Published : Jan 28, 2014
NOT ON THE CURRENT EDITION
This blip is not on the current edition of the Radar. If it was on one of the last few editions, it is likely that it is still relevant. If the blip is older, it might no longer be relevant and our assessment might be different today. Unfortunately, we simply don't have the bandwidth to continuously review blips from previous editions of the Radar.
Understand more
Jan 2014
Assess
The recent explosion of mobile-focused products, coupled with widespread adoption of 'Lean Start-up' approaches that put a premium on time-to-market for new ideas, has spawned an ecosystem of Backend as a service (BaaS) offerings that enable developers to focus on the client application while offloading backend concerns. Assess adding these services to your toolkit where fast and low-cost proving of a new product idea is important. Our usual advice on build/buy/borrow decisions still applies: be clear on which functional areas are strategic to your business and which are commodities. For potentially strategic areas be sure to plan a migration path that will allow you to use the BaaS provider to get started quickly, while avoiding friction when your architecture evolves and you need to migrate to owning this functionality and customizing it as a differentiator.
