The development world is yet to come to terms with the shutdown of Parse, the popular MBaaS service by Facebook. While the official closure is not before January 2017, the clock is certainly ticking by. It would make perfect sense for developers to assess their business and tech infrastructure and then determine what type of Parse alternative will need to be adopted in Parse migration, to match the fantastic work being carried out by Parse till now.
Parse USP
For app developers, Parse offers a suite of services, features, and functionalities that help them concentrate on their design, development, and testing work rather than worrying about the environment in which it will be done in. The reliable service was the go-to tool to help tie up backend resources nicely to the overall app development project so that the development team can add more value to the development process. Right from advanced analytics and hooks to push notifications, it had built-in capability for getting these functions developed in swift time.
Its value didn’t go unnoticed. Facebook acquired Parse in 2013 and armed it with a slew of possibilities that further eased the application development process. This has resulted in over 600,000 apps using this service to aid in their development process. However, only within 3 years of acquisition Facebook announced the shutdown of this MBaaS without providing any concrete reason and one year of the grace period for Parse migration.
What next?
While we cannot judge Facebook for its strategy behind this step, we would rather believe in exploring ways and means to come out unscathed from this decision and maintain operationally and business continuity. This can be done by selecting the right alternative for Parse migration that can add the same (if not more) value to the entire app development process.
When you get down to looking at alternatives you need to look at a few options
- Migrate to another BaaS
- Migrate to individual services
- Customize backend completely
Let’s look at these options in more detail
- Migrate to another BaaS – This is the most reliable option for Parse migration. Even Parse recommend this as a very stable way to transition all files, data, and features implementation and ensure near zero compatibility issues. Most of the cutting edge BaaS systems like Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, or Heroku have a similar structure to Parse and hence not much of learning will be needed to come up to speed with the new BaaS for Parse migration.
However, developers might need to catch up with the slight difference in the various BaaS, so that they can continue adding to the clients’ business. Let’s take a look at the two most commonly used technologies – Heroku and AWS
- Heroku – The company offers the flexibility needed to ensure that the Parse migration is glitch-free and goes smoothly. For clients who want a secure MBaaS solution with minimal server-side overhead, Heroku comes across as an ideal choice. At a very nominal cost, the solution delivers flawless performance when it comes to maintaining the server, database, or take care of automatic backups and reboots.
The other key advantage offered by this technology is that as and when the organization grows to the next level, it need not look for other alternatives in this stage of growth. Using the existing Heroku deployment, you can easily flourish, as Heroku is extremely flexible.
- Amazon AWS – AWS provides a comprehensive management console that helps a developer to design, develop, test, and release an application. In fact, AWS can also help in tracking your app’s performance post its release. This all-around competency of the Amazon-backed hosting service offers a lot of advantages such as:
- High degree of accessibility
- Its distributed architecture prevents a very degree of latency and thus let your system remain available at all times, minus downtimes.
- If you need to scale up by volume or by configuration, AWS offers immense cost effectiveness
- Since it is hosted on the cloud, your IT team can save substantially as they don’t have to invest in costly servers or arrange for its upkeep in-house. They can simply use the resources required on cloud and get high convenience in resource planning.
- Utilize individual services similar to Parse: This needs to be used only as a stop- gap arrangement till you don’t get hold of an appropriate BaaS. The strong Parse community online can suggest of viable servicing options for individual modules like-
- Push notification: Firebase
- Analytics: Google Analytics
- Custom backend: If you have the human capital within your organization’s IT team, then it will be viable to completely overhaul the backend system. While the time, efforts, and cost may be a bit higher initially, the effort will be worth it in the long run. However since most of the emerging companies cannot allocate budgets for this initial setup and overhauling, this can work only in limited scenarios.
Go ahead, take your pick from among the various alternatives to Parse migration and ensure that your hosting doesn’t get plagued by Parse not being available after January 2017. If you need professional expertise in getting your Parse migration done smoothly, then you can connect with our team at Mobisoft Infotech and make sure that your new backend alternative remains as productive as Parse was.
