Zahwah Jameel, Author at OnGraph: Top Enterprise Web & Mobile App Development CompanyZahwah Jameel, Author at OnGraph: Top Enterprise Web & Mobile App Development Company
The best way to hit the iOS or Android market is by building your own application with a unique and smart solution approach.
Planning to build a new app that offers a seamless user experience besides its original utility?
In most software development strategies, mobile application development has a major role. According to a report by Statista, the global mobile application revenue is projected to reach $613 billion by 2025.
When building a mobile application, you have two choices for a platform, Android and iOS. While Android has a considerable share in the market, iOS also has a large user base and yields more revenue despite a smaller share.
The Apple store has around 2.2 million applications for iOS users as of 2022, and about 60% of mobile app developers work on the iOS system. Before starting to build a mobile application, there are various key factors to keep in mind, the first and the most important one is hiring an iOS developer.
Since hiring the right professional is a daunting task, this guide will walk you through the best hiring practices and things you should watch out for in an iOS developer.
The Importance of iOS Development for Business
Apple still leads the market because potential clients paying for app services are more for Apple than Android. These clients play one of the most crucial reasons for considering iOS development for business.
Another big reason is that iOS users are more satisfied than Android users. This is why iOS users are the first choice for business apps. No lags, glitches, and smooth customer experience make iOS apps less likely to glitch on apple devices.
Mobile App Development: The Latest Trends
Analyzing the trend and working according to it will increase your app’s reach and potential target users.
Here’s a list of trends booming in 2023
1. 5G
In 2022, tech companies started focusing on incorporating 5G at full scale, and every smartphone user now looks for 5G-enabled devices. Year 2023 is going to further accelerate it.
2. Foldable Devices
The trend of compacting things has started, so developers must focus on their app performance on foldable devices.
3. AR & VR
Web3 is ready to capture the tech market very soon, pushing AR and VR in mobile app development.
4. App Security Gets Primary
Regarding Apple, security is always pushed first; thus, mobile apps should focus more on security than new features.
5. Wearable App Integration
Wearable devices are also getting into the trend, so developers should focus more on the seamless Integration of these wearables with application algorithms.
5 Must Consider Points Before Building an iOS App
Building your iOS application is a smart choice to have complete access to application working, modifications and revenues. But, before building an iOS app from scratch, you must know these five crucial things:
Research on Apple Users
Apple users are way different in terms of requirements and UI/UX needs compared to Android users.
App Must Be Compatible With Various iOS Versions
If you want a good user reach, your app must be compatible with various iOS Versions as various age groups use Apple products.
Social Media Integration
Social Integration is a must because billions of iOS users enjoy at least one social network to connect with friends and the world.
Match Apple’s Speed
Apple is well known for its smooth and undisputed speed. To match this speed, ensure your app works glitch-free in all device types.
Choose The Right Program And Platform
For a perfect user experience, you must build your application on the best app-building platform with the most advanced programming tool.
iOS Developer Role and Responsibilities
iOS developers develop applications compatible with Apple’s iOS operating system. Technically, a good iOS developer is proficient in both complex and (technical skills, including programming and tech tools) soft skills.
iOS developer hard skills
Excellent knowledge of Swift and Objective-C language.
Being able to write clean code. This can only be possible if a developer can:
Understand and edit others’ code.
Understand the requirements and obey the rules of the App Store.
Knows Apple app guidelines.
Ensure UI/UX requirements.
Use MWM, Services, Rx, etc.
Understand C ++.
Understand the concept of object-oriented programming.
Understand HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
Use the Core Data, iOS SDK, APNS, and GCD.
Test applications and fix bugs.
iOS Developer Soft Skills
Spatial Reasoning: Visualizing things in a three-dimensional before implementation.
Self-reliance and Proactivity: Good iOS developers can quickly respond to various tasks simultaneously.
Creativity, Adaptability: Being creative doesn’t just give new ideas but also helps find solutions when things get stuck.
Communication skills: A developer has to communicate with different team members and software engineers.
Stress tolerance: A developer under stress can push the entire team into difficulty; thus, resilience against stress is a crucial skill that iOS developers should have.
Experience
Experience comes with time. In an iOS development project, there are several vital tasks, like requirements definition, formulating development approach, architectural decision-making, testing, review, deployment, etc. A developer gets experience by performing these tasks again and again.
Based on these, a developer’s experience is subdivided into three different levels:
Junior
It determines the beginner’s level and ranges from 0 to 2 years of experience. Junior-level developers work under the direction of more senior colleagues.
Middle
At this level, developers have 2-5 years of experience and can now work on different projects independently with little or no guidance.
Senior
This is a proficient level, and developers at this level have more than five years of experience. They can guide Junior-level developers in more complex-level projects.
Choose Between Hybrid vs. Native Development Before Hiring iOS Developers
Before hiring an iOS developer, you must ensure whether you need a native or hybrid app. A native app gives the best user experience using device-specific hardware features. This is why native apps offer better performance and security.
On the other hand, hybrid apps work with one codebase and can be used on both iOS and Android.
Other Skills iOS Developers Need
Apart from the significant hard and soft skills, there are three other skills that you need to look for in a good iOS app developer.
The developer must know how to work with Xcode, the most popular IDE.
A good iOS developer should know how to use popular APIs like Cocoa Touch, UIKit, etc.
The iOS developers should know in-depth about the “Core Data framework.”
Hybrid iOS development: What skills do you need?
Hybrid iOS development builds applications that function in both Android and iOS. For Hybrid iOS development, a developer must know the popular hybrid development frameworks like React Native or Xamarin. Going with any of the frameworks, a developer learns the following skills:
JavaScript (or TypeScript)
HTML5
CSS
Mobile web optimization techniques
How to structure an application
Platform-specific design and interface conventions
Domain-specific knowledge relevant to the app
APIs
Data structures and access are relevant to the app you’re creating.
Benefits of developing an iOS App
iOS apps are best known for high-end quality and large revenue-generating. There are thousands of clients ready to invest in iOS projects with the ability to meet current business needs and give a return on their investment. Apart from revenue, iOS apps have some other benefits as well:
Enterprise Data Security iOS apps are more secure for enterprise data compared to Android apps.
High-Quality Standards Apple is known for its standard, and every app available on App Store has passed various parameters.
Customer Base Apple’s USP, or the customer base, is one of the prime benefits of iOS application development.
Exemplary User Experience iOS apps support the inherent capabilities of Apple’s iOS to provide the best user experience.
Low Fragmentation and Ease of Testing Apple typically develops just one update on its existing OS every year.
Less Development Time iOS apps take nearly 28% less time than Android apps of similar specifications.
How Much Does it Cost to Hire an App Developer?
Whether you want to develop from scratch or improve an existing application, the cost of hiring an iOS developer depends on various factors. These factors include.
Project Complexity The complexity of the project demands experience, which costs high. However, hiring an experienced iOS developer can deal with complexity, idea, integrations, design, features, and functionality.
Location Of Developer As per the developer’s location, the hiring cost varies.
Type of App development When hiring a developer for a specific application, the cost of hiring the developer can vary substantially.
What are the rates of iOS Developers in Different Countries?
Surprisingly, location plays a crucial role in deciding the rate of iOS developers. For example, in Canada, the rate of mid-level iOS developers is around $95,000. At the same time, a developer at the same level gets $120,000 per year in Australia.
In the US, salaries vary in different states and cities.
For example, in Raleigh, North Carolina, you will pay $88,754 per year for your iOS developer. In New York, the same-level specialist will get $97,084. In LA, the average salary is $104,589.
So let’s dwell upon the discussion about the effect of location and developer experience on iOS developer salary expectations.
How to Hire iOS Developers
Project Description
Before hiring an iOS developer, you must first plan the project upon various parameters and platform support (native or hybrid). Project description refers to a project blueprint that includes all minor to prominent edges.
Choose the Most Suitable Model
As per the project description, you need to choose a suitable model for hiring iOS developers. These models are-
In-House In this model, you hire an iOS programmer as a full-time team member; you have to pay them a full-time salary. Bringing them in-house will require space for their physical office. You can track their progress on a full-time contract and transfer them from one project to another if needed within the agreement period.
Freelance This is part-time hiring an iOS app developer for your project. You can use freelancing platforms like GitHub and Upwork to hire. This hiring method is a type of outsourcing where your in-house project manager interacts directly with the developer.
Outsourcing An outsourcing company takes care of the whole project you have assigned. They are responsible for your project design, entire project management, tech stack, ongoing support, and quality tracking.
Interview
Whether you choose in-house, freelancing, or outsourcing to hire iOS developers, you must conduct an interview process to check developers’ capability before handling any task.
The interview process can be different rounds, like technical, managerial, communicational, and HR, to check upon different aspects.
The Agreement, Contract, and Onboarding
After the interview, it’s time to discuss the project outline and deadline. The agreement determines the contract between the developer and company to complete the given project or task. It may vary from project to project, and in the case of in-house, the developer’s ultimate tenure is set irrespective of the number of projects.
Lastly, it’s the onboarding process after successfully approving the agreement or contract. In this onboarding, the process developer learns about the company’s or client’s working model.
Need Help Finding the Best iOS Developers?
Hiring good iOS mobile Application Developers does half the job by filling the skill gap in your development team. When hiring the right iOS developers, you save time plotting investment structure and design. iOS application development is complicated due to App Store rules and different versions.
If you need assistance hiring talented iOS app developers, partner with OnGraph for the best staffing solutions. With 14 years of industry experience, 250+ experienced developers, 100+ delivered applications, and 500+ completed projects, you can outsource your iOS development to world-class developers to create seamless, next-generation apps with high scalability and performance.
OnGraph Technologies provides you with the best remote iOS developers who provide scalable and robust solutions, timely delivery and follow the agile development methodology.
It’s all set! Kickstart your iOS app development journey by hiring the best iOS developer.
Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technologies empowering advanced chatbots, virtual agents, voice assistants, speech-enabled apps, and automated messaging systems to create human-like interaction between humans and computers.
Conversational AI uses large data volumes, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning to understand intent, text, and speech, mimic human interactions, and decipher different languages.
The technologies used in conversational AI are still embryonic but rapidly advancing and expanding. A conversational AI chatbot can troubleshoot issues, answer FAQs, and make small talk through text, audio, and video.
What are the Components of Conversational AI?
Conversational AI is powered by cutting-edge artificial intelligence, machine learning, NLP, text and sentiment analysis, speech recognition, computer vision, and intent prediction technologies.
Together, these elements promote interaction, enhance the client and agent experience, shorten the resolution time, and increase company value.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
NLP describes a computer’s ability to understand spoken language and respond in a human-like manner. It is made possible by machine learning, which teaches computers to interpret language. NLP systems examine massive data sets to identify connections between words and the contexts in which they are used.
Most conversational AI utilizes Natural language understanding (NLU) to compare user inputs to various models, allowing a bot to respond to non-transactional journeys more like a human. The technology is trained to mimic multiple tones using AI-powered speech synthesis to comprehend slang, regional subtleties, and colloquial speech.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment detection enables conversational AI to understand customers’ emotions and recognize if the user needs specialized assistance by immediately directing frustrated users to agents or prioritizing unhappy customers to receive special treatment.
Machine Learning (ML)
ML is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that enables computers to understand data without explicit programming. ML algorithms can become more effective with high data exposure. Using machine learning, computers can be taught to comprehend language and spot data patterns.
Computer vision
A machine’s capability to comprehend and interpret digital images is computer vision. This entails recognizing the many items in a photo and their positions and angles.
The contents of a picture and the connections between its several items are both determined using computer vision. It also deciphers the emotions depicted in photographs and comprehends the context of a scene.
Intent Prediction
Conversational AI solutions can decipher the true intent underlying each customer’s request through behavioral analysis and tagging operations. Knowing intent enables businesses to send the appropriate response via automated bots and human operators at the appropriate time.
Support for numerous use cases, demands across multiple domains and verticals, and explainable AI is all on the future agenda for conversational AI platforms.
Text analysis
The technique of removing information from textual data is called text analysis. This entails recognizing the many components of a sentence, including the verbs, subject, verb, and object. It also entails recognizing the many word categories in a phrase, including verbs, nouns, and adjectives.
Text analysis is performed to comprehend the relationships between the words in a phrase and their meanings. Additionally, it’s employed to determine a text’s theme and mood (positive/negative).
Speech recognition
It refers to a computer’s capacity to comprehend spoken language. This entails understanding the syntax and grammar of the sentence and the various sounds that make up a spoken sentence.
Speech recognition is employed to translate words into text and decipher their meaning. The context of a conversation can also be understood as well as the emotions of the speakers in a video.
How does Conversational AI work?
Natural Language Processing (NLP), Advanced Dialog Management, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Machine Learning (ML) understand and react to each interaction in a conversational AI.
A user interface that transforms speech to text enables Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) or allows the user to feed text into the system.
Natural language processing (NLP) converts text into structured data by extracting the user’s intent from the text or audio input.
Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to process the data following grammar, meaning, and context; to understand intent and entity, and to serve as a conversation management unit for developing suitable responses.
An AI model that, using the user’s intent and the model’s training data, predicts the optimum answer for the user. The foregoing processes are inferred by Natural Language Generation (NLG), creating a suitable response to communicate with people.
A conversational AI platform supplier frequently offers several instances of the user interface, AI model, and NLP. However, It is possible to utilize other providers for each component.
How is Conversational AI created?
The ideal technique to develop conversational AI depends upon your firm’s unique requirements and use cases. Hence there is no universally applicable answer to this topic. However, the following are some pointers for developing conversational AI:
Use the FAQs list to determine prerequisites and use cases
FAQs form the foundation of conversational AI development by defining the major user concerns and needs. and alleviating some call volumes for your support team.
This FAQ list enables you to determine use cases and prerequisites. Defining these requirements will help you determine the best approach to creating your chatbot.
Select the right toolkit and platform
To construct conversational AI, you can use various tools. You must select the platform that best meets your demands because every platform has different advantages and disadvantages. Popular platforms include Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, IBM Watson, and Microsoft Bot Framework.
Design a prototype
The time has come to begin developing your prototype after you have specified your needs and selected a platform. Before releasing your chatbot to your users, you may test it and work out any issues by creating a prototype.
Test and Deploy your chatbot
When your chatbot prototype is complete, it’s time to launch and test it. A small group of people should test it first so that you can gather feedback and make the necessary improvements.
Enhance and Optimize your chatbot
The final stage is to improve and optimize your chatbot continuously. You can achieve this by changing the algorithms, soliciting user input, and including new features.
Why do Businesses Invest in Conversational AI?
Personalization
Today’s clients demand top-notch service, even from the smallest businesses. Personalized client conversations are made possible at scale across numerous channels with the aid of conversational AI.
Therefore, when a consumer switches from a messaging app to either live chatting or social networks, their customer journey will be seamless and highly tailored.
Manage customer calls in high volumes
Higher call counts are a part of the new post-pandemic reality for customer service teams. During abrupt call spikes, chatbots, conversational AI, and voice assistants can help resolve lower-value calls and relieve overworked customer care employees.
Calls can be categorized using conversational AI based on the customer’s needs, previous company experiences, emotions, attitudes, and intents. Routine transactional encounters can be forwarded to an artificially intelligent virtual assistant (IVR), which lowers the expense of high-touch engagements and frees up human agents to concentrate on more valuable interactions.
Deliver the customer service promise
Customer experience is becoming the most important brand differentiator, surpassing both products and prices. 82% of customers, according to Forbes, discontinue business with a company following a negative customer experience.
By fostering a more customer-centric experience, conversational AI can aid businesses in maximizing their commitment to providing excellent customer service. Conversational AI can improve first contact resolution and client satisfaction scores by enhancing self-service—and live agent assistance—with emotion, intent, and sentiment analysis.
Advantages of Adopting Conversational AI
Businesses can gain from conversational AI in various ways, including lead and demand creation, customer service, and more. These AI-based solutions are widely used in businesses to improve the effectiveness of sales teams’ cross- and up-selling.
New apps will help and/or automate more operational areas as technology develops and advances. Here are some examples of conversational AI’s value now helping businesses create.
Cost Efficiency
The cost of staffing a customer care department can be high, especially if you want to respond to inquiries outside of typical business hours. Providing customer service via chatbots can lower business costs for small to medium-sized businesses. Virtual assistants and chatbots can answer immediately, making themselves available to potential clients around the clock.
Additionally, contradictory reactions to potential clients can come from human conversations. Businesses can develop conversational AI to handle various use cases, assuring comprehensiveness and consistency since most contacts with support are information-seeking and repeated.
This maintains consistency in the customer experience and makes valuable human resources accessible for handling more complicated inquiries.
Automating Processes
Not every task needs human involvement. Customer support agents can concentrate on more complex interactions by using conversational AI to address low-effort emails and calls swiftly. Conversational AI can significantly lower contact center operating costs and errors related to human data entry by automating the majority of these processes. The technology can also reveal information that human representatives might not otherwise be able to notice.
Scalability
Conversational AI offers high scalability since adding infrastructure for conversational AI is swifter and cheaper than hiring a workforce. This proves helpful in expanding products to new markets or during unforeseen spikes in the holiday season.
Enhanced Sales and User Engagement
Since smartphones have become an integral part of users’ lives, businesses should stay prepared to provide real-time data to users. As Conversational AI technology is more readily accessible than agents, it enables frequent and quick user interactions.
The immediate response and support enhance customer satisfaction and improve the brand image with enhanced loyalty and added referrals.
Also, since conversational AI supports personalization, it enables chatbots to give recommendations to users, enabling organizations to cross-sell products that users might not have considered.
What are the Challenges of Conversational AI?
Conversational AI is still young. Although it is being adopted by businesses widely, it poses a few challenges regarding its transition.
Language Input
Whether voice or text, language input is a pain point of conversational AI. Different accents and dialects, slang, unscripted language, and background noises generate issues in understanding and processing raw input.
Another painstaking challenge in language input is the human factor. Tone, emotion, and sarcasm make it quite tough to interpret the meaning and respond correctly.
Security and Privacy
Conversational AI depends on assembling data to respond to user queries, exposing it to security and privacy breaches. So, it becomes vital to design conversational AI applications with enhanced security and privacy to ensure trust with users and to augment usage with time.
User Apprehension
Sometimes, users detest sharing sensitive and personal data, especially while interacting with machines. This can, in turn, create negative experiences and affect conversational AI’s performance.
So, it becomes essential to educate your target users about the safety and benefits of the technology to improve customer experience.
Other Challenges
Chatbots are often not designed to cover extensive queries, which can impact user experience with incomplete answers and unresolved queries. This creates the need to provide alternative communication channels, like a human representative, to help resolve complex issues to maintain a smooth user experience.
Also, while optimizing business workflow, conversational AI can also reduce the workforce for a certain job function, triggering socio-economic activism and hurting the business image.
How is Conversational AI Being Used Today?
Several industries are currently utilizing conversational AI applications. These intelligent applications assist organizations in connecting with consumers and employees in previously unheard-of ways, whether through customer service, marketing, or security, emerging as the core of digital transformation for several businesses.
Conversational AI is growing and providing benefits to a wide range of businesses, including, but not limited to, the following:
Banking: Bank employees can reduce their workload by letting AI chatbots answer complex queries that traditional chatbots might struggle with.
Healthcare: By asking questions designed to reduce wait times, conversational AI assists patients while describing their conditions online. The time-consuming practice of manually reviewing candidate credentials can be automated using conversational AI.
Retail: AI-powered chatbots handle consumer requests 24×7, even on holidays, without traditional customer support employees. Previously, the only way for user communication was through call centers and in-person visits. Because AI chatbots are now accessible through various channels and mediums, including email and websites, customer service is no longer only available during business hours.
IoT: Conversational AI features are available on popular home appliances like Apple’s Siri and Amazon Echo. Even smart home gadgets can be used to connect with conversational AI agents.
Implementing Conversational AI
Conversational AI can be implemented in a variety of ways. NLP is the most popular method for converting text to machine-readable data. This information can subsequently be utilized to run a chatbot or another type of conversational AI system.
As was already said, NLP is a method that translates text to a format that computers can understand by comprehending human language. This procedure is being used to decipher user inquiries and orders and to review and react to user comments.
NLP can be done in a variety of ways. A computer can be instructed to comprehend natural language using some techniques that use machine learning. Others employ a rules-based strategy, in which a human editor develops a set of guidelines outlining how the machine must process and react to user input.
The computer can utilize this knowledge to fuel a chatbot or similar AI system once it has been trained or given a set of rules. This system may manage customer service requests, respond to queries, and do other duties that require human involvement.
How to Pick the Right Conversational AI For Your Business
To help you select the right conversational AI solution, you can consider these few points:
Evaluate your business needs first like analyzing the workflow areas where you can integrate automation and tasks where your users need help.
Evaluate various conversational AI capabilities since some platforms might suit better for your business depending on your industry.
Analyze the complexity and cost of integrating different solutions since some solutions are more complex and expensive and might need technical expertise for setting up and use.
After applying the above three steps, narrow down the options to choose the right platform.
Conversational AI vendors now provide advanced functionalities to support entity detection and automated intent, conversational design, annotation tools, no-code or low-code paradigm, and compact training datasets to enable non-technical industry professionals to design intelligent solutions like virtual assistants and chatbots.
Statista sources from 2022 show that Andriod and iOS combined cover almost 99% of the global mobile OS market with 3.5 million apps in the Play Store and about 2.22 million mobile apps in the App Store.
In today’s highly competitive and evolving digital ecosystem, enterprises do not confine their presence to a single platform. Since going for native application development for each platform is quite expensive, cross-platform app development is gained popularity.
A prediction by Forrester shows that over 60% of organizations are already using or involved with cross-platform app development.
What is a Cross-Platform Application Development Framework?
A cross-platform application framework is a tool that simultaneously operates on multiple platforms and operating systems like Android, iOS, and web applications. It follows the one-size-fits-all code and does not require separate coding for the different platforms or OS.
Cross-platform application development builds a software product or service development compatible with several platforms and OS. This process is achieved either by creating separate versions of the app or opting for a cross-platform app development framework.
Cross-platform Mobile Apps use a bridge similar to hybrid apps that allows the programming language to run on any device without the need to rewrite the program for different platforms.
Most enterprises develop a cross-platform application through their in-house development team or outsource the project to reduce expenses and time.
What are the Major Platforms and Operating Systems?
Here are a few key platforms and operating systems:
Android
It is an open-source mobile OS owned by Google and mainly designed for touchscreen devices like smartphones, smart tech, smart TVs, and smartwatches. It is the most popular mobile operating system.
iOS
It is the second-most popular mobile operating system powered by Apple. It is a closed OS with open-source components. It is mainly associated with Apple’s products like iPhone, Macbook, iPad, and so on.
Web Application
A Web app is a third-party software or application program in a remote server that you can access over the network through a browser on your device.
Which Programming Languages are cross-platform?
Java is the most popular and robust language among the developer community and is a universal cross-platform language. Other cross-platform programming languages include JavaScript, Dart, Kotlin, Objective-C, C#, and Swift.
Difference Between Native and cross-platform App Development
Both Native and cross-platform development are emerging technologies that are continually and rapidly advancing. Although cross-platform is the latest buzzword, native application development is also quite popular because of the benefits it offers.
Native app development targets creating complex sustainable software with seamless performance and high UI consistency on a particular platform. In contrast, the cross-platform approach aims to cover multiple end devices at a relatively lower cost.
Parameters
Performance
Cost
Deployment Time
Device Access
Security
User Interface Consistency
Native App Development
Seamless performance since all features and functions are built to suit a particular OS
Higher development cost
Higher time to market since code needs to be written from scratch for multiple platforms
The Platform Software Development Kit assures access to API of the device without barriers
Comes with several in-built security features
A highly consistent user interface
Cross-Platform App Development
High performance, but compatibility issues and lagging may occur, sometimes
Relatively lower development cost
Code reusability significantly lowers the time to market
No guaranteed access to APIs of the device
Comparatively less secure
Relatively lower UI consistency
Examples of cross-platform Application Development Framework Based on Programming Languages
Here are a few examples of common cross-platform app development frameworks and the language they are based on.
Cross-platform App Development Framework
React Native, NativeScript, Cordova, Appcelerator
Flutter
RubyMotion
Xamarin
BeeWare, Kivy
Codename One
Programming Language
JavaScript
Dart
Ruby
C#
Python
Java
What are the Benefits of Cross-Platform App Development?
Provides Wider Market Research
Compared to the native app development approach, which faces the problem of limited reach and short market research, cross-platform app development wins this battle with wide market research and user reach.
In native app development, your app is developed specifically for Android and iOS, limiting user access. In contrast, cross-platform app development enables developers to launch the same app on multiple platforms. Market research enhances when you are not limited to any specific device or platform.
Reduced Workload
cross-platform app development has a quicker turnaround because developers don’t create multiple apps for different platforms but only one app for all platforms. That means cross-platform app development reduces the development time and workload.
Reduced Development Cost
Using cross-platform app development technology reduces the number of development hours and also the overall project budget. With a reduced development budget, the costs for all related services like deployment, quality testing, and ongoing support get automatically reduced.
Choosing cross-platform mobile app development over native app development technique organizations can cut overall costs by almost 30-40%.
Uniform Design
Smooth performance and a smart look (UI) and feel (UX) attract users. Cross-platform app development requires only one common development team with a single codebase to give a uniform look and feel across different platforms. This means the cross-platform app development technology offers the same user interface and UX on all platforms.
Further, cross-platform development ensures that the app UI/UX will remain uniform for every update and easy to sync.
Easier Maintenance & Deployment
cross-platform app development, with the help of development frameworks like Flutter, streamlines the app development, maintenance, and deployment process. Maintenance is crucial after successfully deploying your high-quality apps across Android and iOS users, and with one codebase, it becomes easy too.
The development cycle may look pretty simple and straight, but there are many inevitable bug fixes and improvements even during the running phase. Imagine doing maintenance and deployment for multiple applications of one business for development platforms. Yes, it does not sound feasible, and that’s why you need cross-platform development technology as a one-point solution for all.
Quicker Development Process
Compared to the native apps, which are developed specifically for one platform, like Android or iOS, but not both. That means building a native app for Android and iOS is developing two apps, two codebase support, and two sets of teams that increase the development time.
However, the cross-platform approach needs only one codebase for all platforms eliminating the rewriting of code from scratch every time and quicker the development process.
Faster Time-to-Market and Customization
A single codebase cross-development approach reduces the development, deployment, and customization time, as testing is required on one single codebase. Also, when any customization or bug is fixed, it’s done in the same code for all platforms saving time and effort.
Reusable Code
Reusability of code is one of the most significant benefits of cross-platform mobile app development, due to which business owners and organizations adopt this approach. Developers don’t have to write the same code separately for different platforms like Android and iOS Android, but they can reuse the same code.
Furthermore, cross-platform app development frameworks like Flutter have pre-written code for other functionalities, which developers can use to save time and effort.
Easy Cloud Integration
Cloud Integration is easy with cross-platform development solutions based on cloud technologies. Also, organizations can integrate with various frameworks with cross-platform applications to implement several ready-to-use plugins for improving pp functionality, aesthetics, validity, and so on.
Challenges in the Cross-Platform App Development Process
Cross-platform app development process offers several benefits, but it is not without some challenges. These drawbacks are not a deal-breaker, but it is essential to note them.
Inferior UX And UI Compared to Native Apps
Interior UI and UX are significant disadvantages of cross-platforms. This framework builds applications for all platforms using the same code, unlike native apps specifically built for iOS or Android platforms focusing on specific UX and UI design.
Compliance
The biggest misconception is that cross-platform development is easy because developers have to work only on one codebase. However, novice developers face several difficulties during the development phase as they have to use cross-compliance during the development process.
Cross-compliance, when not used correctly, can result in sluggish code, which ultimately slows the application.
Possible Lower Performance
Performance built up with new features and updates is slow to possess in cross-platform apps compared to native apps because the framework you use for pushing a recent update or feature may or may not be packed with all the latest features and versions of releases for a particular OS.
Security
cross-platform apps are less secure than native apps as they use APIs and native frameworks. Furthermore, cross-platform mobile apps have a high chance of security issues and breaches.
Best cross-platform App Development Frameworks
The rising popularity of cross-platform app development has given rise to numerous cross-platform frameworks. We have listed the best five cross-platform application development frameworks in the market pool of multiple tools.
React Native
React Native is one of the most popular cross-platform app development frameworks created by Facebook in 2015.
Flutter
Flutter is an open-source, free cross-platform application development framework created by Google in 2018. Although Flutter has not been in the market for very long, its features and capabilities has made it one of the most loved frameworks by developers according to the Developer Survey Results by StackOverflow.
Xamarin
Xamarin is an independent, open-source, cross-platform app development framework acquired by Microsoft in 2016. It is the oldest framework, founded in 2011, and has a large developer community.
Phone Gap
Phone Gap is an open-source mobile application framework. It is one of the best frameworks for cross-platform application development developed by Adobe Systems. Phone Gap uses the best existing languages for development, like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.
Ionic
Ionic is an open-source SDK and is one of the most popular cross-platform app development frameworks that enables developers to create a fantastic UI with user-friendly interfaces and features. It also supports the development of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
How to Select a cross-platform App Development Framework for Your Enterprise
When you have decided to go for cross-platform app development instead of going native, the problem of determining the best platform suited to your business needs arises. The choice of the most suited framework depends on several factors, the most significant ones being the organizational size, required solution, and developer skills.
Here are a few parameters that can drive you to make the best decision.
Security: If your project has sensitive data involved, you should choose a framework that offers maximum security benefits.
Workload of the development: If you have a large project that involves several functions and processes, you should opt for a cross-platform app tool that can support heavy workloads.
Scalability: If seamless performance is your primary goal, you can choose a platform that offers the best app performance.
Compatibility: If you’re a brand with a target to cover as many end devices and platforms as possible, you can choose the most compatible framework.
Opting for cross-platform App Development? Partner with OnGraph
Going for cross-platform app development and choosing a framework is not enough. Several other processes are involved, from hiring the developers, planning, and development to testing, updates, bug fixes, and rolling out the software.
Here you have two choices: seek help hiring the best cross-platform app developers, or outsource the entire project. We at OnGraph provide staffing services and custom cross-platform app development on frameworks like React Native, Flutter, and Ionic.
Ongraph Technologies has been empowering enterprises and startups around the globe for the last 14 years with smart solutions and delivering sustainable technology. We believe in building long-term relationships with our customers by providing them with affordable, timely, and effective solutions.
With Android exceeding the 100 thousand per month mark, scaling the business is getting more challenging. And it’s not just Android; around 30,000+ apps are on the list for iOS devices. Flutter is a one-in-all solution to all your business challenges and has also swiftly gained popularity in the last few years. Choosing Flutter app development helps you in multiple areas:
In creating cross-platform mobile applications.
Building simple or feature-rich programs.
Building programs for multiple OS while preserving integrity and speed.
Statista research shows Flutter is the second most sought-after cross-platform mobile application development framework, with React Native holding the first spot.
Let’s dive deeper and uncover why Flutter heeds the list.
What is Flutter?
In May 2017, Google developed an advanced framework with a single codebase to create high-quality, high-performance mobile applications for Android and iOS with flexible UI designs and named it Flutter.
Being a free and open-source platform, Flutter gained a massive user base and helped millions of developers all across the globe. Flutter is not just free but a simple, powerful, efficient, and easy-way-to-understand SDK that allows mobile application building in Google’s own language, Dart.
Technically, Flutter is not completely a framework but a comprehensive SDK that allows cross-platform app creation for various Operating Systems and offers different functionalities like rendering engine, testing and integration APIs, ready-made widgets, and command-line tools.
Flutter is divided into two segments:
Software Development Kit (SDK): SDK is required to create fully functioning applications, as it contains a collection of tools, APIs, frameworks, and libraries.
Framework: Like any other framework, Flutter also contains a collection of reusable UI elements that you can use and personalize for your development needs.
The Three Architectural Layers of Flutter
The three architectural layers or the three-tier architecture (N-tier) is one of the most popular architectures for developing applications and programs. These three layers of Flutter are-
Framework
Also known as the interaction layer, most developers associate with Flutter’s platform through this layer. The framework layer is also among the most modern frameworks available.
Building block services and core classes with pictorial explanations, animation, and gestures make Flutter application development easy.
Components of Framework layer: Widgets, Material, Rendering, and Cupertino
Embedder
It is the second layer in the architecture where the flutter code is added to an existing or new app as a module or as the entire application’s content. The Embedder application framework can gain required services like accessibility, input, and rendering surfaces.
Moreover, embedder is created in a platform-specific language for iOS, Android, and macOS. For Android, it’s Java, and for macOS and iOS, it’s C++, Objective-C/Objective-C++.
Engine
It is the final layer in the architecture that manages network requests, output, and input. Flutter has Skia as its rendering engine, which reaches Flutter’s framework through Dart. Dart encapsulates the C++ code to Dart classes. Flutter Engine also handles rendering translation challenges in C/C++.
About Dart: Flutter’s Programming Language
In 2011, Google developed Dart as an open-source, object-oriented programming language with C-style syntax, which developers can use as a general-purpose programming language. Application developers can use Dart programming to create front-end user interfaces for mobile and web applications.
Dart is under active development and is compiled into native machine code for building mobile apps and programs using modern tools. It is inspired by other popular programming languages like Java, JavaScript, and C#. You cannot execute code directly in Dart as it is a compiled language. The compiler parses it and transfers it into machine code for executing the code.
What is Flutter used for?
Fortunately, many answers to this question vary from user to user.
For users, the Flutter development framework gives life to amazing applications.
For developers, Flutter helps lower the entry bar for creating apps. It also helps reduce complications and fares and increases the speed of application production across different platforms.
For designers, Flutter is a tool that provides amazing UI/UX. Flutter can turn concepts into production code without any compromises typical frameworks impose. After the recent update, CodePen support is added to share your ideas with fellow developers, making it a prolific tool
For tech support teams, engineering managers, and enterprises, Flutter enables the integration of application developers into one desktop, web, and mobile application team. This unification helps build branded apps for multiple platforms out of a single codebase. Also, development gets faster with Flutter synchronizing the releasing timetables through the user base.
Why Opt For Flutter App Development?
The most prominent reason why to opt for Flutter. The primary languages used are Kotlin, Objective C/Swift, and Java. Also, using these languages makes the overall development less expensive and fast, allowing code repetition.
In the past few years, Flutter has become famous among organizations and cross-platform tools like React Native, PhoneGap, and Xamarin.
With Flutter, you can facilitate responsiveness for mobile applications without JavaScript bridges, reducing most hectic development procedures. Also, it aligns perfectly with various iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, MAC, and Google Fuchsia.
Here’s a list of reasons why one should choose Flutter over other application development frameworks:
Enhanced Performance
Flutter uses Dart language that gets compiled directly into machine code and enhances performance. It also eradicates errors caused by interpreting mistakes which increase competitiveness and performance.
Faster, More Productive, and Steady
At Flutter, you get readymade gadgets and syntax with fewer code lines. Shorter code makes bug fixing and updating more simple. Application takes less time to develop than other native languages and less time to roll out to the marketplace, which ultimately increases overall efficiency and development speed.
Competitive
Due to its effective and cost-efficient flow, it gives a tough fight to other cross-platform application development frameworks. Flutter takes less time to establish a mobile app than other development frameworks.
Supports Cross-Platform Application Development
Flutter is an open-source app development framework that offers cross-platform app development. Both Android and iOS device applications can be built using Flutter.
Enhanced User Experience
The Flutter app development framework helps create the best presentation layer/ UI interface that enhances user experience.
Flutter App Development is Cost-effective
Reusing the code reduces cost and complexity, ultimately making development faster.
Support for Older Devices
Taking modern devices as the primary user platform is essential to compete in the current business race. But, Flutter builds applications that work seamlessly on both new and old devices.
Google guaranteed
Brand trust from Google is enough to ensure quality and modern functionalities.
Availability of Widgets: Simplifying App Development
Flutter highlights widgets as a constitutional unit to simplify application development. Widgets are simple building blocks of Flutter’s UI, where each widget is a fixed manifesto of the UI.
Based on composition, Widgets outline into different levels where every widget nests in the center of its parent and get context from the parent. This structure carries up to the root widget (the container hosting Flutter, like CupertinoApp or MaterialApp)
Basic widgets
Text
It helps to build a run of designed text in the program or your app.
Column, Row
These widgets enable the development of adaptable layouts in the vertical (Column) and horizontal (Row) directions.
Stack
This widget lets you place other widgets above the other in the paint order rather than following a linear orientation.
Container
This is the most creative widget that allows you to build a rectangular perceptible element.
What Kind of Apps Can You Develop in Flutter?
Flutter is an open-source, cross-stage mobile application development framework for building local interfaces on Android and iOS. Presented by Google in 2017, Flutter works by wrapping a web view in a local application.
Besides its ability to fabricate applications with a native look and feel, this application development structure by Google is generally welcomed by engineers and ISVs for improvement.
Since Flutter works with developers to build cross-platform native apps with very little compromise, Flutter has been dependent on new companies and set-up brands. Here’s a recent usage statistics of the Flutter app development framework –
Benefits of Flutter App Development
Some benefits of Flutter app development are:
Reusable Code: Single Codebase for Android and iOS
A reusable codebase makes Android and iOS app development easy and quick. It also reduces development time.
Widgets are the most useful and innovative features that let you create interfaces through various building components. It offers different fonts, padding, and buttons. It also helps create different layouts and customization from basic to complex.
Flutter App Development has a Low Learning Curve
The accessibility of easy-to-understand documentation makes Flutter learning easy for beginners and gains admiration from developers. The other best part about Flutter learning is that it uses Dart, one of the simplest languages for app development.
Flutter framework allows mobile app developers with only fundamental programming experience to develop applications and prototypes.
Availability of the Skia Libraries
Skia is a swift and dynamic open-source library with a strong backend. It redrafts the user interface, enabling the rapid load of the application at sixty frames per second. This makes the users like the seamlessness of the application more than any other frameworks available.
Fast testing with hot reload
This feature got the most attention and praise from Flutter engineers worldwide. Yes, almost negligible reloading when making changes. Also, Flutter offers faster updates, testing, the introduction of newer features, and bug fixes.
Cons of Flutter App Development
Drawbacks are not like a deal-breaker, but they allow you to understand if it may not be the best choice for a project. Here are some drawbacks you may come across using Flutter.
Lack of Support for iOS Features
As Flutter is a Google product, the iOS application support quality suffers. If most Software Development Kit features and functions work perfectly on Android (primary devices), then there are a few problems with iOS.
Large file size because of the widgets
Adding widgets increases functionalities and file sizes, becoming a substantial concern. Sometimes this storage issue causes a developer or a flutter mobile app development company to select a different tool for development.
Limited tools and libraries
Flutter does not allow third-party libraries (majorly paid) for application development, so developers can only access certain functionality.
Moreover, searching for free libraries and packages with pre-tested functions is quite difficult.
Tiny Flutter App Development Community
Dart still lacks a wide community since a handful of developers use it for app development. This is why Dart programming language has a relatively smaller application development community than JavaScript.
Examples of Popular Apps Developed on Flutter
Apps like Google Ads, Hamilton, and Alibaba’s Xianyu have distinctive and rich SDKs and are developed on Flutter. One of those prominent reasons why organizations use Flutter is because it helps apps expand faster.
Google Ads
Regarding marketing and monetizing, there’s no one close to Google Ads. It is a mobile application that helps in managing Google Advertisement campaigns. Earlier, managing Google Ads was only possible on a desktop.
Google Ads is smartly designed to show campaign statistics, budget updates, real-time bids, keyword tweaking, and live notifications. In its recent update, there’s an additional feature to reach a professional for any queries and suggestions. The attractive UI encourages users and also makes it easy to use.
Other examples of apps developed on Flutter are:
BMW App
Google Pay
Alibaba
Reflect
Cryptograph
Dream 11
Tencent
Philips Hue
MGM Resorts
Nubank
Have an App Idea? Start Flutter App Development Now with OnGraph
Flutter app development enables organizations and developers to seamlessly create native-like apps without worrying about the strict budget plan. Flutter also stretches the user base by publishing the apps on Android and iOS stores.
Organizations mastering Objective C/Swift, Java, and Kotlin can directly move to Flutter as these are their primary languages. Further, it offers cross-platform toolkits like React Native, PhoneGap, and Xamarin for application development.
At OnGraph Technologies, we have about 250+ hand-picked top developers with expertise in various technologies and tech stacks. We provide the best resources for Flutter App Development and have created multiple Flutter applications despite the brief existence of this emerging technology.
You can schedule a consultation with us if you’d wish to realize an App idea and discuss Flutter’s benefits and cross-platform app development.
ASP.NET vs. PHP is one of the hottest comparisons developers come across while selecting from these leading technologies for their business or project, as they both have broad bases and comprehensive tool support.
Since both are popular in the web development world, selecting the right one is tricky. We aim to highlight-guide you in choosing the best one for your organization.
What is ASP.NET?
ASP.NET is a popular web development platform and provides a comprehensive software infrastructure, a programming model, and various other mandatory services to create robust web applications for mobiles and desktops.
ASP.NET was released in early 2002 as a successor to Microsoft’s ASP (Active Server Pages). Creating .NET applications is relatively easy with ASP.NET as it is a language-independent software allowing developers to select any .NET supported language.
Apart from its different libraries, ASP.NET also provides several development toolkits that make the app, dynamic web pages, microservices, and REST APIs creation more accessible and seamless.
Some popular websites built through ASP.NET are Visual Studio, DELL, Microsoft, StackOverflow, and GoDaddy.
Advantages of ASP.NET
ASP.NET is highly scalable and gives tough competition to PHP in scalability.
Support almost all major programming languages, including C#.
Capable of highlighting mistakes made by the developers during the coding part before compiling.
Support programmers with popular tools and advanced features.
ASP.NET works smoothly with Windows OS.
Provides the best platform for Enterprise applications.
Pre-coded features for fast development.
Smart UI to navigate and use different features seamlessly.
Disadvantages of ASP.NET
Tough to understand and learn for new developers.
A small support community to help developers.
The Microsoft license makes it more expensive.
Not as suitable as PHP for website or application development.
What is PHP?
PHP started as an open-source web development project and later evolved over the years with new features and tools. It’s the same reason PHP comes to everyone’s mind when discussing web projects. PHP allows integration with several popular databases efficiently. To interpret PHP code, there’s a PHP interpreter implemented in the web server as a module.
The web server first combines the results of both executed and interpreted PHP code. These codes could be of any type, including images too. In its execution, you may find PHP smugly zippy; however, the execution works even smoother on the Unix side when compiled as an Apache module. PHP also supports major protocols like- LDAP, POP3, and IMAP.
PHP is a recursive acronym for HTTP processors, and as a web development framework, PHP is embedded in HTML. PHP developers are provided with various open-source libraries and applications to make web designing more efficient and easy. Therefore, PHP is compatible with different web applications, and unsurprisingly, many of our favorite social media sites are written in PHP code.
Some popular websites powered by PHP are MailChimp, Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia, and WordPress.
Advantages of PHP
PHP is a free, open-source server-side scripting language
A larger support community to help developers, programmers, and hiring teams.
It is perfect for large projects and socializing sites.
Perfect for building scripts, primarily web-based ones like- WCMS (Web Content Management Systems), because it is highly effective at communicating and accessing various database types.
PHP is highly scalable, which makes customization easier.
Experts to support in case of any issue or bug.
Low-cost software tool.
Powerful frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony make it even more popular.
Disadvantages of PHP
Not suited for building desktop applications/software.
PHP applications lag a bit more than other frameworks and languages.
It enables customization, which results in poor coding and sometimes hard bugs.
Approaching, managing, and fixing errors in PHP is poor.
What are Some Standard Criteria for Comparing PHP and ASP.NET?
Here are some parameters that help to understand ASP.NET and PHP-
Cost: Cost plays a crucial role when working on a large project. Regarding cost-effectiveness, PHP has a distinct advantage over ASP.NET as PHP is free, while ASP.NET comes with a web hosting fee.
Scalability: A scalable technology is more flexible and covers a wide area. Compared to ASP.NET and PHP, ASP.NET can handle various web applications, which is impossible with PHP. ASP.NET is a more flexible language, and thus many developers choose it over PHP.
Performance: In PHP, scripts are executed faster than ASP.NET because PHP uses its memory, and performance depends on the level of interaction between the script, the database, and the server.
Moreover, PHP web application implementation takes the LAMP format, offering increased performance.
Speed: PHP programs run on their own memory space and do not require any other system resources, resulting in less execution time than ASP.NET. Whereas ASP.NET is a bit slow because it is built on a COM-based system that requires different storage areas.
Popularity:
PHP is hugely popular and used by almost 76.0% of all the websites whose server-side programming language we know, whereas ASP.NET is used by 7.6% of total websites whose server-side programming language we know, as per the recent stats.
Learning Curve: If your organization has new developers, PHP is a better choice as it is easy to learn and understand for beginners, whereas ASP.NET is quite challenging to learn and needs time to master. Also, PHP has large community support to make your learning curve more smooth.
Security: ASP.NET is the best pick for your organization if your applications primarily focus on security and functionality, whereas PHP is better for user interfaces, speed, and performance.
Market Share:
PHP has a higher market share than ASP.NET since PHP is a free, open-source scripting language, whereas ASP.NET is a paid web application framework.
According to SimilarTech, there are 4,956,798 websites supported by PHP and 1,681,045 by ASP.NET. Overall, as shown by W3Techs, ASP.NET powers 2.73% of websites, and PHP powers 8.33% of websites.
Comparing ASP.NET and PHP
Parameters
Type
Speed
Support
Solutions
Customization
Cost
Community
Security
PHP
Server-side scripting language
Not suitable and slower for desktop application
Small to medium-sized web projects
More focused on client-facing, user interfaces
Allow customization
Freely available all over the web
Large size community as it is open-source
Less built-in security feature than .NET
ASP.NET
Web application framework
High speed, fast enough for desktop application
Large enterprise applications
More focused on Security and functionalities
Less prone to customization
License cost attached
Dedicated community, mostly skilled developers
Highly secure
Which Should You Choose – ASP.NET or PHP?
For large-scale organizations and enterprises where security is vital, ASP.NET is more suited.
Startups and small organizations focusing on performance, speed, and cost optimization can use PHP for their business.
Also, if you are looking for a general scripting language, PHP is more suited since it is free, open-source, and has an easier learning curve. Whereas, if you want a complete web development programming framework, ASP.NET will do half your job with brand trust from Microsoft.
Trouble deciding between ASP.NET and PHP? Partner with OnGraph
Both ASP.NET vs PHP are great solutions for your business projects with slight differences, but a small difference can bring a significant change when things are done on a large scale.
If you’re facing challenges in choosing the most suited development framework for your business, OnGraph can help you make the right choice and assist in hiring the best developers for your organization’s web application development.
OnGraph Technologies partners with startups and enterprises to provide seamless mobile and web application development backed by the best technology practices and enhanced user experience. Hire PHP developers with us today.
The global pandemic challenged the best organizational infrastructures and accelerated digital transformation. Being the heart of digital transformation, DevOps enables businesses to improve through flexibility, agility, and continuous revision. A report by AMR showed that the international DevOps market size was appreciated at $6.78 billion in 2020 and will reach $57.90 billion by 2030, reporting a CAGR of 24.2% from 2021-2030.
DevOps has transformed the software delivery process by increasing team collaboration and a flexible environment. The benefits of implementing the DevOps approach have made it immensely popular. About 83% of decision-makers said they’ve increased business potential and worth by implementing DevOps methodologies.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a collaborative approach of the software development and operations team combining concepts, cultural philosophies, techniques, and tools that enable organizations to enhance speed, efficiency, security, and customer experience to compete better in the market.
The DevOps culture promotes cross-team communication and team empowerment to integrate and automate software processes. Shared accountability and collaboration allow organizations to improve and evolve products faster than traditional software development.
Principles of DevOps
The DevOps methodology has four fundamental principles that form the best roadmap to modern software development. These principles guide towards improved planning, better product, and faster market delivery.
Automation of the product development lifecycle
Communication and Collaboration
Intense focus on customer’s demands with brief feedback loops
Waste minimization with constant improvement
Key Pioneers of DevOps
The formation of DevOps consists of Agile and ESM.
Agile Software Development
DevOps is a projection of Agile that boosts strong team collaboration between developers, testers, management, and customers to finalize an improved product. It helps businesses identify communication and service delivery as crucial customer value proposition components.
Enterprise Service Management (ESM)
Enterprise Service Management ESM is an extension of IT service management abilities further to enterprise teams like Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, Legal, and Facilities to manage business-centric use cases.
ESM allows the management of service demands and supplies through a standard catalog, facilitating faster workflow automation and innovation. Initially, the system administrators defined the concept of DevOps and incorporated automation, the toolchain approach, configuration management, and system monitoring.
How does DevOps Work?
The DevOps approach breaks down the walls between operations and development teams, often merging them throughout the software development lifecycle with a multidisciplinary skillset. Some DevOps models integrate security and quality assurance teams for a seamless development process.
The integrated teams use technology stacks and tools to accelerate and automate reliable applications. These toolchains handle essential DevOps functions like collaboration, automation, continuous integration, and delivery.
The tech stacks and tools also enable engineers to perform tasks like code deployment without help that generally would need assistance from other teams.
Often the DevOps model is applied to organizational teams other than development, like security, where safety becomes the core part of the process. This model is the DevSecOps approach.
Challenges Faced in SDLC
The traditional Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) approach had several flaws that hindered seamless product development.
The traditional approach ‘siloed’ the software development team, maintenance teams, and test engineers, where they performed tasks separately without communication. This model was time-consuming, and the end product came with several flaws.
Test engineers faced issues maintaining a steady process in the different development stages. This issue also created bugs that were avoidable through inter-team collaboration.
Bug fixes and fresh adjustments in the product took too long, ranging from several months to a year, due to the lack of collaboration between the developers and testers.
Since the customers interacted with the product at the end, it gave rise to a lack of transparency, extra reworks, late feedback, decreased user satisfaction, and delay in working on the user’s complaints.
How DevOps resolves the SDLC Challenges
The DevOps model encourages collaboration and communication between the organizational teams during the development process and tears down all the barriers, solving most challenges. It helps the teams to form T-shaped competencies faster and energetically acclimate to market demands.
106 times swifter lead time from committing to the deployment stage
18 percent improvement in customer satisfaction
2604 times faster recovery from unexpected incidents and failures
22 percent minimized the time on unplanned work and rework
208 times more deployment frequency
Two times more employee satisfaction, especially among high-performing teams
Six times more accuracy in estimating operational costs
Seven times lower failure change failure rate
Organizations adopting the DevOps model experienced a quintuple growth in the deployment frequency from 46x to 208x within a year from 2018 to 2019.
Also, 50% of DevOps enterprises reported reduced expenditure, time-to-market, and revenue growth.
Why Should Your Organization Invest in DevOps?
A study by DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in 2021 shows that the main distinction between powerful and poorly performing teams is the successful integration of the DevOps model or the delay in implementing it.
Here are a few advantages of adopting the DevOps approach for your organization.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is one of the most significant advantages of adopting DevOps. This benefit is achieved by faster delivery, price deduction, transparency, and incorporation of feedback.
DevOps helps streamline several workflow areas, allowing you to charge less for your products than competitors not using the DevOps approach.
Streamlining enables collaboration between the organizational teams and the users, allowing transparency and user feedback and making it easier to finalize the desired product quicker.
Return IT Investments Rapidly
Releasing swift software updates, patches in code, and bug fixes helps corporations return their IT investments quicker and bring pristine revenue. High-performing DevOps organizations deploy 200 times more with about 2,555 times faster lead time compared to low performers. Also, better product quality in production environments saves 50% of the time on security issues, paving a speedier path to ROI.
To become a high-performing firm, your business’s current situation is crucial here. To start with DevOps, you must inspect your present situation and workflow. Also, you need to check your infrastructure state.
AWS tech professionals reveal all critical points, like the business processes you’ll need to induct for the most profitable results, and describes a perfect architecture. It describes six core pillars:
Robust Security: Security is a high-priority task in every development and establishment process. For robust security, the best methods are utilizing cloud capabilities, regulations of infrastructure protection, and providing more valuable data.
Operational Excellence: One of the most optimal ways to support the development lifecycle. A perfectly timed operation runs applications efficiently.
Performance Efficiency: Performance track the future. Performance Efficiency is utilizing Its resources most efficiently.
Reliability: It defines the desired infrastructure state when every unit or module in the system performs its planned operation effectively.
Optimizing Costs: Cost optimization is the intelligent way to produce more value at a reduced cost. It’s a practical approach to running workloads efficiently and cost-effectively.
Sustainability: Sustainability manages your enterprise activities’ long-term environmental, economic, and societal impact.
Embedding all these six pillars to your organization will increase your organization’s ROI and decrease operational expenditure and TCO. These core pillars in your organization will give you 15-20% faster income growth.
How to Calculate ROI from DevOps?
On different aspects, ROI varies in DevOps. Although, there are ways to measure the ROI of DevOps:
1. Acceleration
Automation: Reduced manual intervention and continuous testing to fix issues
Infrastructure Retrieval: The swiftness of production recovery from incidents of collapses
Frequency of Releasing: Speed of code releases to production
Resilience of Infrastructure: Reducing downtime induced by infrastructure failures through automation
Infrastructure Efficiency: Resource shielding to protect from production, and deployment failures
Iterations: Number of modifications and fixes made from customer feedback and requests
2. Mindset
Tech-oriented- Application, service, and hardware
Procedure-oriented – Enhancing by continuous feedback loops, deploying and undertaking upgrades
Employee-oriented – Prioritizing work grade and productivity
3. Performance
Low IT Performers- Focus on opportunities and improvement areas to set measurable goals.
Medium IT Performers- Reaps benefits by eradicating technological deficits and weighing value and velocity.
High IT Performers- Targets high profits and foremost product delivery pipeline.
These are different ways to drive ROI on various aspects. But, there are some key factors as well that can affect ROI monetary values like-
Price of Introducing Process
Expenses of introducing processes begin from software development environments and processes to CI/CD. They all have a shared thread in spite of the changes available in individual working approaches.
Product Development Cost
Product development cost starts with the hourly expense of software product development. You can calculate the cost by multiplying the average yearly compensation and employer expenses and dividing this figure by the yearly working hours.
Expense Savings
Expense savings is accomplished by the successful integration of a specific DevOps model. It should have the accuracy to efficiently recognize the overall monetary benefit discovered through DevOps.
You can use this formula to convert ROI monetary value into ROI percentage:
Boosts Innovation & Development
The traditional SDLC (software development lifecycle) took long lead times and a longer time for patching the code and bug fixes. Various teams were responsible for writing, testing, and deploying code without seamless communication.
DevOps replaced the manual processes with automation and integrated all teams into a single environment. This reduces bugs, makes the team productive, and frees their time to focus on development, improvement, and innovation. Hire DevOps Engineer and harness the benefits.
Reduced Expenditure on IT Infrastructure Upkeep
Here’s how the DevOps methodology automates all software development processes and reduces monthly expenses.
Establishing CI and CD Pipelines, Continuous Delivery, IaC, Reduces Overprovisioning of the Resources, Cloud Migration
Establishing CI and CD Pipelines: When CI and CD pipelines in workflow lower the MTTR (mean time to resolution), the development team can focus on improving the product quality and feature releases. Automating software tests ensure that codes deployed in short clusters won’t impact the infrastructure and contain bugs from escaping to production.
Reduced bugs and MTTR sidestep consistent poor workflows and technical deficits.
Continuous Delivery: It is the most substantial aspect of DevOps. After passing through a testing environment, the code is transferred from the development stage to the release stage. The developers can release updates and fix bugs faster. Continuous Integration enables them to upload code.
Infrastructure as a Code (IaC): The fundamental key of the DevOps model enables the automation of routine tasks. The IaC approach hit two targets with one arrow: it eliminates the Dev team’s responsibility for infrastructure provisioning, permitting them to avert human intervention blunders and concentrate on product innovation and enhancement.
Reduces Overprovisioning of the Resources: Private cloud providers ensure that your system uses the CPU effectively and all complimentary RAM with container orchestration tools.
Cloud Migration: It decodes ineffective use of resources. Public cloud providers like GCP, Microsoft Azure, and AWS guarantee smart use of resources through load balancing and auto-scaling. The best part is that you only pay for the cloud features you employ.
These are the five most crucial factors that show how DevOps helps lower the bills of an It Infrastructure.
Promotes Collaborated and Engaged Efforts
DevOps accentuates a collective approach and collaboration at all software development levels, from coding and testing to monitoring, release, and updates.
This system allows developers, system administrators, and testers to communicate seamlessly and work effectively as they work in an integrated environment to maintain uniformity across all functions.
Team members in a DevOps model also embrace multiple roles to accomplish tasks, increasing organizational efficiency and roles and responsibilities. This also encourages the team members to improve their skillset for a seamless product development lifecycle and seamless user experience.
DevOps also increases employee productivity and satisfaction. By implementing DevOps, the software developed is error-free and efficient. Lesser bugs mean the team members spend less time fixing them, enabling them to work on working and creating better products.
When the development and operations teams spend less time patching bugs and support, it reduces their stress, allows them to enjoy their work, and increases job satisfaction.
Lesser Chances of Failures
The State of DevOps Report shows that businesses adopting a DevOps model experience reduced failures by 60 times.
DevOps aims to promote team collaboration, where the members understand all functions in the development lifecycle, from infrastructure to configuration. This also allows developers to write and fix code simultaneously, reducing the prospect of bugs.
Before releasing the product, the users get to use and give feedback if problems emerge, allowing developers to fix and instantly release the update without much delay.
Enhanced Service Availability
Gartner stated in its study that the average IT downtime cost for large firms could reach $5,600 each minute.
Even if it is not a significant issue, enterprises from inaccessibility for their services to customers, on average, can lose from $140,000 to $300,000 each hour. Mid-size businesses and startups also suffer from downtime, making them lose potential investors and customers.
Prominent market players who embraced DevOps to annihilate unavailability can save up to $100,000 every hour of decreased downtime. DevOps boosts your service availability through the implementation of:
IaC (Infrastructure-as-a-Code) enables standard tasks’ automation, reduces human intervention, enhances stability, makes testing more effective, and insinuates system consistency. You can implement this strategy through tools like Ansible, Terraform, and Pulumi.
Facilitating the CI and CD workflow and IaC to identify unstable updates with the infrastructure and preclude the deployment to delivery.
Enhances Security and Reduces Risks
DevOps helps organizations mitigate risks and enhance security by:
Creating automated testing environments and predefined compliance measures that integrate into the environment. This allows team members to identify the bugs while writing and testing the code simultaneously.
Reducing human intervention and errors by automating tasks
Incorporating the Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) model eliminates manual intervention and governs infrastructure configuration.
Assisting organizations to adapt to market changes faster by promoting an agile and flexible work environment.
Ensuring better adherence to compliance measures, like the PCI-DSS, by utilizing Policy as a Code model for managing and defining rules and conditions.
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To summarize, a well-planned DevOps implementation strategy can drastically increase the proficiency of your end-to-end delivery pipeline.
If you own a startup in the initial stage, we recommend you adopt the DevOps model so that you can scale your business rapidly. The adoption might be more challenging for large enterprises but is worth it, given the result in security, reliability, and scalability.
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The latest Statista research shows that over 48% of developers worldwide use Python for software development. Python is among the most popular programming languages, with major firms like IBM, NASA, Spotify, and Instagram using them.
The popularity of Python is because of its vast range of libraries, packages, and frameworks. A Python application framework is a collection of modules and packages that allows developers to build apps through a pre-built implementation of redundant functions. They release developers from minor issues like thread management, sockets, and protocols.
There are several Python frameworks for mobile app development and web app development that enable seamless, efficient, and swift application development. We’ve listed the best frameworks in this blog.
Why Should I Go for Python App Development?
Python is best suited for creating dynamic applications integrated with CRUD operations and avoiding repetitive coding for activities like authentication and sessions. It also provides an execution system when you’re building a separate UI with associated logic.
Python is also the best option when you have strict deadlines and time and resource constraints. From full-stack and DevOps to AI/ML, data engineering, and data science, Python offers all-around development options.
Here are some reasons why Python is the king of programming languages:
Python’s vibrant range of frameworks, libraries, and tools enables swift development and gives access to code templates.
Python is a high-level programming language and quite close to English, hence it has a lower learning curve compared to other coding languages.
Python has a large developer community and rich documentation with new frameworks and libraries being added quite often.
What are the Types of Python App Development Frameworks?
There are three types of Python application frameworks: Microframework, Full-stack, and Asynchronous Framework.
Micro Framework
A Python micro-framework is easy to use with basic capabilities or features required for web development and does not have added functionalities like form validation and data abstraction layers. They are lightweight and useful for building small applications.
Some popular examples of Micro Python frameworks include CherryPy, Bottle, Falcon, and Dash.
Full-Stack Framework
A full-stack framework is an end-to-end solution for web and app development with functionalities like template layouts, form validation, form generator, and so on. It is the most convenient and popular Python framework since it offers features of back-end functions, front-end interfaces, and databases.
Some popular examples of Full-stack Python frameworks include Django, Pylons, CubicWeb, and Giotto
Asynchronous Framework
The asynchronous framework empowers developers to work on large amounts of concurrent connections, databases, web servers, connection libraries, high-performance networks, and so on. It is gaining widespread popularity recently since the development of the Asyncio library.
Some examples of Asynchronous Python frameworks are Tornado, Growler, AIOHTTP, and Sanic.
How to Choose the Right Python App Development Framework?
The most essential factor before selecting the right framework for development is the nature, size, and complexity of the project. For example, you can opt for a micro-framework for a smaller project while considering full-stack frameworks for larger projects.
Also, here are some examples of frameworks based on the project’s nature.
Other factors that you can consider before selecting a Python app development framework for your project are
Scalability to handle traffic load when they run on several servers
Core libraries like authentication, data validation, URL mapping/rewriting, and templating.
Comprehensive documentation with tutorials, sample codes, blogs, and snippets.
Easy installation of the preferred Python framework.
10 Most Popular Python App Development Frameworks
Here’s a list of the most popular python app development frameworks:
Django
Django is a high-level development Python framework for creating both mobile and web apps that operate on a power ORM and follows the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern, making the code reusable and readable. It has built-in tools like URL routing/parsing, authentication system, form validation, template engine, and caching to ensure a swift development process.
Django follows the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) concept and focuses on rapid app development with a neat design. It is the first choice of developers for any Python project due to its versatility, customization, scalability, deployment speed, simplicity, and compatibility with the latest Python versions.
According to a Stack Overflow survey of 2020, Django and Flask are the most popular Python frameworks. Popular examples of apps built with Django include Instagram and Spotify.
Key Features of Django:
Enables execution of automated migrations
Robust security
Enhanced web server support
Comprehensive documentation
Vast add-ins with SEO optimization
Flask
Flask is an open-source, lightweight, and the best Python microframework with a built-in development server, debugger, HTTP request processing, file storage, and support for establishing client-side sessions. It has a modular and adaptable design and added compatibility with Google App Engine.
Besides Django, Flask is another popular Python framework with the Werkzeug WSGI toolkit and Jinja2 template. Flask comes under the BSD license and it is inspired by the Sinatra Ruby framework. Popular examples of apps developed with Flask include Lyft and Netflix.
Key Features of Flask:
Jinja2 templating and WSGI compliance
Unicode-based with secure cookie support
HTTP request handling capability
RESTful request dispatch handling
Built-in server development and integrated unit-testing support
Plugs into any ORM framework
Web2Py
Web2Py is an open-source, full-stack, and scalable Python application framework compatible with most operating systems, both mobile-based and web-based. It is a platform-independent framework that simplifies development through an IDE that has a code editor, debugger, and single-click deployment.
Web2Py deals with data efficiently and enables swift development with MVC design but lacks configuration files on the project level. It has a critical feature, a ticketing system that auto-generates tickets in the event of issues and enables tracking of issues and status.
Key Features of Web2py:
No configuration and installation needed
Enables use of NoSQL and relational databases
Follows MVC design with consistent API for streamlining web development
Supports internationalization and role-based access control
Enable backward compatibility
Addresses security vulnerabilities and critical dangers
TurboGears
TurboGears is an open-source, full-stack, data-driven popular Python web app framework based on the ObjectDispatch paradigm. It comes with a powerful ORM and supports intelligible templating.
TurboGears is useful for building both simple and complex apps with its features implemented as function decorators with multi-database support. It offers high scalability and modularity with MochiKit JavaScript library integration and ToscaWidgets for seamless coordination of server deployment and front end.
Key aspects of TurboGears:
MVC-style architecture
Provides command-line tools
Extensive documentation
Validation support with Form Encode
It uses pylons as a web server
Provides PasteScript templates
Falcon
Falcon is a reliable and secure back-end micro Python application framework used for developing highly-performing microservices, APIs, and large-scale application backend. It is extensible and optimized with an effective code base that promotes building cleaner designs with HTTP and REST architecture.
Falcon provides effective and accurate responses for HTTP threats, vulnerabilities, and errors, unlike other Python back-end frameworks. Large firms like RackSpace, OpenStack, and LinkedIn use Falcon.
Falcon has the ability to handle most requests with similar hardware to its contemporaries and has total code coverage.
Key Features of Falcon:
Intuitive routing with URL templates
Unit testing with WSGI mocks and helpers
Native HTTP error responses
Optimized and extensible code base
Upfront exception handling support
DRY request processing
Cython support for enhanced speed
CherryPy
CherryPy is an object-oriented, open-source, Python micro framework for rapid development with a robust configuration system. It doesn’t require an Apache server and enables the use of technologies for Cetera templating and accessing data.
CherryPy is one of the oldest Python development frameworks mainly for web development. Applications designed with CherryPy are self-contained and operate on multi-threaded web servers. It has built-in tools for sessions, coding, and caching.
Popular examples of CherryPy apps include Hulu and Juju.
Key features of CherryPy:
Runs on Android
Flexible built-in plugin system
Support for testing, profiling, and coverage
WSGI compliant
Runs on multiple HTTP servers simultaneously
Powerful configuration system
Tornado
Tornado is an open-source asynchronous networking Python framework that provides URL handling, HTML support, database support, and other crucial features of every application.
Tornado is as popular as Django and Flask because of its high-performing tools and features except that it is a threaded framework instead of being WSGI based. It simplifies web server coding, handles thousands of open connections with concurrent users, and strongly emphasizes non-blocking I/O activities for solving C10k difficulties.
Key features of Tornado:
Web templating techniques
Extensive localization and translation support
Real-time, in-the-moment services
Allows third-party authorization, authorization methods, and user authentication
Template engine built-in
HTTP client that is not blocking
AIOHTTP
AIOHTTP is a popular asynchronous client-side Python web development framework based on the Asyncio library. It depends on Python 3.5+ features like Async and Awaits.
AIOHTTP offers support for client and server WebSockets without the need for Callback Hell and includes request objects and routers for redirecting queries to functions.
Key highlights of AIOHTTP Python framework:
Provides pluggable routing
Supports HTTP servers
Supports both client and WebSockets without the callback hell.
Middleware support for web servers
Effective view building
Popular Cross-Platform Python Frameworks for Mobile App Development
Here are the two main cross-platform Python mobile app frameworks: Kivy and Beeware
Kivy
Kivy is a popular open-source Python framework for mobile app development that offers rapid application development of cross-platform GUI apps. With a graphics engine designed over OpenGL, Kivy can manage GPU-bound workloads when needed.
Kivy comes with a project toolkit that allows developers to port apps to Android and has a similar one for iOS. However, porting Python apps to iOS currently is possible with Python 2.7.
Features of Kivy:
Enables custom style in rendering widgets to give a native-like feel
Enhanced consistency across different platforms with a swift and straightforward approach
Well-documented, comprehensive APIs and offers multi-touch functionalities
BeeWare
BeeWare is another Python framework for mobile app development that enables developers to code apps in Python and cross-compilation for deployment on several mobile platforms and OS like Android, Linux GTK, iOS, and Windows.
The primary repository of BeeWare gets updated often with added commercial support including technical support, consulting, and training.
Features of BeeWare:
Enables code reusability
Provides consistency across apps with the native look and feel
Includes tools like Briefcase and Toga that are designed for precise functions
Agile developer community
Still Confused? Partner with OnGraph for Python App Development
Python has several app development frameworks and selecting the perfect fit can prove tough with several factors to note from budget and complexity to scalability, additional features, learning curve, and so on.
Fortunately, you can get the right pick for your project with OnGraph, a leading Python Development Company that offers tailored Python development solutions with proven expertise in various Python application frameworks like Django, Flask, TurboGears, Kivy, and Tornado.
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