Real-Time Mobile App Strategy for Data a Priority in 2013
As more developers become familiar with the nuances of developing mobile computing applications, they are starting to get frustrated with the limitations of HTTP. The basic problem is that HTTP introduces a lot of network overhead that adds a fair amount of network latency to any mobile computing application.
As such, Kaazing is making a strong case for replacing HTTP with the Websocket transport protocol that is administered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which Kaazing had a major hand in developing.
According to Kaazing CEO Jonas Jacobi, now that HTML5 is gaining momentum with the rise of mobile computing, developers want to able to create single-page applications that are able to access applications in real time. Websockets can play a major role in improving the performance of those applications by providing a standardized way for the server to send content to the browser without being solicited by the client. This allows for a two-way, bi-directional sharing of data between a browser and the server to take place over a connection that remains open.
Jacobi says that approach also means less reliance on big servers to manage thousands of HTTP connections. In addition, Jacobi says it often eliminates the need to develop an entire tier of servers to host Web applications, which in turn results in an attack surface that from a security perspective is significantly smaller. The end result is a streamlined backend server environment that is simpler to manage, says Jacobi.
Mobile computing applications are still uncharted applications for most organizations. But what is clear at this point is that developing them the same way Web applications were developed is definitely not the way to go.
