AWS can help your business grow.Please visit senecaglobal.com

When developing a strategic mobile application, focusing on scalability and security is essential in order to acquire mass user adoption.

Four Considerations for a Modern Approach to Mobile Application Development in the Cloud

AWS can help your business grow.Please visit senecaglobal.com

69% of the U.S. online population uses mobile internet on-the-go, and that number is steadily increasing.2 There are four mobile application types — native, web, hybrid, and progressive. Native apps are developed exclusively for single mobile operating systems, generally Android and iOS. Web apps use a browser to run and are usually written in HTML5, JavaScript, or CSS. Hybrid apps are built using multi-platform web technologies and take advantage of the best of native and web apps. Progressive apps, on the other hand, are web apps or websites that can be added to a mobile device home screen and can work offline.

Therefore, some of the biggest challenges for mobile development include the need to cater to so many different models and platforms. The right cloud solution enables teams to streamline their work and make development and hosting environments easily customized, while simultaneously preparing for many future users at a later release date.

Here are four critical factors to consider when developing your software for mobile adoption.

We’re in the midst of a digital revolution, and software companies and departments must continue to innovate in order to stay relevant and top-of-mind to users. When developing a strategic mobile application, focusing on time to market, scalability and security is essential for mass user adoption and long-term success. This is now best accomplished on the AWS cloud, utilizing AWS Amplify, a development platform for building secure, scalable mobile and web applications.1

AWS can help your business grow.Please visit senecaglobal.com

Undoubtedly, mobile applications represent the dawn of a new, more accessible, way of life. Today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape means users expect software products within a shorter timeframe. As a result, application development needs to occur quickly to keep up with demand. About 48% of mobile apps take four to six months of development time, but oftentimes businesses require a more aggressive delivery schedule.3

Some apps may go from having releases every month or every two weeks to nearly every hour. AWS Amplify tools centered around continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) help developers deliver value faster and with more transparency.

To rapidly meet market demand also requires continuous testing. Rigorous testing is imperative in order to ensure the quality of the new releases, and just as important to make sure new bugs are not introduced into the existing applications. Although a very important step for mobile app development, many developers fail to complete proper testing rounds.

In 2018, 26% of IT managers did not have their devices readily available for mobile app testing, while 21% did not have an in-house testing environment.5 This is certainly a missed opportunity, as the real-time analytics, automated test environments and structured version control of the AWS cloud nearly guarantee the functionality and quality of programs while accelerating the time to market.

1. Time to Market

AWS Amplify Console provides a complete workflow for developing, deploying, and hosting single page web apps or static sites with serverless backends. Continuous deployment allows developers to deploy updates to their web app on every code commit to their Git repository. When the build succeeds, the app is deployed and hosted on an amplifyapp.com subdomain. Developers can connect their custom domain to start receiving production traffic.4

AWS can help your business grow.Please visit senecaglobal.com

Eric Crump, VP of Global Cloud and Managed Services at SenecaGlobal, notes the importance of scalability when it comes to mobile app development.

“Mobile applications can catch fire quickly, and the ability to scale and test is key in keeping up with demand.”

According to Crump, it is imperative for applications to be able to elastically scale on-demand. This can be a major issue with a standard on-site hosted app.

During the typical four to six-month development process, many factors can change. The best application is one that can adapt to and support a business as it grows with new traffic sources. Well-structured

mobile app scalability helps to deliver consistent, outstanding user experience irrespective of the number of users. When the scalability is not properly planned and the number of users increases, the performance of the app can significantly deteriorate and cause users to abandon the app and may result in its ultimate failure.

The cloud provides the option to scale and pay only for the bandwidth in use, with the ability to almost instantaneously adjust capacity. But the application must be developed specifically to take advantage of this: it must be a well-architected solution. “And with AWS Amplify you can develop with confidence since you do not need to graduate your app to a separate production platform - - Amplify will scale with you and your business.”6

2. ScalabilityWith native apps, data is stored locally on the users’ devices. This method can be problematic since data can be easily lost or malfunction within the system. When data is secured on the cloud, however, this risk is mitigated. This is because the files are password protected and stored on devices in remote, physically secure data centers. Cloud services also store multiple copies of each data piece in multiple locations, and multiple disappearances are highly unlikely. There is also a high probability that the app is storing sensitive user data. If you’re collecting payments through the app, you’ll also have customer billing information on file. For mobile payments, safety is the biggest concern from consumers of every generation.7 As a result, if your brand gets the reputation for allowing data breaches that compromise consumer information, it could be nearly impossible for you to recover. Storing data on the cloud is a safe method to protect yourself as well as your users.

3. Security

AWS Amplify gives you far greater security controls for your application than other platforms. With Amplify, you have the power to set granular access controls for every user of your application. You can easily set up federated authentication from Amazon, Facebook, and Google, and you can also control the exact piece of data that is authorized to each user.8

AWS can help your business grow.Please visit senecaglobal.com

There are major cost benefits to mobile software application development and hosting on the cloud - - and of course cost is also always an issue. Fortunately, by utilizing the cloud correctly, developers can significantly mitigate cost issues regarding servers, employees, storage space, and maintenance.

Developmental costs are lower on the cloud, making it a desirable place to build, enhance and host applications.9 Moving to the cloud leverages tremendous economies of scale, as it fully utilizes hardware resources depending on business workloads. Because some apps only need to be developed once to be available on both iOS and Android, developers can experience a significant cost savings in time and labor as well.

4. CostResource adjustments can easily be made to meet seasonal spikes and fluctuating demand. For example, an app built with the intention of reducing the stresses of couponing could expect greater use during periods of high shopping activity, such as the holiday season. Instead of having to build an infrastructure to support maximum capacity needs (with its attendant significant waste), the cloud allows for renting of that capacity only when needed, on-demand.

Lower TCO (total cost of ownership)

is also achieved due to the lack of

in-house servers, physical storage

space, sophisticated security and

power environments, and of course

the attending staff. Instead, the cost

of servers, maintenance, and upgrades

are spread through a multi-tenant

infrastructure, allowing the provider

to offer services to all clients at

competitive rates.

Amplify leverages the AWS Cloud to power your applications, so you get access to a far broader selection of services along with much deeper functionality within most of these services than other mobile development platforms. With Amplify, you can build on-demand, live applications that can handle millions of requests per second over hundreds of terabytes of data with microsecond latency across the globe.10

With the AWS cloud, the net result is a world-class, custom environment at very cost-efficient pricing.

AWS is an essential component of mobile application because of its advancements in speed, scalability, and innovation. In fact, for the ninth consecutive year, AWS has secured the top-right corner of the Leader’s quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant11 for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), earning highest placement for Ability to Execute and furthest for Completeness of Vision.

The pace at which AWS innovates is unmatched, and its scalability is unparalleled. AWS Device Farms provide a realistic testing environment for applications, with the ability to test scenarios or reproduce issues on a shared fleet of thousands of devices. Additionally, Amazon CloudWatch provides data and actionable insights to monitor applications, visibility to system-wide performance changes, optimizing resource utilization, and a unified view of operational health.

Contact SenecaGlobal to Learn more about how the right cloud computing parthner can transform your mobile application.

Developing a mobile application is challenging. Developers must look for scalability and customizability in a platform that can be delivered in a short time to market with minimal risk.

As a global leader in technology services and advisory, SenecaGlobal specializes in enterprise cloud and managed services, software product and custom development, technology advisory services, and more. SenecaGlobal partners with AWS to provide on-demand access to scalable application servers, storage, databases, content delivery, cache, search, and other applicationservices that make it easier to build and run apps that deliver an ideal customer experience.

SenecaGlobal encompasses a team of world-class information technologists across industries,ensuring that they provide clients with a strong competitive edge. By employing the latest qualityassurance testing procedures, the team confirms all quality standards are met prior to going to market.

ConclusionWhy AWS?

Sources1. https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/?nc2=h_ql_sol_use_ms2. https://www.statista.com/study/38170/mobile-internet-usage-in-the-united-states-statista-dossier/ 3. https://lvivity.com/mobile-app-statistics-for-20194. https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/console/faqs/5. https://www.statista.com/statistics/500630/worldwide-mobile-and-multichannel-application-testing-challenges/ 6. https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/?nc2=h_ql_sol_use_ms7. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/05/who-uses-mobile-payments8. https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/?nc2=h_ql_sol_use_ms9. https://cloudcomputingtechnologies.com/where-is-the-real-cost-savings-in-cloud-computing/10. https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/?nc2=h_ql_sol_use_ms11. https://pages.awscloud.com/Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-for-Infrastructure-as-a-Service-Worldwide.html