As per a study, in 2013, 17.4 % of global web traffic comes through mobile devices, a 6% increase from 2012. Hence it would be safe to assume that there would be many IaaS supported applications which are accessed through mobile devices. The two major IaaS providers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure both offer specific guidance to mobile developers looking to leverage their services for mobile application development.
Features offered for mobile development on AWS
- AWS SDKs for iOS and Android
- AWS is platform agnostic. SDKs are available for backend platforms like Java, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, .Net etc
- Backup, share and retrieve app files using Amazon S3. The inbuilt transfer managers in the SDKs simplify cloud storage
- Mobile Push, available through Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) allows for cost- effective push notifications across smart devices
- Secure mobile app access to AWS resources through inbuilt identity and Access Management, integrating Amazon, Facebook or Google sign-ins
- AWS SDK for Java has an optional add-on to tap on location data for your mobile app
- Amazon DynamoDB is a fast fully managed No SQL database to store and retrieve app data. Access controls secures user data within a single table and allows for private data storage directly from the application
Mobile development on Azure
- A hybrid consistency allows for the same VM and management tools to manage the Azure environment and on-premise
- Built in Auto-scale features enables dynamically scaling to meet mobile application needs
- Employ the full power of SQL Server and Hadoop clusters to analyze data
- Azure mobile services allows for business logic to be run on the servers and scheduling of backend jobs
- User identification and scripts to authorize users to access specific data associated with their user ID values
- Custom APIs for periodic notifications
Why did we pick these two IaaS providers?
They have a clear page dedicated to mobile development. Most common doubts which come to a developer’s mind has been addressed, and supported by documentation and tutorials.
Going ahead, many customers looking to provide mobile apps for their services will look for a mobile development framework from IaaS providers as well. Having a common development platform would keep management of infrastructure simpler. Mobility will also play a big role for the new generation. Staying connected is one of the key aspects of the cloud, hence working towards weaving in mobility and IAAS is a sure future trend.
