App Development Consultants India

Security in Cloud

Since it caught on, any application built is build to leverage the cloud – more than 70% of all business, according to CSA. Makes you wonder if there is any other kind of IT platform and how we ever managed without it.

Cloud doesn’t just offer the cost and management benefits but gives the freedom to build ‘the best possible’ application – and why not? On a traditional IT infra you have to accommodate a certain amount of traffic and hence distribute your resources in the order of importance. But no more.

Applications which used to be server based designed to be monolithic are now cloud based ensemble Eco-spheres having many moving parts and interconnected services. Which is great news. I mean, we are only doing this in our pursuit to build applications which bring out great user experience. We are now building apps which are highly specialized, ever more complex and intricate.

On the flip side, it isn’t just the cloud technologies that have gotten better over the years. Threat to application and data security on and off cloud has increased just as well.

Most cloud service providers offer security of the cloud i.e your provisioned IT infrastructure is as safe as having it in-house. This doesn’t mean that an application deployed in the cloud is inherently living in a enterprise class security model. It is up to the architect and the developers to see to it and that the best practices are implemented in to the system. Security of the cloud is only as good as the developer using it to provide security in the cloud.

Some of the common data security threats to an application are breaches through hijacked accounts, Malware injection, or even a disgruntled employee, MITM and DOS service disruption attacks.

For the most part breaches occur due to lack of foresight or technical shortcomings and consequently lack of mitigative methods built into the architecture and IT management.

Its a good idea to think about risk assessments, security requirements, regulatory and compliance requirements and data disaster recovery strategies in addition to fault tolerant and scaling policy prior to sketching out application architecture.

Data encryption – in flight, at rest, SSL authentication and authorization, Access control, Distributed service and content delivery to mitigate any single point of failures – are few of the aspects to be taken in to consideration.

Securing third party API connections is just as important. The amount of data exchanged and possible nodes of data breach, increase with the number of API services used. The way the api communicates with the application needs to be secure with out vulnerabilities.

A good security model forms an application’s fortress. Security should be a concern for application of any size and should take precedence right from App specifications rather than as an after thought.

A good start would be with Murphy’s law in mind.

Having such specifications makes it easy to choose the proper development framework, supported services, third-party providers and deployment environment that enforce the over all security.

August 11, 2017 Featured, Trends No comments yet
Aws Application Development Services India

Technology Trends 2017

Technology has always spearheaded change in businesses. Be it the way they work, think market or innovate. So much so that it has often necessary for businesses to pay attention and take notes. Technology empowers and facilitates doing more – easily. Businesses have to adapt and adjust their course to available technologies to gain an edge over the competition.

2016 ended with buzz words like IoT, Serverless Architecture, AI, m-commerce etc. Here’s some more description about what they are and what to expect from them in the year to come.

Going mobile

Mobile applications are set to see a good leap in tech and usability. We are currently using our mobile phones about 250 times a day. Younger groups use it pretty much every other minute. Device makers and service providers are pouring in tech to make a cutting edge for them selves with features like supercharged application services like the Google AMP, APP streaming services and increased app integrity and security. Numerous studies have shown that a faster better served application is more likely to have more view-ability and higher CTR.

Very thing mobile – from Marketing, sales to customer service. Integrated web and mobile applications are increasingly becoming tools of customer engagement, retention and brand establishment rather than targets of sales process. Mobile Applications in specific give the ability to deliver content – many a times personalised and targeted to the user directly which makes it invaluable to any marketing process. Especially in the B2C industries.

M-commerce.

This is particularly important as the portion of mobile based eCommerce far exceeds other platforms. These days ‘Wallets’ like Google Wallet and Apple Pay are favoured over Cards. If you are into e-commerce be sure to be into M-commerce.

Hybrid Applications

You may already know about hybrid applications based on Cordova framework. Native applications are giving way to hybrids and packaged web applications – less than 10% of new apps created are native code. This trend will continue despite Native code frameworks -swift and ADK improving their tool-kits to increase developer productivity. It would be difficult to stay ahead of Apache. Their developer community is vast and very active. What started as a support for simple web pages to run as mobile applications has evolved in to a full fledged eco-system.

The importance of User experience and interface has come to decide application’s success. Users tolerance to bugs and issues in a released applications is getting down to zero. There are just so many contenders out there the users can try that they just move on. No second chance. You’d do the same.

More and more, expectations from UI is bordering the lines of AI. Interfaces have become more proactive, engaging and more than just drawing on activity history. This is a form both the users and businesses have come to push for as the user attention span and engagement time on the application, web or mobile, keeps decreasing. Dynamic UIs are aimed to yield an action or complete the required task quickly.

A.I

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM have started offering services in AI section – i.e analytics, cognitive interfaces, machine learning. Increase in IoT is going to add fuel to fire. One such trend is Location based service – Analytics on user location and tailored offers provided by applications like Apple iBeacon and Google Beacon.

We should see a rise in data analysis and information building trend as tech is becoming commonly available for non enterprise applications.

VR & AR

Device makers are keen to push Virtual and augmented Reality in to budget smart phones . We should expect to see more and more applications and games exploiting this.

IoT

The usage of wearable devices has been increasing at a steady 20% every year and is expected to cross more than 200 Million units by 2020. All the major hardware manufacturers have some sort of wearable tech offerings. And that’s just half the story. More and more devices in general are going to be connected to the internet. The numbers are increasing exponentially and are expected to exceed 50 Billion by 2020. This is great news for mobile apps as IoT devices are primarily controlled by smartphones.

Wearable devices along with IOT is the biggest growing market to look out for.

You can read more about IoT here.

Server-Less

One of the most promising paradigms of software architecture and development of 2017 is the Server-less Applications. What this is that computing service providers have begun to offer abstracted services which would typically form the base for most server application features.

This entails developers have a different approach to design and architecture of the application to fit in to the server-less architecture.

Read More about Server-less Architecture.

Service Based industries

Businesses with highly targeted and niche client base are expected to increase. Deep intensive service rather than wide extensive. This makes for a better more specialised marketing and customer engagement strategy as well.

Automation Based service.

Internal automation is among the key focus are in most businesses. By utilising automation, businesses can reduce the amount of manual labour required from their employees and either eliminate that payroll expense or allow their employees to do tasks that are less mundane.

Though it has been around for decades, automation typically was restricted to companies which could afford the top names of IT Development consultancies. But emerging technologies and platforms have placed it within reach of most small and medium businesses.

Artificial intelligence is making its way in to businesses as a common tool be it marketing, customer engagement,customer data capture and data mining. More data is always welcome. It leads to more through analysis and knowledge building and finally better customer service.

IoT has to top the list of most interesting business sector to come up in 2017. There are more number of startups and more funding to this sector than with any other.

bugs and issues in a released applications is getting down to zero. There are just so many contenders out there the users can try that they just move on. No second chance. You’d do the same.

More awesome stuff to come..

March 31, 2017 Featured, Trends 1 comment
Aws Application Development Services India

Marketing Trends in 2017

2016 saw some good changes to the landscape of small and medium businesses. Needless to say the market space is dynamic and effected by constantly evolving technologies. Here’s what 2017 has to offer for you.

Service Based industries

Businesses with highly targeted and niche client base are expected to increase. Deep intensive service rather than wide extensive. This makes for a better more specialised marketing and customer engagement strategy as well.

Automation Based service.

Internal automation is among the key focus are in most businesses. By utilising automation, businesses can reduce the amount of manual labour required from their employees and either eliminate that payroll expense or allow their employees to do tasks that are less mundane.

Though it has been around for decades, automation typically was restricted to companies which could afford the top names of IT Development consultancies. But emerging technologies and platforms have placed it within reach of most small and medium businesses.

Artificial intelligence is making its way in to businesses as a common tool be it marketing, customer engagement,customer data capture and data mining. More data is always welcome. It leads to more through analysis and knowledge building and finally better customer service.

IoT has to top the list of most interesting business sector to come up in 2017. There are more number of startups and more funding to this sector than with any other.

Marketing

Social media Marketing is set to increase its share of marketing. with that the competition among businesses  to catch the users attention is growing intense and as a result Paid advertising in Social platforms is getting more expensive.

The way platforms publish organic content is due for an upgrade. Facebook has already done this. According to few studies done, your content may reach about 20% of your followers. This is done partly to reduce the followers being bombarded with promotional material and partly (well.. mostly)to promote businesses to opt for paid advertisements.

The work around for that would be a more targeted advertising, paid or otherwise. Also, as a trend in general, users are spending more and more time on mobile devices. Businesses need to develop strategies for multiple streams of content and promotions for specific focus groups and specific to devices.

Content based marketing has been a part of Social marketing for the past few years and will be increasingly so in 2017. Content based video marketing has been gaining momentum as an easy and readily available content for younger groups. Businesses cannot afford to ignore video content as it gives them an edge over competition and more access to client base.

Most businesses have been focusing on Social media that SEO has taken a back seat in their marketing strategy. Google typically keeps changing the way it ranks web pages but with addition of AI learning, google may include more factors like usability and user experience. (Penguin 4.0 has been a game changer is page ranking algorithms and SEO.) For marketeers with SEO holds tangible profit with the sequential updates released.

More focus on Millennials. The generation than grew up in the internet is entering the workforce and coming of age. As baby boomers grow older, millennials are becoming a more important consumer demographic that businesses will have to cater to. They currently represent 37% of online market and growing. There have been good number of studies on this group to suggest their buying and decision making process are influenced extensively by price and peer recommendations on social sites. Quick and fast service seem to be the requirements of this group often willing to pay premium for such service.

Technology

Very thing mobile – from Marketing, sales to customer service. Integrated web and mobile applications are increasingly becoming tools of customer engagement, retention and brand establishment rather than targets of sales process. Mobile Applications in specific give the ability to deliver content – many a times personalised and targeted to the user directly which makes it invaluable to any marketing process. Especially in the B2C industries.

Mobile applications are set to see a good leap in tech and usability. We are currently using our mobile phones about 250 times a day. Younger groups use it pretty much every other minute. Device makers and service providers are pouring in tech to make a cutting edge for them selves with features like supercharged application services like the Google AMP, APP streaming services and increased app integrity and security. Numerous studies have shown that a faster better served application is more likely to have more view-ability and higher CTR.

This is particularly important as the portion of mobile based eCommerce far exceeds other platforms. These days ‘Wallets’ like Google Wallet and Apple Pay are favoured over Cards. If you are into e-commerce be sure to be into M-commerce.

The importance of User experience and interface has come to decide your application’s fate. Users tolerance to bugs and issues in a released applications is getting down to zero. There are just so many contenders out there the users can try that they just move on. No second chance. You’d do the same.

More awesome stuff to join

March 31, 2017 Featured, Trends No comments yet