Gluon For IT Architects & Enterprise Developers
The IT infrastructure and software that is in operation in a company is often a complex system containing many different components, accessible via public and private points, and maintained in a secure and controlled environment. All components that are added to this infrastructure have to follow some policies. Having mobile applications access critical or personal enterprise data and functionality is often a nightmare for the team responsible for managing the enterprise back-end systems.
Integration with existing enterprise architectures is one of the key benefits of using Gluon products. This gives enterprise developers and architects a huge time-to-market advantage when they create their mobile enterprise applications, and they don’t have to worry about insecure connections coming into their enterprise systems.
Integrating Gluon CloudLink
Using Gluon CloudLink, it is much more convenient for enterprise developers, architects, and operators to control the link between the mobile application and the enterprise backend. Gluon CloudLink is an enterprise component itself, that runs on a public cloud infrastructure or inside a company VPN.
Gluon CloudLink knows how to communicate with enterprise components in a secure and controlled way. Different authentication mechanisms can be used in order to make sure that Gluon CloudLink only uses functionality or accesses data that mobile users are entitled to use and see.
With Gluon CloudLink Dashboard, it is even possible to mock backend calls during development (until the backend is developed, or until the mobile app is released).
Regardless of the architecture used on the backend, it is possible to integrate Gluon CloudLink with it. Existing (reverse) proxies and load balancers can be leveraged and Gluon CloudLink can be configured to take advantage of these technologies. Other typical enterprise requirements such as data backup can be handled by Gluon CloudLink, or the task can be delegated towards the existing solutions.
Gluon CloudLink for Mobile
Gluon CloudLink talks with mobile applications in a mobile-proof way. It can deal with connection loss, offline usage, and different network connectivity properties. As such, Gluon CloudLink shields the mobile complexity from the enterprise applications it needs to connect to.
Using SDKs, Gluon CloudLink can communicate with native iOS/Android apps, or with apps created using HTML / JavaScript.
Gluon CloudLink is even more powerful when used in conjunction with Gluon Mobile, as there is an even deeper integration. Gluon Mobile apps are created using Java on the client, and come with additional functionality such as real-time synchronization between the UI and back-end data, and with the Java Security APIs.
Java enterprise architects can extend their existing enterprise architecture diagrams to also include mobile components. The same quality of service that is expected and requested for back-end components can be achieved for the mobile components.
Creating a mobile application does require communication with the team creating or maintaining the enterprise application. With Gluon CloudLink Dashboard, this communication can be facilitated. Enterprise functionality that is required for a mobile application, but that is not yet available or that is not suited for being used during development or testing, can easily be replaced by mock values.
Operations & Analytics
Using the operations and analytics capabilities of Gluon CloudLink Dashboard, operators can easily measure how often mobile applications are used, who is using the application, and how.
Gluon CloudLink offers numerous benefits, for example, in case a specific part of a mobile app is used a lot, a data and function cache can be used to reduce the load on the back-end. Rather than making a huge amount of requests that may overload an existing enterprise component, results can be (conditionally) cached in Gluon CloudLink. All relevant configuration is backed by usage numbers, so it is possible to optimally leverage the resources available on the back-end infrastructure.
Java Everywhere
Traditionally, creating an enterprise mobile application requires mobile and enterprise developers to collaborate. Different skills, different teams, and often different companies make it non trivial to achieve the best collaboration. However, a suboptimal communication between the developers working on the mobile app, and developers working on the enterprise components may have dramatic consequences for the behavior of the mobile app, the end-user experience, or the stability of the existing back-end infrastructure.
With Gluon, if the mobile application is created using Gluon Mobile, and the existing back-end application is created in Java, it is possible to have the same team of developers work on both the client as well as the server, as both parts only require Java development skills. Procedures and methodologies that are typically in use within Java enterprise companies (e.g. agile development, coding and pattern conventions) can be applied across the whole development chain from mobile to enterprise and back.
Next Steps...
Gluon CloudLink
Enable enterprise and mobile developers to easily connect their disparate services and apps together, enabling bi-directional communications between mobile apps, enterprise infrastructure, and cloud systems.
Gluon Mobile
Create iOS & Android apps using the latest Java 8 features. Build one application using one set of cross-platform APIs, and deploy to all platforms. Using Gluon, you can massively improve time-to-market for your apps.