It’s well understood that cloud computing plays a significant part in most new app deployments. What is not as well understood is the impact that cloud-based tools have on app development processes. Leading app development firms that know how to coordinate between cloud development tools are increasing the speed of the development process, and improving the reliability of their apps all while reducing costs.
The end result—high level savings and performance is being passed along to business customers. The process of building an app has become much easier, faster and cost effective with the growing array of cloud based development tools. So, how is it cloud computing tools are saving time and money?
1. Simple Registration and Authentication
AWS Cognito, Azure Active Directory, Google Firebase
Registration and Authentication functions are required in most every new application today and these major cloud service providers make it easy to use their platform in place of building your own. All of these providers offer a ‘Free Tier’ that with this free service included. They can be used for free until the app hits a certain level of production usage. Most of these service providers also offer a 30-day free trial account.
2. Fast and Easy Backend Analytics
Google Analytics for Firebase
Google Firebase is the market leader in providing backend analytics tools that are useful for application development. Google Analytics for Firebase helps you understand how people use your iOS or Android app. The SDK automatically captures a number of events and user properties, and even allows you to define your own custom events for measuring user interactions that matter to your business. As soon as data is captured, it becomes available in the Firebase console dashboard. This dashboard provides detailed insights about your data — from summary data such as active users and demographics, to more detailed data defining how users use application features.
3. Notification and Messaging Services
Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, Amazon Simple Notification Service, Azure Notification Hub
Major cloud service providers offer information and messaging services at no extra cost. You can customize notifications to your desired content, time-zone, and even track conversions. The delivery and response of notifications can also be monitored from one dashboard.
Their messaging services are cost-efficient, time-sensitive, and reliable. You can use them to send targeted messages from your server. These messaging services support Android and iOS devices, as well as web apps.
4. Cheap and convenient storage and backup
AWS S3, Azure/Google Storage
You can get huge storage space at affordable prices from these major cloud service providers. There’s more than enough room to backup data, user photos, and videos for any app freshly getting started. Their cloud storage services facilitate fast downloads and uploads, even ensuring that uploads and downloads pause automatically when mobile connectivity is lost.
5. Serverless Computing
AWS Lambda, Azure Serverless
Cloud computing services are slowly eliminating the need for companies to invest in massive servers for application data storage. AWS Lambda and Azure Serverless are serverless computing services that run your code in response to events and automatically manage the underlying computing resources for you. These services run your code on their cloud compute infrastructure and perform all the administration of the computing resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling.
6. Secure App Testing
Google Firebase
No matter your development efforts, all apps need testing and experimenting before they go to market. Cloud services offer a safe space for testing the strengths and weaknesses of new applications. With them, you can analyze the impact, revenue, and engagement of the changes you make on apps before roll out.
Selecting The Right Cloud Service Providers
The primary cloud service providers on the market are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform. Each of them are working hard to provide a more robust suite of cloud based development tools. Cloud service providers are operating within a very competitive environment. As soon as one provider introduces a popular new tool, their competitors quickly introduce similar services. Each platform understands that the more tools their customers use within their development environment, the harder it is to move to a competing platform. New features are frequently released to keep user satisfaction high.
By utilizing a savvy development partner that has the knowledge and experience to choose the right cloud based development tools, you can save considerable time and money on your next app development project. Not only that, but by eliminating the need to custom code every aspect of the application, you can focus more of your attention on strategic elements of launching an app-based business.