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- What is a mobile backend as a service?
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By Faiza Khalid
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1 year of experience
Faiza is a CIS engineer with a keen interest in software development, AI research, and technology writing.
Interested in knowing what is a mobile backend as a service and how MBaaS platforms help in mobile application development?
In this article, we will discuss the same in detail. Let’s start.
What is an MBaaS?
A mobile app will use the following backend resources:
- Infrastructure;
- Storage;
- Social network APIs;
- Various other APIs as the nature of the app dictates.
Imagine a scenario where you and other entrepreneurs repeatedly spend time developing backend programs to consume these resources. Also factor in the time required to configure a server, networking, file storage, and similar resources every time from scratch for your mobile app.
You will lose valuable time, and your competitors will race ahead of you, for they aren’t spending that time in the development of their own backend infrastructure. Your competitors will gain the ‘Fast Mover advantage’.
An MBaaS platform saves you this backend development time, so you can focus on your frontend UI/UX and your business logic. It’s a ready-made infrastructure on the Cloud, which enables you and similar entrepreneurs and developers to access backend resources.
Read more about MBaaS platforms in “What, When, and Why MBaaS?”.
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An MBaaS platform gives you ready access to Cloud storage, various APIs, and other mobile resources. Your mobile app just needs to consume these and deliver the value to your customers via a front-end. You don’t forfeit the ‘Fast Mover Advantage’.
Benefits of an MBaaS
To understand why an MBaaS matters, you need to understand the paradigm shift mobile apps have brought in. Remember what Drucker had said about the importance of marketing?
It’s the marketing of your business that mobile apps have changed forever. If you are launching a business trying to sell to customers all over the world, earlier you couldn’t compete without a website. While you still need a website, for such a business you can no longer market your product or service now if you don’t have a mobile app.
Businesses understand it and are racing against time to market their products or services through their mobile app. Read about it in “Marketing Through The Small Screen: The Growing Shift to Mobile App Culture”.
It’s an absolute priority for you to launch your mobile app fast, and the app must function to a satisfactory level. However, working on your mobile backend infrastructure from the ground up is a nightmare, and you will certainly experience a delay in launching your mobile app.
The benefits of an MBaaS lie in simplifying this backend development for you. For example:
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- If you were to work your backend from the ground up, you would need to integrate multiple proprietary systems. Data formats are of a varied range, and the volume is high, and you need to manage this. An MBaaS does all of these for you.
- Now consider the range of mobile platforms and various devices that your mobile app must work on seamlessly. You can see the complexity. An MBaaS takes care of it for you.
- You can leave your user management to MBaaS.
- Storage of persistent data is another area where an MBaaS does all the heavy-lifting, so you don’t have to.
- You don’t have to code services for push notifications, your MBaaS will take care of it.
- Your MBaaS also takes care of providing geolocation according to the need of your business.
- An MBaaS takes care of the entire API management and your app only consumes services. You don’t need to code integrations at your end. This is a significant advantage, since it saves precious time for your programmers.
- Modern mobile apps rely heavily on microservices architecture. This architectural approach allows for building smaller programs for different services instead of a giant program. This helps because typically different services have different demand profiles. The microservices architecture enables scaling for different services. Read about the benefit of this architectural approach in “Large Enterprise Java Projects Architecture”. An MBaaS uses the microservices architecture, and you can reap its’ benefits if you use an MBaaS.
- For start-ups, creating dedicated infrastructure for their mobile app is hard. An MBaaS with its’ Cloud-based model removes this hurdle for them.
You surely can build all of these yourself. However, doing so diverts your focus away from delivering value to your global customers. An MBaaS frees you up for your crucial front-end design and development.
Remember that your mobile developers also enjoy working on the front-end, due to the enormous creative potential it offers. Hence, you will also have a happy and productive team when you let an MBaaS provider take care of your mobile app backend.
Read more about the advantages of MBaaS in “The benefits of MBaaS and a mobile app architecture”.
Looking forward to using a Mobile Backend as a Service?
MBaaS is an extremely useful development tool available today. Just like a visual app development platform that enables efficient app development without much coding skills, MBaaS make the work easier for developers creating customized mobile apps.
You can easily select a mobile backend as a service provider for business processes from a number of MBaaS providers available like Amazon Web Sevices for mobile, Apple CloudKit, Goole Firebase, etc.
Read our article here on how to select a mobile backend as a service and a comparison of different mobile backend as service providers.
If you need professional help in making the right MBaaS platform choice for your business according to your specific technical mobile app development needs, then partnering with an experienced software development company will help you significantly.
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One such option is DevTeam.Space. Its field-expert software developers community has experience in working with multiple mobile-backend-as-a-service solutions and building market-competitive software solutions with a minimum time to market.
You can easily partner with these mobile and web developers by sending your mobile app specifications via this quick form. One of our account managers will get back to you instantly for discussing more app project details.
Frequently Asked Questions on Mobile Backend as a Service
Mobile backend as a service is a cloud computing platform that provides all the mobile backend resources such as networking, file storage, servers, data storage, and APIs for features like user authentication, payment gateways, push notifications, etc. on the cloud. Several modern MBaaS providers also provide app store optimization, customer engagement, and IoT data management capabilities.
Mobile-backend-as-a-service providers store and manage all the backend computing resources on the cloud while your mobile app developers work on the software application itself. MBaaS gives developers more time to focus on the UX/UI and the business logic of their mobile applications. It offers efficiency in both the development process and mobile application performance management.
The global MBaaS market is growing. Google Firebase, Kinvey (now integrated with several existing Progress tools), Amazon AWS, etc. are popular MBaaS solutions with a great userbase in software development circles. These leading MBaaS tool providers have detailed technical documentation on their websites.
Alexey Semeney
Founder of DevTeam.Space
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Alexey is the founder of DevTeam.Space. He is award nominee among TOP 26 mentors of FI's 'Global Startup Mentor Awards'.
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