ENTERPRISE MOBILE BACKEND AS A SERVICE EVALUATION CHECKLIST

Transcription

1 ENTERPRISE MOBILE BACKEND AS A SERVICE EVALUATION CHECKLIST Considerations for choosing a secure, scalable, and reliable enterprise mobile backend platform

2 OVERVIEW Organizations often struggle with identifying core features and services to focus on when evaluating a mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) vendor. At the same time, because MBaaS platforms are central to an enterprise s mobile strategy, choosing a vendor that does not meet your organization s specific needs can be a costly mistake. From an app perspective, enterprise mobility is driven by four key components that work together to support effective mobile applications: data, identity, mobile-specific business logic, and engagement features. Organizations must be able to connect to their existing systems of record both on-premise and in the cloud, as well as to leverage these features as built-in to the MBaaS platform. From a platform perspective, enterprise IT requires MBaaS platforms to embrace security, scalability, and a self-service approach. Sensitive enterprise application data requires complete security both at rest and in transit, and backends must scale to accommodate both a steady increase in utilization as well as oneoff spikes in activity. Developers need to be able to start building apps against a backend right away, with minimal training, without being tied to specific platforms or SDKs, and without the need for potentially costly professional services engagements. These considerations demand a large set of features, and it can be daunting for organizations to perform a thorough analysis and identify the core components of an effective MBaaS on their own. To that end, we ve created the Enterprise MBaaS Checklist below. Of course, not all organizations will require every single component of this checklist, so we encourage you to adapt this to your own needs. And while we believe that Kinvey is the only MBaaS to offer such wide-ranging and robust support for enterprise mobile app needs, this document is intended to be a vendor-agnostic tool for evaluating all enterprise mobile app development platforms. Enterprise MBaaS Checklist 2

3 ENTERPRISE MBaaS EVALUATION CHECKLIST Functional Considerations Data Integration In addition to being able to persist data and files within the platform itself, a quality MBaaS platform will provide a seamless mechanism for connecting into both public and private systems of record and abstraction layers, such as: Public (Cloud) Public REST APIs Public SOAP APIs Private Cloud CRM Salesforce Oracle Microsoft CRM Sugar CRM CMS Drupal Wordpress Microsoft SharePoint SAP On-premise Oracle E-Business CRM Siebel Microsoft Dynamics Salesforce CMS Microsoft Sharepoint Drupal Wordpress Kentico DB Oracle IBM DB2 MySQL PostGres MongoDB SAP Oracle E-Business Abstraction Layers Kentico DB Oracle IBM DB2 MySQL PostGres Amazon RDS MongoDB API management Layer7 Apigee Mashery WebServices Custom SOAP interfaces Custom REST interfaces Enterprise Service Buses Enterprise MBaaS Evaluation Checklist 3

4 Identity In addition to being able to manage users and ACLs within the platform itself, a quality MBaaS platform will provide a seamless mechanism for connecting into both public and private identity services, such as: Public Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Google Private Cloud ForgeRock Lighthouse Gateway Ping Identity On-Premise Data Security In transit At rest Identity Data encrypted from app to MBaaS platform Data encrypted from MBaaS platform to your systems of record Data encrypted on client device (out-ofthe-box) Data encrypted on the MBaaS platform Data Encrypted on device, via the libraries Mature, enterprise-grade user management, access control, and ACLs Platform Security LDAP ActiveDirectory Oracle IDM Homegrown identity management solutions Enterprise-grade security features Firewalls Full-sandboxing Strict employee access control Private deployment options Auth Protocols OAuth SAML Compliance Per-user usage tracking for governance, compliance and auditing purposes LDAP Custom auth protocols Enterprise MBaaS Evaluation Checklist 4

5 Mobile User Experience Business Logic Support for hosting and executing arbitrary business logic Support for integrating externally hosted business logic Ability to run business logic based on rulesbased trigger Ability to run business logic during scheduled times Ability to run business logic 24x7 Client Library Feature Set Online/Offline support Pre-built, cross-platform on-device caching strategies (via client SDKs) Caching options within the platform itself Caching at connection point to systems of record Support for any frontend development platform Windows Direct REST API access (in addition to client SDKs) Messaging and Notifications Built-in push notification support APNS GCM Built-in support Built-in SMS support Other services Beacon support Integrations with common location data providers Foursquare Google Places Support for other common public services Payment processing Image processing Video transcription Prerelease support for major platforms ios Android JavaScript (HTML5) PhoneGap Titanium Gizmox Unity AngularJS Backbone.js Ember.js Node.js Blackberry Enterprise MBaaS Evaluation Checklist 5

6 Vendor Considerations Usage Analytics Users Active users Total users Device make and model Auth type address Name API calls Devices Activity history Sessions API Calls Collection type API version Device type Request ID Timestamp Device make and model OS version Client IP address Integration with existing analytics suites Enterprise-grade Services Optional professional services to help development on platform Self-Service Structure Architecture Self-service platform architecture (i.e. build your own backend integrations without professional services) Leverages open standards to connect to data and identity systems of record Includes pre-built connections to common enterprise systems Documentation and Training Complete, easy to use, public documentation of platform Sample code and applications provided Active community and public forums Training and consulting offered to ensure upfront adoption and proficiency 10s of 1000s of developers using the MBaaS platform world-wide Open Source Apache 2.0 License model Open Source client-side Libraries Open Source code to connect the MBaaS to enterprise systems Open Source sample apps Dedicated business resources to ensure overall health of the vendor-customer relationship Platform uptime SLAs Support SLAs Optional training and best practice guidance Enterprise MBaaS Evaluation Checklist 6

7 Reliability and Scalability SLAs Enterprise-level SLA options around platform uptime Enterprise-level SLA options around support Global support 24x7 phone and support Server Maintenance and Scalability Zero-downtime platform updates Dedicated DevOps team focused on performance and uptime Autoscaling platform to handle activity spikes Deployment Model Public cloud - multi-tenant Private cloud - single tenant Enterprise MBaaS Evaluation Checklist 7