everything you need to rapidly set up a backend for your app, without needing to write any backend code. It includes a server that stores your data with App Engine and a client library and sample app for Android that make it easy to access that data. You can also add support for Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and continuous queries that notify your app of events you are interested in. To keep users data secure, Mobile Backend Starter also includes built-in support for Google Authentication.”

Mobile Backend Starter includes: cloud data storage, pub/sub messaging, push notifications, continuous queries, and Google authentication and authorization. It’s also free.

Google provides steps for getting started here.