With many companies seeking to expand their online presence, Backend as a Service (Baas) has emerged as an option for tech companies looking to manage the growing demand in this rapidly changing environment.
BaaS allows to speed up development and remain ahead of the competition
In today’s environment, technology solutions are a necessity. With most companies looking to expand their online presence, tech companies are facing the new challenge of managing a large amount of projects in a rapidly changing environment.
An example might be with the need to develop 10 different applications. This would mean that each application would need functionalities like login capabilities, data storage, and notifications. Creating a backend service is a lengthy process in terms of time and effort. Instead of creating 10 login implementations, 10 data storage implementations and 10 notification services, there is the option of consuming a backend as a service (BaaS) to handle those features. This means separating a chunk of the work to speed up development to allow for faster and better delivery of products, ensuring that internal and external clients remain ahead of the competition.
The beauty of BaaS is that, once it has been set up, your software developers can focus their efforts on tasks which add value to customers, for example, user interface and client-side logic that would be connected to the backend’s APIs. User experience is a crucial aspect of any online presence - it is your direct communication with clients. Having a custom, easy-to-use, professional-looking build on the front-end will positively impact the strength of your offering. At the end of a project, the most visibility and appreciation is at the frontend, although the bulk of the work done is at the backend.
How is BaaS used?
BaaS can be set up to handle all services required. In addition to those mentioned earlier, BaaS can also be set up to handle popular features like cloud integrations, social network integrations, geolocation services, logging, reporting and file management. It can also handle important structures such as hosting, frameworks, secure setups and GDPR compliance, among others.Setting up the backend is a lengthy task if developed in-house and much simpler if outsourced. The decision for or against outsourcing would depend on the unique situation of the company. Building one’s own BaaS can help keep control of changes to the backend and avoid being trapped in vendors’ service offerings and costings. Building it in-house also means increased flexibility and customisation.
Alternatively, outsourcing BaaS construction to one of the many companies that offer it could also be an interesting option. Probably one of the strongest arguments in favour of outsourcing is the potential cost-savings on hosting, security, compliance teams, system architect, database administrators, and back-end developers. If resources are limited with many projects in the pipeline, outsourcing BaaS construction could be what keeps your wheels turning and your clients happy. This may also be the better path to take if you are developing a single application and the above mentioned features prove to be unfeasible to custom build for a single project. Outsourcing your backend could offer you a quicker return on your investment as well as a quicker entry to the market.
Other variations of service offerings
Other variations of these types of service offerings are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) would be the basic level and would aim to replace hardware such as storage and data management systems. One example is Amazon Web Service (AWS). On the other hand, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a service aimed at providing tools to streamline deployments, load balancing, and testing. Software as a Service (SaaS) then aims to cater for a specific task like Slack and their chat service. Finally, Backend as a Service (BaaS) is a collation of all the above and covers all functions.
Conclusion
At Deloitte Digital, our team has experience with various BaaS platforms such as Firebase, Backendless and Back4App that include the above mentioned features and more.
For more information, please contact our team.
