Azure Mythbusters: There’s no MBaaS for Mobile Developers
First of all, what is MBaaS? It means Mobile Backend as a Service, so it’s all of the cloud services we may need to power our mobile applications. Historically you may have used Paths.com or Firebase. Microsoft has its own MBaaS that you can use – Visual Studio App Center.
It’s our one-stop shop for building all of the services you need to create a 5-star app, with a gamut of important features for app development from building the app itself, to distribution, to running diagnostics and analytics.
If you’re developing applications, you need to build your app somewhere. We have build solutions within Visual Studio App Center, from iOS, tvOS, macOS – we’ve got you covered on Apple platforms with both Swift and Objective-C. This integrates in with your source repository – wherever you’re storing your code we should be able to integrate with it – and it’ll fire off the build automatically.
Once we have an application, we need to test it. Visual Studio App Center has a testing solution, where thousands of physical devices in a warehouse in Denmark can be used to test your app upon. We launch your application on each of these devices and simulate button presses, swipes and other gestures to see how it performs. You can also pick which devices to run your application on, so you can choose iPads only if that’s where you want to focus your testing.
This video, by Mike James, is the second in this new series that aims to bust some of the myths surrounding Azure technologies. With his expertise, you’ll be able to gain a deep understanding of MBaaS and the full Visual Studio App Center pipeline, as well as why the myth exists in the first place and what his recommendations are for you during app development.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of Azure Mythbusters! Until then, here are some useful resources for learning more on the topic of MBaaS and application development.
