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August 27, 2015

To Tackle Today's App Boom, Organizations Must Focus on the Mobile Backend

By Special Guest
Cathal McGloin, vice president, Mobile Platforms, Red Hat

In a mobility survey we conducted across our global customers, we found that backend integration is a leading challenge for development, in addition to security. We also found that in an effort to scale mobility efforts, one in four organizations this year are planning to hire developers with backend proficiency and experience.

As organizations face the challenge of accelerating the development, integration and deployment of their mobile apps to meet increasing demand, they are hampered by the shortage and cost of mobile development skills.

To efficiently and effectively conquer mobile, organizations need to embrace agility across the whole app development cycle, including a focus on backend app integration and the technologies that support this. Enterprise-grade mobile Backend-as-a-Service (MBaaS) and mobile application platform technologies have emerged to help enterprises close this gap between high app demand and their ability to deliver. In fact, according to Gartner: “By the end of 2017, market demand for mobile app development services will grow at least five times faster than internal IT organizations' capacity to deliver them.”

Many organizations still struggle with backend app integration and have not yet implemented technologies that can accelerate and streamline this. Survey results found that more than half of companies are integrating mobile apps with backend systems either through custom coding these connections from scratch, or using external sources such as libraries or vendor services. These methods are neither sustainable nor affordable. They cripple scalability and developer productivity. They also lack the centralized control mechanisms provided by a platform approach, resulting in fragmentation of security and policy management across mobile projects.

In addition to adopting a platform approach for their mobile projects, IT teams can also boost their mobile efficiency if they take the following three steps:

1. Recognize and incorporate DevOps

Mobile Application Platform technologies, based on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), support a DevOps approach by enabling greater collaboration, mobile app lifecycle management, and flexible deployment. However, according to our survey, a mere 26 percent of organizations are currently incorporating DevOps practices into their mobile development initiatives. For enterprise to support the continuous develop/deploy cycle required by mobile, a DevOps culture should gain more momentum in bringing developers and operations together to work more effectively and efficiently across fast and iterative mobile app development cycles.

2. Embrace the power of APIs

For optimal backend app development, teams must implement modern architectures allowing for the composition of backend services in a way that promotes reusability—this is what we call an API-based and micro-services approach.

With this approach, components can be centrally discovered, accessed and managed. Teams must also make centralized control of backend integrations a priority so that sensitive data, systems and apps are protected from a security standpoint. Another benefit? By focusing on APIs, teams can speed up their development process end-to-end.

3. Architect for both enterprise integration and MBaaS functionality to reduce the complexity of legacy systems

As MBaaS functionality directly addresses the need for mobile to access services such as storage, caching and authentication, the backend swings to the cloud in enabling more efficient data-level scaling and management. But, organizations must reduce the complexity of connecting to legacy systems. For legacy systems such as CRM, ERP, database applications and industry-specific applications (e.g., electronic medical records in healthcare), a hosted MBaaS alone is typically not enough. Instead, a mobile application platform, based on PaaS technology and architected for complex enterprise system integration enables developers to build high-performance and secure interactions with such heterogeneous systems and services.

Addressing the app boom head-on

To say there is more pressure than ever on enterprise mobility is an understatement – teams must adopt flexible, agile practices in order to mature. As companies become mobile-centric, they are currently hitting the wall of backend integration. However, by fully leveraging a mobile platform instead of approaching app development on a per-app basis, organizations can overcome this obstacle and produce a more effective mobile enterprise.

About the Author: Cathal McGloin is Vice President, Mobile Platforms at Red Hat. He is the former CEO of FeedHenry, recently acquired by Red Hat and provider of an industry-leading open standards based mobile application platform. Cathal has championed startup ventures in IT and Telecoms, including Performix Technologies which he founded, and Aran Technologies where he was President/VP Sales. Previously, he was with Siemens, Germany and Cap Gemini, UK. He is based in Boston.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino


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