With smartphones becoming ubiquitous, perhaps the biggest trend we are seeing is the proliferation of mobile apps. A report by released by App Anni in mid-2017 found that smartphone users access over 30 apps on a monthly basis. From ordering groceries to filling in time sheets to losing weight, people are using apps for practically everything. On their part, businesses are launching new apps at an unprecedented pace.
This explosion in mobile apps is also driving a huge transformation in the way that apps are developed and disseminated. While a number of apps were hitherto running on bulky backend architecture and legacy software, this model is proving to be highly inconvenient in an era where the speed at which apps are released and upgraded often dictates their utility.
For example, one our clients, a top general contractor in the United States, opted for an ‘App Factory’ framework based on our Halosys platform to quickly deploy custom apps. Each app was developed in an average time frame of just five weeks - from requirements gathering to production deployment. Businesses are increasingly seeking a similar pace of app development today.
In general, mobile app architecture design is made up of the following standard layers – the presentation layer, business layer and data layer. Each layer plays a specific role. The presentation layer holds the UI components. The business layer takes care of workflows, and business entities, while the data layer handles the data components. These layers could either lie on the on the device or the backend depending on whether you are building a rich or thin client.
The decision as to where which layer resides depends on factors such as utility, network connectivity etc. For example, for sales persons who are constantly on the road, they need to be able to feed in data into the app even when they are not connected to the Internet, with a provision to sync whenever data becomes available. If there is processing required at the user end, then it will have to be a rich client app.
But whatever the specifics might be, the speed of app development and deployment matters. This has resulted in a huge movement in favour of microservices based environments.
Here are some of the top reasons why a microservices based architecture makes sense:
Complexity:
Given the complexity of applications, rewriting the entire code from scratch for every single new application simply isn’t feasible given the time and resource crunch that most organisations grapple with.
Resource Management:
With the rising demand for mobile app developers and the lack of available talent, it's important to build systems with reusable components. That's only possible with MBaaS, which lets you reuse microservices across various apps and cuts down the time required to build a new app.
Standing on the shoulders of giants:
By reusing available code, you have an opportunity to take your code much further because you don’t have to focus on reinventing the wheel.
Coping with the Pace of Change:
Given the pace at which requirements and technologies evolve, it is difficult to foresee how your application will run eventually – on which device or which platform. A microservices can be device and technology agnostic, ensuring their usefulness irrespective of the way the need eventually evolves.
Sonata’s Halosys platform takes a microservices approach and brings a Mobile Backend-as-a-Service (mBaaS) option, which dramatically simplifies and accelerates App development, deployment and management.
Kindly reach out to us @ Halosys-mobility@sonata-software.com for more information.