Accelerate Enterprise Mobility with MBaaS Leveraging Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) for an effective mobile strategy in your enterprise.

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1 Accelerate Enterprise Mobility with MBaaS Leveraging Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) for an effective mobile strategy in your enterprise. Roshan Kulkarni and Ankur Mehta Enterprise mobility has witnessed exponential growth and MBaaS platforms have become a key component for most enterprise mobility solutions today. In this paper we look at the key MBaaS features and the value of MBaaS platforms for your enterprise. We also offer an evaluation checklist to help you Introduction Enterprises that invest in a mobility roadmap are faced with some interesting challenges today: (a) How do we accelerate the development and roll-out of our mobility solutions? (b) How do we achieve the desired level of management controls and visibility for deployed solutions? (c) How do we optimize the Infrastructure and SysOps costs for deployed mobility solutions? pick the right MBaaS provider for your enterprise s needs. A Mindstix Labs Publication 1

2 (d) How do we effectively leverage our legacy technology investments into the new mobility roadmap? (e) How do we create a coherent and consistent architecture across all our mobile apps? Several mobile middleware platforms have evolved over the past few years to address these challenges and accelerate your mobility journey. Such middleware platforms are termed as MBaaS (Mobile Backend as a Service) or MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Applications Platforms). They are typically multi-tenant, cloud-based, PaaS providers; Some of them can even run on private cloud or hybrid cloud infrastructures within your enterprise. In this white paper, we take a deeper look at the core capabilities and features of MBaaS platforms and provide detailed guidelines to chose the right MBaaS provider to fit your needs. Legacy Enterprise Services Most enterprise mobility solutions need to use legacy enterprise services in order to access existing business data and workflows. Consider the example of a B2B Commerce Mobile App that allows customers to place orders. Such an App will need to: (a) Verify stock-availability against an Inventory System, (b) Fetch customer address information from a CRM System, (c) Place an order into an Order Fulfillment System, and finally, (d) Generate an invoice in the Accounts Receivables System. Completing the entire business workflow via a mobile App would involve calling all these legacy systems (or services) in a specific sequence, or feeding the results obtained from one service call into the next service - a process often called as Service Orchestration. A Mindstix Labs Publication 2

3 Figure 1: Service Orchestration with MBaaS Platforms Service Orchestration MBaaS platforms offer the ability to invoke and orchestrate multiple backend enterprise services. As a developer, you write code to perform this service orchestration and deploy it onto the MBaaS Cloud. Some MBaaS platforms also offer declarative ways to define how my services should be orchestrated - this reduces the extent of coding needed for service orchestration. Since the intelligence to orchestrate complex services gets encapsulated within the MBaaS itself, you can now expose a simpler REST interface to all your mobile clients. The mobile client no longer directly interacts with complex enterprise systems - making the client App lightweight and simpler to build. Many MBaaS platforms also offer capabilities to invoke services asynchronously (Non Blocking IO) thus improving the data delivery performance for your mobile clients. Normalize Heterogeneous Data Enterprise systems have been built over the past few decades using legacy software and heterogeneous technology stacks. As a result of this, the backend data sources in an enterprise often exist in varied A Mindstix Labs Publication 3

4 formats and require heterogeneous protocols, and authentication schemes to access that data. Heterogeneous Legacy Enterprise Data Data Access Protocols TCP, HTTP, REST, RPC, RMI, ODBC, JDBC, NFS, Flat Files, FTP. Data Formats XML, SOAP, JSON, CSV, Relational DB, RSS, Semi-structured. Auth Schemes No Auth, Basic HTTP Auth, SAML, OAuth, NTLM, Cert Based Auth, Proprietary Auth. Technology Stacks Enterprise Java, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Force.com etc. MBaaS platforms offers the ability to massage and normalize heterogeneous data sources into a single homogeneous data format (typically, JSON). By abstracting heterogeneous sources into a common data format (JSON), your mobile Apps no longer deal with multiple legacy data formats, authentications schemes, or access protocols. This makes the architecture of your mobile apps simpler and coherent. Figure 2: Normalizing Heterogeneous Data Formats A Mindstix Labs Publication 4

5 Managing Service Granularity The granularity of legacy services may not be the right-fit for direct consumption by mobile clients today. The service payloads could be too large (coarse-grained services) or too sparse (fine-grained services). Large payloads would mean: (a) Frequent drops and timeouts on your mobile carrier network, (b) High response latencies from the backend, (c) Unwanted or unnecessary data reaching the mobile client, (d) Excessive CPU and memory overhead in mobile clients. Small payloads could mean: Too many HTTP round-trips from mobile client to fetch the required data or to complete the required business transaction (and hence a slower App). By encapsulating the underlying business services, MBaaS offers the ability to manage the granularity of services exposed to your mobile clients. MBaaS can consolidate responses from multiple fine-grained services, or filter data from a coarse-grained service to expose just the right sized service interface for mobile consumption. Backend Evolution Enterprise systems and services constantly evolve over time: Service interfaces get redefined to meet the evolving needs of your business. Old services get deprecated or retired; New information systems get deployed to replace legacy ones. MBaaS acts a loose-coupling between the enterprise backend and your mobile Apps. If enterprise systems evolve or services interfaces change, the orchestration rules can be modified within the MBaaS itself without having to re-publish a new App to all your users every time. A Mindstix Labs Publication 5

6 MBaaS And Enterprise Services Service Orchestration Orchestrate Multiple Enterprise Services as per Mobile Requirements. Data Normalization Normalize heterogeneous data sources and data formats into standard REST-JSON for mobile consumption. Service Granularity Tune the granularity of the exposed services to fit mobile requirements. Service Security Don t directly expose internal services to the public Internet. Enforce additional security controls and audits. Backend Evolution Minimize the impact of backend service & software evolution on your mobile clients. Multiple App Versions Support multiple REST API versions for multiple versions of mobile client Apps. Mobile API Versioning Mobile Apps themselves evolve over time with new features and capabilities every few months. Often multiple versions of an App exists across your user s devices (since not all users upgrade at once) and each App version is tied to specific REST APIs. MBaaS platforms offer versioning capabilities for REST APIs that are exposed to your mobile clients. This enables multiple App versions to thrive in production at the same time, and the latest App versions can be incrementally rolled out to your users. Securing Enterprise Boundaries MBaaS acts as an added layer of security in front of legacy enterprise services so that internal services do not have to be directly exposed to the public Internet. Moreover, MBaaS Platforms offer other security aspects such as: (a) A mobile-specific authentication layer, (b) SSO capabilities for Apps, and (c) Session filters for all real-time mobile traffic. Audit Trail and Compliances MBaaS can be leveraged to capture a trail of all chatter between mobile clients and the enterprise backend. An enterprise can keep a track of which user accessed what enterprise data at what time via which mobile App. This may be necessary for compliance and policy requirements in your enterprise. Runtime for Mobile Workflows The mobile first way of doing things often involves disruptive workflows and it is not always a mirror of legacy business flows. For example, if a user has added items to her shopping cart, but has not checked out for the past few days, we may want to send a push notification to that user. A Mindstix Labs Publication 6

7 This requires additional business logic to be implemented in the backend which may not exist in your legacy system. MBaaS platforms provide a runtime environment for such additional mobile-specific business logic and triggers. Data Synchronization Offline access is a common requirement for mobile Apps today. This requires the intelligence to facilitate a two way data sync between mobile clients and backend data sources. Many MBaaS platforms offer APIs to facilitate such a two-way data sync. This includes: (a) Prefetching specific data objects to your mobile client, (b) Identifying stale objects on the client and automatically refreshing those from the backend, (c) Identifying dirty or modified objects on the client, (d) Performing a two-way data interchange and merge of the client s data with the backend, (e) Elegantly handling merge conflicts in the data objects. In most platforms this sync can be performed either automatically or ondemand by the user. Last Mile Caching MBaaS platforms also offer a last-mile caching layer for your mobile Apps. This is typically a cluster of an in-memory cache nodes (products such as Redis are commonly used by MBaaS providers for this purpose). Slow-moving data or master data, can be cached in the MBaaS cache to avoid deeper backend calls to your enterprise services each time. Data that is common across multiple logged-in mobile users can also be cached here. Mobile CDN and File Storage Some MBaaS platforms offer a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for binary content required by your mobile Apps - Images, Videos, Static Resources, Documents. A Mindstix Labs Publication 7

8 This helps scale-out your mobile deployment without straining the enterprise backend infrastructure. This can also act as a scalable cloud-based file storage for content uploaded by mobile users. Performance and Scale By using last-mile caching, offline and sync capabilities, and mobile CDNs, the API calls from mobile clients avoid going deeper into the enterprise stack. This reduces the response latencies when clients attempt to fetch data and results in a better mobile App performance. This also reduces the strain on your legacy enterprise infrastructure and helps scale-out your mobile Apps to millions of users by leveraging the scalability of the MBaaS cloud platforms. Figure 3: MBaaS Platform Architecture A Mindstix Labs Publication 8

9 Key MBaaS Benefits Enterprise IT Teams Cohesive Mobile Architecture and Streamlined Dev Ops Enterprise CISO Teams Better Enterprise Security and Compliance Business Teams Accelerated time to Market on Mobility Initiatives Finance Teams Cost Effective Mobile Strategy by Leveraging the Cloud Mobile Users Higher User Engagement and Better Performance Mobile Analytics In-app analytics is a powerful way to understand user behavior and to tune your App s user experience. Some MBaaS platforms offer mobile analytics capabilities including a Client SDK, Analytics Engine and a Dashboard. They also offer visibility into to the number and velocity of REST API calls being made by your mobile clients. Enterprise Software Connectors Many MBaaS platforms offer baked-in connectors to specific enterprise software such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft CRM, SFDC etc. Instead of using generic SOAP or REST interfaces for backend integration, such product-specific connectors help accelerate the development of mobility solutions in your enterprise and help leverage the features of your legacy software better. User Engagement Features Push notifications are an important way to drive mobile user engagement. Some MBaaS platforms offer APIs to trigger push notifications (these are typically wrappers on top of APNS or GCM). This eliminates the need to have separate integrations with APNS or GCM or to leverage other third party providers for this purpose. Cloud Object Store Mobile Apps often require a structured data storage for some Appspecific data: Information such as mobile user profiles, mobilespecific user preferences, persistent mobile user sessions, user stats etc. Such a store may not exist in your legacy enterprise infrastructure, so some MBaaS platforms provide a cloud-based store for JSON objects along with a client API to access this object store. This is A Mindstix Labs Publication 9

10 typically a scalable NoSQL database platform that is managed by your MBaaS provider. Social Connectors Mobile Apps targeted towards your customers, employees or partners often have social media integration as a critical requirement in the App. MBaaS platforms offer APIs to easily integrate various social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In). This lets your mobile users to perform a Single Sign On (SSO) into your App using their social avatars, or share content from your mobile App to social platforms. Improved SysOps Cadence Most MBaaS platforms directly integrate with your source code repository and offer the ability to push latest code from there to multiple MBaaS runtime environments with a single click (Say, to Dev, Stage, QA, Production environments of the MBaaS runtime). This eliminates downtime when upgrading your middleware code. Most platforms also provide a self-service management portal (dashboard) to monitor the middleware, including information about the provisioned capacity, utilized capacity, and the overall health of the run-time. This eases the efforts on your DevOps / SysOps teams and brings a mature cadence. Build Farm Some MBaaS platforms offer build farms which can create packaged builds for your native or hybrid Apps (Including ios, Android and Windows Mobile platforms). They can manage your AppStore signing keys and publish the signed builds directly to the AppStore or Marketplace. A Mindstix Labs Publication 10

11 This helps streamline your build process and you no longer have to rely on individual developer machines to perform production builds for your enterprise Apps. The MBaaS Market Today Several MBaaS providers exist in the market today - these include FeedHenry, Kinvey, Parse, Appcelerator Cloud Services, and DreamFactory. While many of them offer similar baseline capabilities, these platforms are constantly evolving with new, competitive features being added rapidly. We recommend that you use the evaluation checklist provided below to help you make the right choice of an MBaaS provider that best fits your enterprise. A Mindstix Labs Publication 11

12 MBaaS Evaluation Checklist MBaaS Feature Evaluation Generic Integration Capabilities A Pluggable Architecture for Backend Data Sources Declarative Service Orchestration HTTP Backend Connector SOAP Backend Connector REST-JSON Backend Connector Connectors for Other Data Formats (CSV) Connectors for Relational Databases Connectors for No-SQL Databases Runtime for Custom Business Logic and Custom Orchestration Security Capabilities Supported Auth Schemes for Backends (SAML, NTML, OAuth) Supported Auth Schemes for Mobile Clients SSO Capabilities for Mobile Clients Session Filters for Mobile Traffic Audit Logs for Mobile Traffic Data and Cache Capabilities Persistent Cloud Object Store / NoSQL Store Two Way Object Sync Offline Data Persistence Scalable Cloud Cache Fine-grained Cache Controls for Expiry and Eviction Mobile CDN and File Storage User Engagement Features A Mindstix Labs Publication 12

13 Push Notification APIs Social Integration APIs Integration APIs SMS Integration APIs MBaaS Feature Evaluation Other Features Client SDK for Easier Integration with MBaaS Analytics APIs Client Crash Reporting Build Farm for Mobile Apps Platform Maturity Public Cloud Offering Hybrid Cloud Offering Features in the Self Service Portal Service SLAs / Managed Service Performance SLAs and Metrics Platform Scalability Pricing Model A Mindstix Labs Publication 13

14 About the Authors Roshan Kulkarni Roshan Kulkarni is the Founder and CEO at Mindstix Software Labs. He has a master s degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with over 10+ years of product leadership experience. Since its inception, Mindstix Labs has evolved under his leadership to become a creative home to 100+ software craftsmen, product designers and code ninjas. Ankur Mehta Ankur Mehta has an engineering degree in Computer Science with over 10+ years of global delivery experience. He has been part of the Mindstix journey since it s inception and has played a key role in scaling our product engineering practice. Prior to Mindstix Labs, Ankur led global technology teams at several Silicon Valley startups as well as enterprises such as BNP, Tata Telematics, and Capgemini Consulting. About Mindstix Labs Beautiful Software. Purpose-built for your Enterprise. Mindstix Software Labs was founded in 2009 with a vision to deliver high-performance product engineering services to enterprises across the globe. Our primary areas of work include Mobility, Cloud Engineering, Embedded & IoT Systems, and User Experience Design. With an impressive line-up of customers including Fortune 500 Enterprises and leading Silicon Valley startups, Mindstix Labs has sustained a 100% growth year-on-year. Immaculate product design, agile cadence, and intense dog-fooding are what make us a strong engineering-partner today. A Mindstix Labs Publication 14