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30 MINUTEN Welcome! How to build your Mobile App Competence Center? Webinar Series.. #6 Back-end and Integration Arnold Wilts, Project Manager Peter Broekroelofs, CTO

Agenda

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•  A Mobile Maturity Model for Your App Center - Summary •  Introductory Case stories

•  Back-end development in mobile maturity context •  How to build a mobile-ready back-end? Our approach

•  Integration and API first •  How to integrate with existing systems of record? Our approach

Companies struggle in transition to strategic mobility

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Opportunistic Strategic Mobile-First

The majority of companies A small minority of companies Very few, if any, companies

A reactive IT department

Mobility Center of Excellence: C-level attention, self-empowered lines of business, a responsive IT department

Low

Organization-wide strategic focus

Medium High

Most of the time customers only. Some-times siloed employee classes, typically field and sales forces and applications addressing basic informational interactions

Limited extendibility of architecture

Addresses large subsets of both dedicatedly and occasional mobile workers and more sophisticated offerings to customers. Transactional driven

Affects all mobile workers and internal activities and sophisticated customer engagement

Common architecture for mobility

Common architecture for mobility and integrated into most IT business processes

Siloed point solutions

Sophisticated administration and management tools; voice, data and integrated communications services

Integrated platform capabilities and ubiquitous connectivity

Few formal policies with decisions heavily user-influenced

Policy-driven approach for management, security and compliance

Policy-driven and 'factory' approach to mobile innovation, re-casting business workflows

Proportion of companies

Mobile strategy center of gravity

Level of business model innovation

Users

Architecture

Technologies

Policies

The Opportunistic Market in Transition

Experimentation is giving way to a more thoughtful approach to mobility. Organizations are taking a step back and rethinking how best to maximize the value of mobility. 3  

1  "The early days of mobile adoption were characterized by experimentation and unfettered departmental demand for mobile apps. These apps, funded by the business, tend to be natively developed, and are built quickly and cheaply and often without coordination with the rest of the organization or a view to long-term sustainment and value maximization.

2  Such experimentation and piloting are necessary for organizations to test and learn about mobility, with the lessons learned that enterprise mobility can show significant business value, and that not embracing enterprise mobility will put the organization at a competitive disadvantage.

Source:  Gartner,  2013  

Quick Introduction to our Mobile Maturity Model

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Disclaimer J

How to grow your mobile maturity?

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1.  What is your Mobile Strategy Maturity goal? 2.  How are you performing currently? 3.  What are the gaps? 4.  Define gaps that matter most 5.  Prioritize and close the gaps

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1.  Strategy and Organization 2.  Initiation and Design 3.  Security and Management 4.  Development and Maintenance 5.  Test and Distribution 6.  Backend and Integration

Mobile Maturity Model - Assessment Axes

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Mobile Maturity Model - Level determination

   

OPPORTUNISTIC

Developing

Aware

STRATEGIC

Optimising

Practicing

MOBILE FIRST

Leading

   

   

   

Opportunistic Strategic Mobile First

Strategy & Organisation

Practice observed 1 ✔ x

Practice observed 2 ✔ x

Initiation & Design

Practice observed 1 ✔ x

Practice observed 2 ✔

Development & Maintenance

Practice observed 1 x

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Mobile Maturity Model - Gap Identification

Chapter 6:

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Backend & Integration

• Data aggregation • Data filtering & sorting • Image scaling

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App performance?

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DATA and PERFORMANCE are KEY

THIS makes the app!

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Real life case 1: Wegener

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•  Poor app performance

•  Too much data calls

•  Too much data to fetch

Real life case 2: Springer

Advanced app solutions | 15

•  Editorial process carved in stone

•  Images for web and print

•  Scaling images through image server

Backend & Integration

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Backend Opportunistic Strategic Mobile First

Systems are made (mobile) available on a need basis

Information is made available based on a strategic need

All systems are made available with device agnostic interfaces and API's

Practices Observed

Wearables add context

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Internet of Things: the mobile as remote control

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The new dynamics of enterprise IT

The goal of new-age computing

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Generating relevant and rewarding experiences

through combination of historical knowledge and situational context

This requires:

Systems of interaction

characterized by deep integration from apps in the internet of things

to back-end systems

Why mobile optimising?

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•  Performance of devices

•  Bandwidth (Edge, 3G, 4G)

•  Data usage (flat-free internet access)

What is mobile optimised?

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What is mobile optimised?

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<item> <title>‘Wakker Dier misleidt publiek over melkgeiten’</title> <description>HENGEVELDE - De actiegroep Wakker Dier misleidt het publiek met zijn acties. Dat is de stellige overtuiging van de melkgeitenhouders José en Gerrit-jan Veelers uit Hengevelde. Na varken en plofkip is in de nieuwste campagne van Wakker Dier de melkgeit aan de beurt. </description> <link>http://www.newspaper.nl/regio/hof-van-twente/wakker-dier-misleidt-publiek-over-melkgeiten-1.4392376 </link> <guid isPermaLink="false”>2376</guid> <pubDate>06-06-2014 10:04</pubDate> <updated>06-06-2014 10:04</updated> <content_type>Article</content_type> <fields> <field keys="tag" label="wakker dier" format="string">wakker dier</field> <field keys="tag" label="boerderij" format="string">boerderij</field> <field keys="tag" label="veehouderij" format="string">veehouderij</field> <field keys="tag" label="hengevelde" format="string">hengevelde</field> <field keys="tag" label="melkgeit" format="string">melkgeit</field> </fields> <author> <item> <name/> <email/> </item> </author> <enclosure type="image/jpeg" url="http://www.newspaper.nl/2376!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_340_240/image-4392385.jpg" length=""/> <related/> </item>

{ "id": "2376", "title": "‘Wakker Dier misleidt publiek over melkgeiten’", "intro": "HENGEVELDE - De actiegroep Wakker Dier misleidt het publiek met zijn acties. Dat is de stellige overtuiging van de melkgeitenhouders José en Gerrit-jan Veelers uit Hengevelde. Na varken en plofkip is in de nieuwste campagne van Wakker Dier de melkgeit aan de beurt.", "pubDate": 1402041840, "modDate": 1402041840, "imageUrl": "http://www.newspaper.nl/2376!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_340_240/image-4392385.jpg" }

Raw input Output to app BACKEND

What is mobile optimised?

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•  Integral solution – focus on UX

•  Which screen requires which kind of data

•  Minimise requests

•  Minimise data in requests/responses (e.g. JSON instead of XML)

•  Data caching on app

•  Data protection!

Approach Wegener

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•  Dashboard contains multiple sections, separately requested •  Dashboard configurable by users

•  Optimising by having 1 request with all data for dashboard •  Backend collects all data and sends it back in response

•  Image scaling performed by backend

Approach Elsevier

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•  Multiple products – ScienceDirect. JACC, HealthAdvance, … •  Elsevier web optimised API’s (complex XML)

•  Not suitable for mobile •  Backend renders HTML from XML and caches

•  Minimal app – backend calls

•  Backend inserts extra data towards Elsevier

Approach Formula 1

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•  Live timing application (retired)

•  Huge amount of data from track

•  Backend for data minimising

•  Broadcast stream

•  During race >+100k concurrent users

•  CPU load below 10%

Mobile first strategy

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•  Features required

•  Kind of data

•  Determine required API’s

Web first strategy

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•  Features required •  Which interfaces are currently available

•  What is the performance of those API’s •  Determine mismatch between

APIs versus app ID/GD

•  Develop a proxy backend!

Backend and Integration

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Integration Opportunistic Strategic Mobile First

No specific focus to optimize backends for mobile. As-is standard interfaces are used (XML, SOAP)

Most important interfaces are made lightweight (JSON/REST). Proxy services used for optimal mobile interfacing

API First strategy

Practices Observed

API First

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•  The right definition of business interfaces

•  Design interactions device agnostic

•  Benefits: Simplicity, Consistency and Structure

API management:

•  Publish

•  Monitoring and control

The transformation of mobile middleware

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System integration

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•  Content (text, images, video) and performance are KEY

•  Enrich apps with high value, good quality and relevant content

•  Ensure app performance by:

•  Introducing a mobile optimised backend

•  Optimising current API’s

•  Caching strategy!

•  Determine technical contract for API’s to enable automated validation

Do’s

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•  Minimise data requests

•  Minimise data transfer

•  Keep in mind available mobile bandwidth

•  Backend is responsible for data processing

•  Use progressive loading for large data collections/sets

Dont’s

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•  Image scaling

•  Data sorting

•  Data filtering

•  Data aggregation

Mobile app = data presentation!

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Are you interested in a Mobile Strategy Maturity Assessment?

anette@service2media.com

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Next Webinar:

August 28th

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#7. App Monetization