Four Reasons Why Cloud Backend as a Service Are App Developers’ Secret Weapon

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Across several global industries, enterprises are embracing mobility as a central focus in their digital transformation efforts. In fact, a recent EIU study shows that four out of five respondent businesses are investing heavily in mobile technology as a part of their digital strategy for the future. The reason: mobile application popularity has spiked, leading many app developers to explore different methods and technologies to meet this growing demand.

Cloud backend-as-a-Service can effectively fill this void, providing several key value points. Here are four, indispensable ways that app developers stand to benefit from implementing cloud backend into their workflow (and the opportunities they miss by not doing so).

Seamless integration and extension

Delivering mobility solutions can be a challenge if not optimized to integrate with on-premise systems. Updating on-premise systems with additional features often involves high cost of development. Furthermore, even the most customized mobile application or out-of-the-box solution often requires third-party development platforms to mesh successfully. For example, mobile features like geo-spatial querrying and social connections are important mobile qualities that users expect these days from mobile apps.  Mobile cloud backend alleviates this need, providing APIs and SDKs software development kits (SDKs) built to enable seamless integration across several cloud-based services.

Agile delivery

Another immediate advantage that app developers can expect from implementing cloud backend is shorter delivery times. Cloud backend condenses product development cycles from years and months to a matter of weeks. As a result, app developers will have more time to focus on the creative side, rather than spending excessive time on back-office procedures – meaning better code quality and a steady output of products to meet demand. Using concepts like Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, developers can create a delivery pipeline that spans across multiple components seamlessly and enable them to deliver new features and bug-fixes very frequently.

Scaling capabilities

Cloud backend also boosts on-demand app scalability, a crucial step in ensuring applications are available and performing at their best for its users. The underlying cloud platform, in addition to backend services, delivers operational capabilities designed to adapt to changing business needs and mobile app environments.

Failing to adopt agile development and scale applications to meet growing usage can leave app developers having to spend precious time away from actual development and instead reactively fix bandwidth issues. Cloud backend is a means of solving these issues before they happen.

Cost reduction

Lastly, sound user experiences in enterprise applications drive adoption. However, while more enterprises are making strides, hiring professional designers and investing in DevOps resources still present an economic challenge for many businesses.

Cloud backend is an excellent alternative for short-staffed or under-resourced app development teams because the technology can assist them with completing a large portion of the architectural legwork. Additionally, faster development time translates to lower costs as end-to-end infrastructure and specialized programming, which cloud backend provides, lessens the need for development team resources.

Aside from the immediate technical advantages, cloud backend’s true value for app developers lies in its ability to significantly reduce development time (and costs by extension) by improving developer efficiency. App developers will have more time and resources to channel into driving innovation, and shortened product lifecycles will get products to the user faster. This is a powerful combination for inspiring brand loyalty and positioning an enterprise as a digital leader. Considering the growing popularity of mobile apps along with the fierce competition to meet this demand, app developers are hard-pressed not to embrace the benefits – both immediate and long-term – that cloud backend enables.

senthil-krishnapillaiContributed by: Senthil Krishnapillai, Global VP and Head of Development for Digital Experience Services at SAP. He has more than two decades of expertise in product development, management and marketing. In this role, Senthil is responsible for leading the SAP’s cloud services vision and delivering solutions that connect employees, customers and partners at any time and on any device with real-time information. His team delivers all the cloud services and agile development using cloud engineering principles, some of which are described in this article.

 

 

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