Backend-as-a-service (BaaS) companies can help enterprises to eliminate much of the complexity surrounding app development.
While it is important for an enterprise to carefully weigh the options before deciding whether a BaaS solution is right for them however with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement continuing to pick up seam, BaaS appears to provide a suitable balance where IT or non-IT staff can have access to critical data while continuing to meet the required data security standards.
BaaS should, at a bare minimum, provide fully managed IT departments with a more efficient model for deploying apps within the company, allowing them to develop apps faster and more efficiently, while also potentially using a lower-cost programming resource to “construct” the required apps using the existing infrastructure as opposed to a high-end, high-cost app developer.
For those enterprises who have opened their minds to the possibilities that the mobile revolution presents and adopted standards for BYOD, BYOS and BYOF etc, BaaS can present even greater opportunity to leverage the skills within the company to develop apps which will deliver improved access to information along with improved productivity and collaboration.
Although some programming expertise is required to develop apps using BaaS, the provision of pre-built APIs can quickly add features such as login systems, social integration and push notification, greatly simplifying the process for anyone with the necessary knowledge.
While BaaS will certainly receive considerable resistance from traditional IT departments that are threatened by this technology, Enterprise IT is evolving to the point where IT might not be the only ones capable of developing corporate apps and may lead to companies developing their own Enterprise App Stores where IT serve as the gatekeepers to the store, undertaking the process of QA on apps before release to employees, much like Apple and their App Store approval process.
One of the important questions is whether companies what their non-IT workers developing apps. Employees certainly have the best understanding of what information they need and how it should best be presented, there needs to be a level of control exerted over how much time employees may spend during business hours developing these solutions to prevent this opportunity from becoming a black hole.
Marketing departments could present a perfect use-case for Baas as they most likely go outside of IT already to build promotional mobile apps and there is a great benefit to being able to create a lot of apps quickly and the move to BaaS could allow them to even build consumer-facing apps around brand campaigns or events.
While it is true that BaaS is in its infancy when it comes to Enterprise IT however companies such as Cloudmine, Parse, Kinvey, FatFractal and Stackmob are already providing solutions to mid-size and Enterprise businesses with each offering different price-points and feature sets that would suit most businesses starting out with BaaS.
About AppConsultants
We’re an Australian Mobile Agency delivering Mobile Solutions including Mobile App Development, Mobile Marketing and Mobile Website Design.
26 Comments
June
I did some research into this subject and discovered that new kinds of middleware are arising to deal with mobile device diversity. Backend as a Service (BaaS) -- also called mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) -- made its debut as an alternative to mobile middleware. I'm intrigued by this because while traditional mobile middleware federates back-end services through a physical server, BaaS moves the point of integration to the cloud.
Rick
This was very informative. Thanks to this bit of information, I have become aware of yet another field of expertise: Baas. I also learned that more and more, enterprises are seeking third-party vendors to host business solutions rather than source the hardware and software themselves. This is widely known as the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and it's making enterprises more efficient as it continues to gain widespread adoption.
Jennifer
This was a great article you have proven yourself to be very knowledgeable about this subject and I think with the knowledge that you have shown you can be trusted and that people can take your advice and know that they are making the right choice. Thank you for the work you have done and I hope that you will keep up the good work.
Bruce
You have done a fantastic job with this blog and I look forward to the next post that you do. This is information that many people out there can use to further their knowledge in the mobile device world not to mention the network systems administrators that are working with these devices now. Keep up the good work I for one will revisit your link.
Lillian
Partnership strategies that use Saab are important because it gets developers access to features they would not be able to easily develop on their own. It's really expensive to get access to these backends and time consuming. Developers do not need to learn networking or how to build or configure a CDN into their application, or develop push notifications or configure an analytics platform on their own, because It's built in.
Angela
I think that this sounds like something that is going to be needed a great deal but it also sounds like something over my head so I am going to say great job here you have a lot of knowledge that is going to help a lot of technically people and I hope that you get a return on your investment here. Keep up the good work this stuff needs to be out there.
Tammi
As an IT person I think this is a great option because it allows the information to be accessed but still under some modicum of control by the IT department. Thank you for doing the work It must have taken to get this information out there you did an excellent job and I hope to see more on this in the near future.
Richard
Baas and BYOD seem to go hand in hand. I find these trends most exciting. Baas seems to be dependent on a cloud server. We seem to be very early in the evolution of this concept, but like anything within the IT industry, it can take off quickly and before you know it, you have an explosive movement that can then be considered the next big craze.
George
While reading this discussion on Backend as a Service (BaaS), I was struck by the lack of clarity around BaaS market space boundaries and roadmaps. While BaaS is currently well tuned for mobile client backend use cases, the market definition is on a collision course with Platform as a Service (PaaS). That is just the overall feeling I am getting, without knowing much myself about the subject.
Lyle
Most of the BaaS players out thereStackMob, Kinvey, folks like thatdo a lot around user management and push notification, and they offer some form of object storage management. users including employees, partners and customers, can access unstructured data regardless of where documents are kept in their enterprise. When you think about an enterprise wanting to mobile-enable their content, they've got some challenges.
Dale
With employees eager to bring their own smartphones and tablets to work, I guess the bring-your-own-device movement is as strong as ever. The downside of course is that employee-owned devices can expose a corporation to subpar security and privacy. This problem is made worse by carelessly downloading mobile applications programs that can sometimes be malicious in nature. I know from first hand experience.
Tammy
This was interesting, I had no idea what a push notification was until I got my Iphone and the apps on there ask you if you want to use them. I turned a lot of them on and now I want to turn them off can I do that? The push notifications are very aggravating. You have a lot of good points besides that one in your post, you really know your stuff keep posting.
George
Thank you so much for explaining what a BaaS is I had no idea and I am sure I am not the only one that felt that way. You did a great job explaining it and making so the least of us understands it. Keep up the good work with your blogs you did a great job on this one and I am sure the information out there will keep you posting for sometime.
Barry
This was very interesting until now I had no idea what backend-as-a-service stood for nor that so many places were using it. That makes me wonder if that is what they are doing where I work because things have changed here lately, If a company isn't using this and they change to it would it be noticeable to the employees? Great post thank you.
Julio
You did a great job on this blog post you have new and fresh content about a topic that everyone is interested in. You have it in the post in a way that is attractive to the people browsing and causes them to stop and read a little bit. I know that there will be a ton of information that will come up after this post and I hope that you will continue on.
Marilee
Allowing an employee to develop an app is not a bad idea because as you said they no better than anyone what kind of information they are going to need to do their job. But you are also right in the fact that you would have to limit the amount if time they have for doing this each day or nothing else will get done. Maybe they should write it down and turn it in.
Randy
This company, App Consultants, really seem to be an authority on app development, marketing and all things within this field. I am learning a lot from these blogs and all this information has me actually thinking realistically about developing a mobile app. It is something I have been thinking about, but I have also been intimidated by my lack of knowledge. But that opinion is starting to shift thanks to this site.
Asia
People have been trying to define Cloud-based billing terminology better, but they also need to look at who's using some of the solutions. Cloud-billing, or really BaaS (because I happen to think that reflects something more sophisticated than lightweight billing for recurring subscriptions) isn't just for certain types of applications such as retail.
Tammy
It is quite obvious to me how the BAAS concept can help teams of developers to work in unison. Developers and designers for that matter tend to be different about the kinds of software they feel comfortable using. So when you put several of them together on a team to complete a project, their differences could wind up stalling the project unless they are all using the same software on a BAAS integrated environment.
William
June I had no idea that there were so many kinds of middleware popping up to deal with the mobile device diversity until I read your comment and looked into it myself. And like you I am curious because this type of backend as a service sends the point if integration to the cloud. I haven't used the cloud much and didn't realize it was that secure.
Dale
I have been hearing for years (since the turn of the century) that the future of software was going to be online. In other words, no more installation of software into your computer. Instead, you would supposedly go to a website to access the app. Now that the mobile device revolution is well on its way, I wonder if this means a detour from that prediction into the mobile app explosion.
Tammy
Appconsultants is a big company right and you are stationed out of Australia if I'm not mistaken, so how can you determine what will work every where? You have some great ideas but for the size of some of the companies here in the UK I just don't think some of this will work. Keep up the good work though because this is very helpful.
Julio
I've found out about nearly 40 companies that call themselves BaaS. What is good about the BaaS concept is that vendors offer services aimed at making it quick, easy and inexpensive for developers to add common functions such as messaging to their mobile apps, freeing them up to focus on the functions that are important to the business. Companies will need to choose their provider carefully, because consolidation is certain.
Sandy
The cloud is not just about technology - I think it is a paradigm shift. It presents new economic models that companies can use to provision IT and services. Businesses that see the cloud as the future of services are already living in the past. Cloud computing is no longer the future. It's the present. It's now. This has become obvious in the past couple of years at the very least.
Torrie
How Baas can simplify the challenges of BYOD is unclear to me because in my opinion, allowing employees to bring their own software could very well create a free for all that could expose a company's network to malicious scripts. The only way I see BaaS working is if a company limits the kinds of apps that employees can deploy. They might have a list of apps that are limited to what the company does.