Determining Feature Gaps Of Open Source Cloud Platforms for Mobile Backend as service (MBaaS) in Enterprise Mobile Applications

Abstract

The development of mobile applications for various platforms requires enormous amount of time and effort. Demand for high performance, high quality, cloud enabled, social media and security aware features in a limited time to market environment requires systems which solve the task of integrating the front ends with various back ends. The model of “Mobile Backend as a service” (MBaaS) offers a cloud server infrastructure with Application Programming Interface/Software Development Kits for development on various mobile, web and desktop platforms. This saves considerable amount of app development expense, time, as it eases up the backend development work, thereby enabling the developer to focus on functionality, its promotion and on the improvement of the user experience. Technical requirements and various features of both open source and commercial MBaaS products are compiled. The paper evaluates popular, open source products available for enterprise mobile, web and desktop applications, and documents the fundamental and common set of capabilities provided by MBaaS. The developers, technical architects and managers will benefit from the qualitative analysis of development, deployment and engagement services of each MBaaS platform. The constraints discussed can be a feedback to platform vendors and hence the observations can help the complete ecosystem of mobile application development.