I am still processing the recent news of Amazon Mobile Services. Over time Amazon is continuing to push into the BaaS world, to compliment their existing IaaS, and PaaS ecosystem. Amazon is a cloud pioneer, and kind of has the first mover, 1000lb gorilla advantage, when it comes to delivering cloud services.
At this moment, I just thought their choice of core services was extremely interesting, and telling of what is important to mobile developers:
- Authenticate Users - Manage users and identity providers.
- Authorize Access - Securely access cloud resources.
- Synchronize Data - Sync user preferences across devices.
- Analyze User Behavior - Track active users and engagement.
- Manage Media - Store and share user-generated photos and other media items.
- Deliver Media - Automatically detect mobile devices and deliver content quickly on a global basis.
- Send Push Notifications - Keep users active by sending messages reliably.
- Store Shared Data - Store and query NoSQL data across users and devices.
- Stream Real-Time Data - Collect real-time clickstream logs and react quickly.
You really see the core stack for mobile app development represented in that bulleted list of backend services for mobile. I'm still looking through what Amazon is delivering, as part of my larger BaaS research, but I think this list, and what they chose to emphasize, is very relevant to the current state of the mobile space.
It is kind of like steering a large ocean vessel, it takes some time to change course, but now that Amazon has set its sights on mobile, I think we will see multiple waves of mobile solutions coming from AWS.
I'll keep an eye on what they are up to and see how it compares to other leading mobile backend solutions. Seems like AWS is kind of becoming a bellweather for what is becoming mainstream, when cit omes to delivering infrastructure for mobile and tablet app developers.
