iOS 12 is now live and represents the latest evolution of Apple over its decade long existence. Today, Apple’s App Store has over two million apps with over 170 billion downloads and over $130 billion in revenue. With iOS 12, developers are poised to offer a far superior experience for users compared to previous versions.

Here are the top iOS 12 application development features that enterprises can benefit from in the year 2019.

Siri Shortcuts Take User Experience to a New Level

Adoption of Siri is increasing at an exponential pace, considering the popularity of using voice technology for commands and simplifying user actions. True to form, iOS 12 makes Apple’s personal assistant more proactive, by allowing shortcuts.

Siri Shortcuts minimize the number of steps users take to accomplish everyday tasks. Siri intelligently pairs users’ daily routines with app functionality and suggests convenient shortcuts whenever available. Such shortcuts allow users to access the offered functionality or complete the task on hand from the lock screen or from search, without having to open the app.

Siri learns and predicts shortcuts through “donations.” Developers and users may “donate” shortcuts to Siri. Developers may use the Shortcuts API to donate the shortcuts they wish to offer their users. The prerequisite towards “donations” that meet the objectives is developers having an accurate understanding of the specific in-app actions that drive the most engagement, to make the relevant Siri Shortcut donations for the most frequently used features.

The flip side to making donations for shortcuts is handling user expectations. Users may, for instance, expect the app to have shortcuts for features where shortcuts are not technically possible. For instance, when the app requires user authentication before completing an action, such a feature cannot run in the background, as a shortcut.

Improved Core ML 2 Brings Machine Learning to Apps Easily

Core ML is a relatively new toolkit, but very critical, considering it now powers Siri, Quick Type, and Camera functions in iOS. Core ML allow developers to integrate machine learning models including text, barcode, face, and landmark detection, object tracking, enhanced image recognition, and other intuitive functionality into apps, easily. Core ML 2 comes with over 30 layer types and supports expansive deep learning capabilities. Developers may run on-device machine learning models without the need to analyze data across multiple servers.

iOS 12 makes it easy, simple and fast to integrate Core ML 2 with user-facing apps. Developers can leverage this handy toolkit to embed machine learning frameworks and models directly into mobile apps, with just a few lines of code, and with no extensive technical expertise required.

A New CreateML Framework Allow Lay Users to Create Machine Learning Models

Create ML, a new framework, allow developers to build machine learning models, with little to no machine learning expertise. Its similarity with Swift makes the framework familiar and comfortable to use. Create ML is also integrated into Xcode 10 playgrounds, making it easy to view model workflows in real time.

Developers can leverage the embedded natural language capabilities of iOS 12 to create in-depth models for advanced purposes such as regression, image classification, word tagging, and sentence classification, with just a few lines of Swift code.

Highly Intuitive ArKIT2 Toolkit Takes AR Experiences to a New Level

The improved ArKit 2 toolkit allows developers to create powerful and hugely incredible Artificial Reality (AR) immersive experiences. The toolkit enables developers to create engaging multiplayer games, presentations and more, allowing multiple users to view or play the AR enhanced simulations simultaneously. The ingenuity of the toolkit enables developers to offer users the option to save the AR experience and resume it at a later time, co-opt real-world objects into the AR experiences, and much more.

Interactive Push Notifications

iOS 12 changes the way users receive push notifications. Users now gain considerable control over the type of push notifications they choose to receive and how they receive such notification. Users gain access to message settings directly from the push notification interface, allowing them to opt-out of messages from the device’s lock screen. The enhanced downtime settings enable users to ignore push notifications entirely.

Such new functionality, however, creates a new challenge for developers. It is no longer enough to somehow coax the user to download the app. The obvious requirement to remain in the user’s scheme of thing is to provide better and highly personalized, stand-out content in the push notification. Developers can also add buttons and switches to the push notifications, to encourage user action, infusing interactivity to push notifications. Developers can also customize the font, image, and other elements of the push notification.

End of Password Annoyance with iOS 12 Application Development

iOS 12 offer developers access to Password Autofill. Users may leverage this new feature to create and save passwords, and then log in to incumbent accounts, with just a few taps, regardless of the device. The password autofill functionality saves the user’s password on the device, and users can now share the data across devices using the iCloud keychain.

The new password autofill option significantly improves the user’s onboarding process, offering the path of least resistance. Empirical evidence suggests complicated registration fields harm user acquisition efforts and increase user abandonment. Also, contrary to the first impression, the autofill option actually increases app security. Autofill suggests strong, unique passwords at the onset.

While features and options are aplenty in the new iOS 12, the key to successful app development is picking and choosing the right features, relevant for the project. A tie-up with competent professionals with a history of having developed successful apps helps.

Related Reading:  How to Empower your Business with an iOS Application

As we enter 19 years into the millennium, we find that Java has been running on 10 billion devices. The world is yet to witness innovative and user-friendly Java trends that will have a profound effect on application development in the year 2019!!

From peer-to-peer, open source and embedded to wireless and Juxtapose applications, Java has been the most popular programming language in the world of application development, with the highest rating of 16.746 percent, according to the Tiobe index!

A Retrospective Of Java Trends

Java so far has given a step-up to many of the light-weight programming platforms, as for Eclipse, Java Development Kit (JDK), the Oracle JDeveloper, as well as the Eclipse and other Open Source Applications. Let us take a look at the Java trends that made a breakthrough in application development.

• Emergence Of EE4J and MicroProfile Projects

The Eclipse Foundation has emerged with pride with the introduction of projects like EE4J and MicroProfile.

MicroProfile has provided insight into how a more open Java EE community could flourish. Both Java EE and Spring technologies benefited out of this rise, by bringing accelerated innovation.

• Emergence Of Kotlin  

Kotlin, the JVM-compatible programming language has caught the strong attention of the Java/ Android community. Its concise coding syntax and interoperability with Java have already made it a hit in the world of application development. Kotlin is first-class support for Android and is expected to additionally improve its use for mobile application development in 2019!

• Java SE 6 Updates And The OpenJDK 10 Release 

2018 also witnessed the updates of Java SE 6. These updates, however, are not publicly available as yet! The code restores are only available through the Java SE Support program and in Solaris 10’s Recommended Patchset Cluster and were mainly a couple of security fixes. OpenJDK 10 was released on 20 March 2018, with the adoption of certain new features.

• Ensuring Seamless Configuration Of Applications With Containers And Java Runtimes 

The Collection framework has managed to leverage more benefits of the use of containers and Java runtimes. This offers a seamless configuration of Java applications and consistent memory management.

• Frequent Alteration To Features – To Ensure A Well-Planned Application Development

Yet another major development was the introduction of a ‘six-month release’ interval.

This ensured frequent iterations and faster introduction of features to Java applications. These characteristics were decided to be made available through enterprising shops.

Technology Trends in Java – What To Expect In 2019 

Java is a programing language that can run on nearly any system (Thanks to the platform-agnostic JVM!), it has started to get easier to use and scalable than ever before! Below are listed the major trends that we could predict for the year 2019.

• Java Continues To Evolve – Java SE 10 Contribution 

Java is a programming language that is used by more than 9 million developers. It contains extensive libraries that shape the whole enterprise application development. With the release of Java SE 10, which was created in close collaboration with the OpenJDK Community, came several new added features. Java is also ranked as the #1 developer choice for cloud, with over 12 million developers and over 21 billion cloud-connected Java virtual machines!!

• Real-time Specification 

The Real-time Specification for Java (RTSJ) is into existence.

Java creator, James Gosling, and Sun’s real-time guru, Greg Bollella have described embedded systems as “the new frontier in which predictable execution takes precedence” over other system attributes, such as speed, bandwidth, and payload-carrying capacity. They are promoting real-time Java applications for embedded use! With the RTSJ, they have managed to solve the language and runtime issues.

• Project Juxtapose 

Sun’s JXTA open source platform has gained ample acceptance among developers.

Using Project Juxtapose, Sun hopes to influence standards that will govern future Web services development. With this, Java developers will be able to focus their capability to contribute more for Java application development.

• The Java Effect On Scripting Languages 

Scripting languages such as Jython, which is a complete implementation of the Python language, is coded in cent percent Java. Python, Perl, and PHP to name a few other programming languages are receiving widespread attention.

• Wireless Applications With Its Ease Of Use 

Wireless application development in Java has gained noticeable traffic due to its open-source platform nature. The reason being Nokia, the world’s largest mobile telephone maker, has committed to using the open source Symbian OS for all of its future handsets!!

Both kinds of Wireless Java applications, Local and Network applications, is more challenging because they are developed on one platform (such as Solaris or MS Windows) but deployed on a totally different one (such as a cell phone or PDA). It is a concern that, while emulators enable developers to do some of their testings on the development platform, they need to test and evaluate the application in a totally different environment of a live wireless network. This is however made easy!!

• Growing demand for Java developers 

Java being a statically-typed language, it is faster and easier to maintain with fewer bugs. It is also backward compatible, which means old versions of the language will still run perfectly even after new versions are released. This is a big relief for businesses who would otherwise worry about rewriting their code every time a new version comes out. Coupled with its portability, developers know that investing in Java will pay dividends for a long, long time.

• Mobile Application Development in 2019

In less than two years, the demand for mobile enterprise applications is estimated to rise five times faster!! Android currently dominates the smartphone market with 80.7% (compared to Apple’s 17.7%) and will continue its expansion! Java will, as a result, continue to be the driving force behind mobile application development trends!

• The IoT Era And Java

The Internet Of Things is among the latest development trends in Java! As of now, Java is currently one of the few technologies that are capable of adding life to IoT. It is indeed true that Java’s future lies in the Internet of Things.

Mike Milincovich, Eclipse Foundation strongly believes that Oracle will help to develop a definite end-to-end storage data solution in 2019!! Like the Kona Project that is currently working on Java APIs for embedded systems.

The Java ME platform allows vendors to build secure mobile enterprise applications for the Internet of Things. The language is supported by the Intel IoT platform!

With all these advanced features and development, Java continues to grow and evolve. Java has undeniably achieved the top spot among the most popular programming languages in the world!

AngularJS has come a long way since Google launched it in 2009. Today, it is one of the most widely used JavaScript frameworks. Here are some of the good reasons which make the framework so popular and powerful.

1. AngularJS Modular Architecture Makes the Framework Very Powerful

AngularJS has a Model View Controller (MVC) architecture, which is best suited to create dynamic web applications with rich content. The framework divides logic, process, and UI into separate modules, making development easy, simple, and faultless, while also improving code quality in a big way.

The modular architecture improves app architecture, and enhances flexibility and functionality, without compromising stability. It facilitates developers to create powerful workflows and achieve powerful results with little effort.

Developers working on a modular framework to create fully-responsive single page apps need to perform very few manipulations on JS and HTML, to achieve different results. It requires very few changes to ensure the page renders differently on various devices and platforms  Also, making changes means rearranging the modules rather than tweaking with the code itself, delivering better stability. Developers may also segment code parts, simplifying testing, updates, and maintenance activities as well.

2. AngularJS is Resource Rich

AngularJS is built on JavaScript and comes as a complete package, removing the complexity traditionally associated with JavaScript development. It offers everything the developer requires to get the app up and running. It is also very easy to co-opt third party libraries and packages, facilitating the presentation of data in a very appealing way.

The multiple templates, modules, and UI effects on offer, improve the all-important user experience considerably. AngularJS also offers several readymade versatile solutions, such as, UI routing approaches, which make the task of customization very easy.

Developers may extend the HTML templates by adding constructs to expand the HTML functionality, facilitating an advanced approach to manage components. In fact, it is possible to extend the HTML vocabulary by implementing features even during runtime

3. AngularJS Leverages the Power of Simplicity

AngularJS makes the development of dynamic web apps simple and easy.

It is possible to add AngularJS to an HTML page easily, using a simple coding script. App developers also need not add all the libraries when writing the code. They can add libraries later, making modifications and customizations very easy. The improved and declarative user interface allows developers to create eye-catchy user-experience across the app.

A normal application consists of more than 60 components, and the project soon turns messy. AngularJS makes it easy to manage and locate the codes for the developers.

The AngularJS code is easy to understand and easy to maintain as well. The ease and simplicity not only make development quicker, but it also means the client need not be tied to a developer who happened to develop the code initially. They can pick and choose any developer as required, depending on the specific nature of the problems they encounter midway.

4. AngularJS Facilitates Accelerated Development

Today’s developers are invariably hard-pressed for time. AngularJS is a godsend in the sense it offers a powerful tool to get the job done very quickly. The modular capabilities of AngularJS facilitate parallel development, reduce dependencies on other modules, and thereby accelerate the critical time-to-market.

The modular structure of AngularJS facilitates code reuse. Each created module remains either independent or dependent on each other, as per the developer preference, facilitating code reuse. Developers may co-opt their previously build components in a new application, sparing considerable rework. A simple copy-paste of an existing component into a new one will make all assets available automagically.

AngularJS also allows changing the behavior of the HTML tags, to create customizable and reusable tags. This not only makes the code more readable and quicker to create but also helps in developing a glitch-free web app

AngularJS also comes with real-time and in-built modules to support in-depth and functional testing for every constructed module. The modular structure means the segments and modules requiring testing may be processed distinctly, while the rest remains untouched.

5. AngularJS Taps into the Power of the Crowd

Popularity brings in its own benefits. It has ensured for AngularJS an active and vibrant community of developers, always ready to solve even the most advanced of concerns. Developers may easily tap into the power of the crowd to figure out the appropriate solution to fix pressing issues.

AngularJS is today the most popular framework to develop on-demand video streaming apps, apps with loads of dynamic features such as travel apps, weather update apps which require interactive display and real-time activities, interactive apps for user reviews and other purposes, apps with a lot of user-generated data, apps processing huge data loads, and more.  Some of the most popular interactive apps on the internet, such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Upwork.com, and others, are developed using AngularJS. Yet, the framework actually draws its strength from a very large number of small-scale developers, who find it ideally suited to their requirements.

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing our lives. What used to conjure up images of robots taking over the world, is now a household word. Recommendation engines are reading our minds, virtual assistants are listening to our voices, and AI insights are transforming our businesses. AI is definitely here, and this blog will show you how.

Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Today’s World 

Artificial Intelligence in its basic sense is defined as intelligence demonstrated by machines. In application, we can say that Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a machine to assimilate information and use it to make intelligent decisions. The attributes of problem-solving, decision making and other cognitive abilities that are associated with humans becomes artificial intelligence when applied to a machine.

The lifeblood of AI is data and its pulse run by an algorithm. Algorithms assimilate data and make sense of it through analysis. The resulting insight is what drives the decision making and problem-solving capabilities of Artificial Intelligence. Learning is by far the greatest attribute of Artificial Intelligence. The ability to learn and emulate human thinking and behavior is what makes AI nearly unstoppable. Its application in business is unmatched and is predicted to offer $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030!

Advanced Benefits of AI 

The benefits of AI extend to much more than recommendation engines and chatbots. The ability of AI to make sense of data collected through the Internet of Things (IoT) will be a game changer in every aspect of our lives. Gartner predicts that 20.4 billion “things” will be connected by 2020. Artificial Intelligence can analyze the data collected by IoT technology and enable it in ways that we cannot even imagine.

A classic example of this is Idemandu, one of the most talked about topic in the AI world since the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. In the words of its founder Pooya Abka, Idemandu is the first AI agent “that can understand customers’ service needs over voice, connect them to vetted service providers instantly, and learn about their personal preferences with time.”

Demonstrating what is possible with Idemandu, a Forbes article quotes this conversation:

You: “Hey Idemandu, could you ask my massage therapist to come to my place tonight preferably after 8? I’m feeling an annoying pain in my neck.”

Idemandu: “Sure, but your therapist is not available tonight. I found another very similar therapist who is available, would you like to see him at 8 pm tonight? If not, I can book your own therapist for tomorrow at 8:30 pm.”

You: “Okay, tell him to come tonight.”

Idemandu: “Okay, he’ll be there. I already briefed him about your pain.”

Imagine the possibilities with such an AI empowered assistant in every home and business. Google Duplex is another technology that is focused on helping us make hotel reservations. The Assistant will call your chosen restaurant, converse with the concierge, make a reservation for you, confirm with you if the reservation was successful or recommend another restaurant if it wasn’t!

The ability of AI and robotics to use concepts like AI-Augmented Contextual Analytics and Sentiment Analysis to better predict and direct customer experience was brought out in one of our recent blogs. You can read it here: https://www.fingent.com/au/blog/how-robotics-and-ai-can-improve-customer-experience-ctos-guide

How AI Is Transforming Various Business Sectors

The biggest impact of AI is in business. A survey conducted at the EmTech Digital conference revealed that respondents saw AI affecting these top three business outcomes:

1. improve and/or develop new products and services
2. achieve cost efficiencies and streamline business operations
3. accelerate decision-making

We can see this impact in nearly every sector in business. Here are three sectors where the impact of AI has been seen the most:  

Healthcare 

86% of healthcare provider organizations, life science companies, and health technology vendors are using AI technology, says a 2016 report from CB Insights. These organizations are projected to spend an average of $54 million on AI projects by 2020. Few areas where AI is being used in healthcare are:

1) Data management – Medical records and other patient data can be accurately analyzed, stored and used to provide healthcare businesses with the right information at the right time. Time-intensive report analyses can be automated, diagnosis can be fast-tracked, and treatment can be better administered.

2) Virtual Consultation and Care – Healthcare apps using AI allow doctors, patients and, caregivers to communicate and coordinate effectively.  Speech recognition, machine perception, and other AI enabled technologies, help to monitor the patient’s condition and administer effective treatment.   

3) Precision Medicine and Drug Discovery – By screening complex compounds and existing medicines for specific attributes, drug candidates for pre-clinical drug discovery and development can be rapidly identified. AI can also help detect diseases and predict hereditary health issues more accurately and help design precision medicines for specific genetic make-ups.

For more applications of AI in the healthcare industry: https://www.fingent.com/au/blog/5-ways-big-data-is-changing-the-healthcare-industry

Finance

The assimilation and analysis of financial data is where AI shows its true potential, but there is much more that AI can do in the financial sector. AI in the Finance industry reduces costs, saves time and improves accuracy and efficiency in all areas of Finance. Here are a few applications:

1. Security from Fraud – Security is the number one concern in the financial sector. AI helps in this by simulating fraud and cybercrime scenarios and coming up with preemptive security measures to combat security breaches. AI also helps in monitoring whether all security measures and regulations are being followed in the design of financial technology.
2. Wealth Management – AI engines help analyze data associated with wealth management and provide insights on how to provide optimal benefits to clients. Creating personalized and tax-optimized investment offerings for clients becomes much simpler and accurate with the help of AI. AI also helps mitigate the unpredictability of the stock market, by incorporating features like blockchains and distributed ledgers.
3. Digital Assistants – AI now assists with banking transactions and finance in nearly every household. AI assistants like Alexa, Siri and others are used to make financial transactions. Voice assisted banking is being made possible with banks like Barclays coming up with technology to enable money transfer through voice assistance software.

Read more about how predictive algorithms and AI will rule financial services:  https://www.fingent.com/au/blog/how-predictive-algorithms-and-ai-will-rule-financial-services 

Transportation 

AI is being used widely in the transportation sector and these are a few areas where it is making an impact:

1. Automation – While driverless cars are what comes to mind when we talk about AI and automation, the role of AI in automobile manufacturing is of equal import. Tesla’s automated manufacturing systems in its factories is an excellent example of the capabilities of AI in automobile manufacturing.
2. Cloud based conveniences – With the help of AI and cloud computing, automobiles are being packed with features like suggestions for gas stations when the fuel is low, favorite restaurants on the route and shopping reminders when approaching stores.
3. Intelligent Maintenance – Features like predictive maintenance, repair scheduling, and even sensors to detect medical emergencies for drivers can be enabled with AI.

Read more about how connected transportation will disrupt the world: https://www.fingent.com/au/blog/how-connected-transportation-will-disrupt-the-world

Keeping up with AI 

As you can see, the implications for AI in business is tremendous. It is important that businesses capitalize on AI-based technologies to keep up with the competition. Fingent has helped businesses from every sector to implement AI and drive revenue. Drop us a message if you have any questions!

Custom Software Development Vs Packaged Software – Tips to select the right solution for your business

Custom software and off-the-shelf solutions come with their own pros and cons. Organizations should assess their requirements closely and opt for one that suits their workflows and processes.

In this video, Dileep Jacob, Head of Operations at Fingent shares his insights on helping businesses choose between off-the-shelf and custom software offerings. He elucidates on how custom software and off-the-shelf solutions bring efficiency improvements within an organization. The benefits and limitations of the two platforms are dealt with to help pick the best choice for your business.

Conclusion

INFINCE was showcased at the  NY Business Expo held on October 30, 2018, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York. The New York Business Expo is an annual B2B trade show for small and mid-sized businesses. The expo brings together business owners and executives of small companies who converge on this day-long event with conferences, sessions, and networking.

As a part of the exhibition, Stephen Cummings, the Senior Vice President at Fingent, took to the stage to deliver a session on running profitable small businesses in the age of digital technologies. He elaborated on how small-scale businesses can be empowered with technology to become competitive and highly productive to thrive in today’s market.

“Every company today, one way or another, depends on information. Successful companies are resilient and adopt the right mix of technology and processes as their appetite for information technology grows. We’ll present ways a small business can take advantage of recent advances in technology to compete more effectively, even against much larger companies.”

                                                                                          – Stephen Cummings, SVP, Fingent

Small Businesses and Technology

Technology should remain accessible to businesses of all kinds, whether big or small. Stephen highlighted on this very aspect in his 45-minute presentation. Technology comes with its own jargons that prevent smaller businesses from taking advantage. However, the onus is on bringing technology to businesses with smaller investments and workforce, so that they can thrive competitively.  

There is a perceivable gap in adopting technology among small businesses. He attributes it to the increasing costs and lack of adequate tech support, Besides, on-premise IT infrastructure was dissuaded in favor of alternatives like the cloud, where small companies can get computing resources at reasonable costs. This is where Stephen put forth INFINCE, Fingent’s own enterprise cloud platform to the spotlight.

About INFINCE

INFINCE is cloud technology optimized for small businesses and a platform to run IT without any hassles. Stephen highlighted on some of the key traits of INFINCE that makes it different from other cloud platforms. Quick deployment is one such, where a company can set up and run INFINCE within minutes. INFINCE is also economical as it integrates optimal cloud configurations that cut down cost without sacrificing on performance.

INFINCE’s concierge IT services together with 24/7 support help small companies deploy the right technology. With it, small businesses get the advantage of a true enterprise cloud with all the functionalities at half the cost. In addition, the huge array of productivity tools and utility apps integrated with INFINCE helps automate marketing, improve customer engagement, open up collaboration across all levels and monitor workforce productivity through its streamlined dashboards.

About Fingent

Fingent is a global IT company specializing in developing custom software solutions that help businesses succeed. Starting operations in 2003, Fingent has grown over the years with more development centers spread across three countries. By building sustainable business practices across different industries, Fingent has become the preferred partner for leading enterprises like Sony, Johnson & Johnson, PwC etc.  The industry expertise combined with a robust workforce have enabled us to consistently deliver strategic solutions for a global clientele.

Find out more about the NY Business Expo here

AI continues to positively disrupt businesses around the world by empowering them with automation and data-driven insights.

In this video, Deepu Prakash, Head of Process and Technology Innovation at Fingent shares his expertise on deploying AI within the context of the modern business environment. He puts forth five crucial steps that you can begin right now to shift your company into an AI-driven model systematically.

This month we are covering how creating and fostering mobile-driven digital ecosystem help grow your customer base and provide services effectively. We will also be discussing how zero code platforms ease the pain of mobile app development. Lastly, we cover what happens when Machine Learning meets the business world.

Zero-Code Platforms Ease the Pain of Mobile App Development | Business.com

Enterprises find themselves plagued with issues like apps not performing as expected, apps scoring low on user experience and more. But with the benefits of zero-code being obvious to more and more businesses, more platforms are on its way to becoming mainstream.

Where Do You Fit in the Mobile-Core Digital Ecosystem?| Clutch

With the global proliferation of mobile users, enterprises must now focus on mobile-centric solutions. Such a rapid increase in global mobile usage points to a paradigm shift in the future of digital communications.

Mobile devices now act as the medium for facilitating all kinds of communications and services within an ecosystem. In addition, their improved connectivity options and versatility makes them ideal for all kinds of digital ecosystems.

When Machine Learning Meets the Business World| DZone

Let’s discover what happens when Machine Learning meets the business world. Take a look at how it will transform businesses as well as how it will minimize risks.

iOS App Development: Grow Your Business With An iOS App

With smartphones and tablets emerging as the device of choice for most people, apps are in a boom phase. Businesses are joining the bandwagon in a big way, rolling out apps that offer a world of convenience to their customers and employees alike. However, while doing so, they need to be wary of losing focus.

Apps are not just another channel to execute the entire gamut of organizational functions. The most effective apps serve specific purposes, and in the process empower the business.

Businesses also need to take a serious look at iOS application development, considering iOS apps have proven to be very engaging. An average iPhone user spends about 75% of her time on apps, probably owing to iOS applications being able to leverage the advanced features and functionality of Apple devices.

Here are some ways in which you can empower your business, using iOS application.

Roll Out Customer-Facing Apps

Customer facing iOS app is a good idea, considering Apple devices, such as the iPhone, has more than a 15% share of the total smartphone market. Such apps not only promote sales but help in engaging with customer better. Marketers may send out push notifications on key milestones, keep track of customer behavior, issue special offers when a customer is in the vicinity of a store, and do more. Customers may be given several self-service options, from keeping track of loyalty points to access of neutral product reviews, and more.

Empower Internal Teams

Imagine the world of convenience when the salesperson, on meeting with a potential or existing customer, pulls out the iPhone, opens an app that draws on data from the CRM, and gather all details about the customer, right from his purchase history to open inquiries, his preferred channels of communication, and so on. The salesperson also gets highly customized tools and relevant insights, such as market surveys, reports, and more. iOS apps facilitate similar empowerment across all functional area, be it accounts, HR, logistics, and other teams.

Forge Deep Relationship with the Ecosystem

More and more businesses seek to develop apps that help the company forge deeper relationships with their ecosystem partners, such as suppliers, contractors, and others. An app that makes explicit real-time stock levels and issue alerts would prompt suppliers to make timely deliveries, and improve the efficiency of their business as well. Contractors could log into another intuitive iOS application to get a list of open projects, deadlines, billing, and more. Channel partners could also gain from first-hand access to a ton of resources, and all the information they require, without having to make follow-ups, or spend time seeking information.

Facilitate the “Internal” Customer

An iOS app could likewise benefit the “internal customer” of the enterprise. Employees could, for instance, use an internal employee app to make leave requests, access their payroll details, stay updated on everything from upcoming team meetings to office parties, and more. Such apps eliminate complicated and time-consuming paperwork, be it filing trip sheets, expense reports, or appraisal forms. With the bulk of information readily available at their fingertips, employees can focus wholeheartedly on their core tasks, improving their productivity manifold.

Streamline Internal Processes

Many enterprise apps streamline internal workings and deliver big productivity gains. Employees starting a task could hook up to an iOS application that guides them through the specific process flow, helping them complete the task without being bogged down by doing things the wrong way, or seeking instructions. The app could also facilitate electronic submissions of documents and bills associated with the task, and make sure the next in line gets a notification to process the same. The benefits are multifold and include reduced paperwork, better productivity, faster turnaround time, and cost-cutting. Still better, employees are empowered to do the task from anywhere, at any time.

Promote “Smart” Work

Apps can help employees work smarter instead of harder. A case in point: the average employee attends 62 meetings a month, wasting a whopping 31 hours in the process. A collaborative app that enables managers to set targets, notify team members of their targets and deadlines, allow team members to submit their results, and do more can eliminate a good chunk of such meetings, and save considerable time. Such app based internal communications is also a good way to overcome silos, a big stumbling block for the free flow of information.

Transform Organizational Processes

Rolling out iOS applications could even eliminate certain traditional functions altogether. For instance, a training app that delivers instructional videos, handbooks, and other resources to the employee’s iPhone could completely eliminate the need for training sessions. The cost saved in terms of arranging training resources and the trainer’s time alone would repay the investment in the app many times over. Employees could also leverage such apps to unlock training and development opportunities not available before. The impact on employee performance and commitment are worth its weight in gold.

All the possibilities come to pass only when the app development is done right. iOS developers would do well to customize enterprise apps by giving it a distinct look and feel that resonate the brand image, offer appropriate options such as choice of languages, flexibility to enable or disable certain features, location mapping and more. The ability to customize the app and the presence of value-added features make the employee feel more connected and enhance the worth of the app.

Development of iOS apps is a far more straightforward process, compared to developing Android apps, as Apple provides standardized SDKs, APIs, and IDE needed for the application development. However, Apple’s app store discards apps that do not meet its guidelines, and as such iOS app development requires a much more concentrated and focused effort. A partnership with a reputable company to develop the iOS application helps pass the iTunes test and ensure the effort invested in the app development process does not go waste.

MEAN Stack – Performance Optimizations

In the past few years, MEAN stack went from ‘yet another shiny JS thingy’ to being a viable alternative to build high-performance web applications. We have quite a few medium to large apps running, that are MEAN.

One of our recent MEAN projects saw rapid growth in the user base (hundreds of thousands of users within the first few weeks), resulting in the system hitting the initially designed max-loads much earlier than anticipated. Hence we had to review the architecture and performance parameters to identify and fix the bottlenecks.

This blog is a quick rundown of the whats and hows in our initial performance tuning. Since the system was hosted in AWS, we used Amazon services wherever possible.

We implemented the following to improve the MEAN Stack project performance.

• Introduction of Load balancing

• NodeJS Clustering

• Amazon S3 as CDN

• Mongo replication

• Microservice implementation

Load Balancing

When it comes to increasing the performance of websites and web services, there are a couple of options:

• Improve the efficiency of the code.
• Throw more hardware at it.

Option two (throwing in more hardware) is the fastest and easiest solution to mitigate the performance woes.

Let us discuss how we can scale the Node.js server infrastructure using ELB, which stands for Elastic Load Balancing. ELB automatically distributes the incoming application traffic across a group of backend servers. The load balancer routes the incoming requests to the second server when the first server is busy processing other requests so that the end user does not experience any delay in getting the response.

There are three types of load balancers:

1. Application Load Balancer

2. Network Load Balancer

3. Classic Load Balancer

Application Load Balancer is best suited for load balancing of HTTP and HTTPS traffic and provides advanced request routing targeted at the delivery of modern application architectures, including microservices and containers. Operating at the individual request level (Layer 7), Application Load Balancer routes traffic to targets within Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) based on the content of the request. The socket forwarding is supported only in the application load balancer.  So we have used the Amazon AWS application load balancer to scale the server architecture.

The decision on how many servers to be used in the load balancer depends upon the traffic expected in the server and the number of concurrent requests the server needs to handle. Moreover, it also depends upon the system configurations in which the server is hosted such as the number of cores, memory, etc. We also need to change some web server(ex: nginx or apache) configurations as described here.

To discover the availability of your EC2 instances, a load balancer periodically sends pings, attempts connections, or sends requests to test the EC2 instances. These tests are called health checks. The status of the instances that are healthy at the time of the health check is InService. The status of any instances that are unhealthy at the time of the health check is OutOfService. The load balancer performs health checks on all registered instances, whether the instance is in a healthy or unhealthy state.

The load balancer routes request only to the healthy instances. When the load balancer determines that an instance is unhealthy, it stops routing requests to that instance. The load balancer resumes routing requests to the specific instance when it has been restored to a healthy state.

The load balancer checks the health of the registered instances using either the default health check configuration provided by Elastic Load Balancing or a health check configuration that the developer configures. In the second case, the developer has to give one health checking URL ({main domain}/health) to the IT team (who are doing the ELB implementation), which serves as the health status of the instance.

The health URL should be an API configured in Node.js program, which connects to the database and fetches some lightweight data to make sure that the instance is properly working i.e, it ensures the health of web server (Nginx), server (Node.js instance) and the database server (MongoDB). If this API could respond with the HTTP status 200 within a particular time (Say 2 seconds, which we can set in the load balancer configuration), the instance is marked as healthy, otherwise, it’s marked as unhealthy.

The load balancer periodically (Say 10 sec, which we can set) checks the health status of each instance (If we scaled to 2 servers – checks these 2 instances) through the corresponding health URL, to mark it healthy or unhealthy. So, when the next request comes, the load balancer routes the request to a healthy server instance which is available.

We are using the LoopbackJs – a Node.js framework, and we can put the following code in the folder called server/boot (In loopback framework folder structure) to create the health checking API URL. You can use your own API path if needed.

module.exports = function(server) {

 var router = server.loopback.Router(); // router module

  router.get('/health', function(req, res) {

       server.models.ServerHealthStatus.findOne({where: {status: 1}, fields: "status"}, function(err, healthStatus) {

           var response = "";

           if (err) { //failure

               res.status(400).send(response).end();

           } else {

               if (healthStatus) { // success

                   response += "Health: OK";

                   res.send(response); // http status: 200

               } else { //failure

                   res.status(400).send(response).end();

               }
           }
       });

 });

};

In this code, ServerHealthStatus is a model which is mapped to the mongo database collection (Similar to a table in MySQL) – ServerHealthStatus, which is having the following one document (Similar to row in MySQL):

{

     "_id" : ObjectId("5b2b7u5d1726126da11b1f98"),

     "status" : "1"

}

The model query tries to fetch this document, and sends the response – either 200 or 400 depending upon the query result. If the Node.js service is busy with processing other requests, it may fail to retrieve data or it may take more time to respond, which may exceed the time that we have configured in the load balancer timeout.

Since our server is distributed over multiple instances, firstly, we need to make sure that, the resources like images or files (user profile images, documents) are located in a place, which is accessible to all instances. Earlier, we may have been using the local file system for resource storage. Since the load balancer is implemented, there are multiple instances which need these contents to be accessible. So in order to solve this problem, it must be saved in a common place like Amazon S3.

After hosting the server, we need to do the load testing with some automated tools to make sure that the server can handle the specified number of concurrent requests and handle the traffic. If it fails, we need to increase the server configurations or the number of server instances until it meets the required standards. We need to periodically track the server for the CPU and memory usage while doing the load testing. After implementing the load balancer, we need to do the failover test as well.

Besides, we need to manually down one instance and check whether other instances serve the client request without any delay. Also, we must carry out the load testing by putting the load specified in the project requirement (say, 10K concurrent requests).  

Node.js Clustering

A single instance of Node.js runs in a single thread. To take advantage of multi-core systems, the user will sometimes want to launch a cluster of Node.js processes to handle the load. The cluster module allows easy creation of child processes that all share server ports. 

const cluster = require('cluster');

const http = require('http');

const numCPUs = require('os').cpus().length;

if (cluster.isMaster) {

 console.log(`Master ${process.pid} is running`);

 // Fork workers.

 for (let i = 0; i < numCPUs; i++) {

   cluster.fork();

 }

 cluster.on('exit', (worker, code, signal) => {

   console.log(`worker ${worker.process.pid} died`);

 });

} else {

 // Workers can share any TCP connection

 // In this case it is an HTTP server

 http.createServer((req, res) => {

   res.writeHead(200);

   res.end('hello world\n');

 }).listen(8000);

 console.log(`Worker ${process.pid} started`);
}

Amazon S3 as CDN

We were using the local file system for storing static resources (images, JSON files etc.). Since the load balancer is implemented, there are multiple instances which need these contents to be accessible, so, it must be saved in a common place. Amazon S3 was the automatic choice since we were already on AWS.

Mongo replication

A replica set is a cluster of  MongoDB database servers that implements master-slave (primary-secondary) replication. Replica sets also failover automatically, so, if one of the members becomes unavailable, a new primary host is elected and your data is still accessible. We have used 3 mongo servers. The entire process is clearly described here:

https://linode.com/docs/databases/mongodb/create-a-mongodb-replica-set

We will specify the server domain names or IPs of the mongo servers in the database connection URL like this:

mongodb://userName:password@mongo1,mongo2,mongo3/databaseName?replicaSet=rs0&connectTimeoutMS=180000&socketTimeoutMS=180000

Where mongo1, mongo2 & mongo3 are the mongo server names(which uses internal domain names, since all server exists inside one AWS account, admins can give user defined names mapped to IP address, which can be used instead of IP addresses in the mongo connection URL) which is pointing to different IP addresses.

In the loopback structure, need to change the connection URL in the  datasources.json (it will change to datasources.prod.json when we are in the production environment) file in the folder called server like this:

{
"db": {

   "name": "db",

   "connector": "mongodb",

   "url": "mongodb://userName:password@mongo1,mongo2,mongo3/databaseName?replicaSet=rs0&connectTimeoutMS=180000&socketTimeoutMS=180000"

 }
}

Microservices FTW

Splitting up independent functionality to a stand-alone service can help with the system performance a lot. Node, with its asynchronous, event-driven architecture, is well suited for this.

If there are complex operations that require lots of system resources (CPU, RAM) for a considerable amount of time, check whether these can be moved out as a microservice. So the load is not reflected in the main server(s). We can implement this functionality in an independent server which can be accessed via an API URL. The main server will trigger this API URL for getting this task done.

For example: Sending push notification functionality to mobile apps

Our app has an alert functionality, where notification gets sent to hundreds of thousands of devices at once. Sending notifications involves selecting the device token IDs from the database to those users who have to be alerted, which proved to be an involved task with the non-relational nature of Mongo.

Since the push notification sending functionality is a time-consuming process, the server load will be high during this process which may result in queueing other incoming requests. In order to solve this, we have separated the push notification functionality to an independent server as a microservice.

After implementing all these, we can monitor the resource usage of all the servers while performing the functionalities especially the complex functionalities.

Please note that this is in no way a complete list. Optimizations vary based on a number of factors from architecture and functionality to client preferences.