Karen's keynote on trends for the future

I1. Social + mobile applications will drive the technology agenda

2. Cloud flexibility will overcome cloud fatigue 

3. Citizen developers will change the way we view IT 

4. Node.js will create the API-first world 

5. Applications will bring the power of IoT to the enterprises 

Progress solutions:

Web app dev

Mobile app dev

Data integration

Business rules

Application deployment 

Future of application development with pacific is Productivity + Control => Rollbase, mobile and Modulus 

Speed-up Enterprise Mobility: The rise of MBaaS

With the need for accessing data and applications anytime anywhere, enterprise mobility is an important requirement for any applications. It is not as simple as getting a mobile app equivalent for a web application. With different types of mobile operating systems (iOS, Android etc) and varying sizes of mobile devices, it is about developing an application that can run on all major platforms as well as suites well on different sized-mobiles and tablets.

Mobile enables many other features such as enabling push notifications, getting location information through GPS and use that for certain application logic etc. For example, with geo-tagging, the application can give more personalized and localized information to customer.

Solution to all such challenges is MBaaS. It stands for Mobile Back-end-as-a-Service. It leverages the power of Cloud to provide various services for enabling mobility fr enterprise applications. For example storage might  be in the Cloud and it will use certain exposed REST APIs to get the data as and when it is required.

A simple application that let explain this feature is "Dropbox" installed on your smartphone. Dropbox on a computer has entire data stored in the local disk. Whereas, ina  mobile, it just shows labels for the folders and upon clicking a folder, it fetches data form the Cloud for the user. This helps save the limited memory on your smartphone.

A high level architecture of MBaaS and how it fits in the Cloud stack is illustrated here. On top of Cloud infrastructure lies the PaaS. MBaaS might replace the entire PaaS or it could be lying on top of the PaaS layer as shown above. Most important services that MBaaS offers are:

1. Push notification services
2. User Management
3. Geo-location services
4. Social Media Integration 
5. Storage services
6. Analytics
7. Ads
8. Payments and e-commerce

With MBaaS offering such multitude of services, we can now build mobile applications that can run seamlessly across multiple mobile devices and mobile platforms. 

Predictions for 2014

Progress Software CTO Karen Tegan Padir is predicting five major technology trends that will shape the year ahead for the industry. She predicts that:

1. The Internet of Things Does Not Make For One Big Happy IT Family
2. Analytics Moves to the Forefront.
3. When It Comes to Apps, Everyone’s Paying Attention.
4. The IT Budget Shift
5. PaaS goes mainstream

You can see the details at http://tinyurl.com/prgspred 

Changes in software testing: Then and now

 In traditional software development mechanisms, we undergo a waterfall model for software development wherein the design and development happens first followed by the testing. In such cases there might be one or two releases in a year and that too a customer can choose to upgrade or not to upgrade to such new product updates. It arises a fixed set of test requirements which can be identified and implemented while the design and development phase happens.

The emergence of Cloud and other web 2.0 technologies made a revolution in the way we develop, deploy and use software. Now we have software available at our finger tips through the preferred browsers anytime anywhere. When you logout and login again in the same software, you might see that some update has happened seamlessly without your knowledge. These SaaS (Software as a Service) applications have very rapid release cycles and generally follow Agile model for software development.

This arises unique set of requirements for these kinds of new generation software developed, deployed and used on browsers. They are often available for use just by submitting your personal particulars such as name without the need for installation and set up. Moreover, pay for what you use and not for the entire software. You can decide a subset of functionalities that you may want to use in that software and then pay for that subset, not for everything. Further, it is interesting to note that, users of Cloud, share the resources available. i.e. one Cloud database may contain information from multiple clients. This is known as multi-tenancy.

For testing, this introduces a unique set of challenges such as security testing, multi-tenancy testing, elasticity testing, load testing, elastic scalability testing, live upgrade testing, browser compatibility testing etc. Added to the new requirements, these need to be performed in a very short release cycle. Finally, these software undergo rapid changes in the portals causing more headache for automation script maintenance.


Disclaimer: "The opinions and positions expressed are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Progress Software"