Understanding application development
Application development involves creating software for computers, mobile devices, servers, networks, clouds, multiclouds, the internet of things (IoT), and any other technologies capable of running computer programs.
Common app development scenarios
The reasons businesses choose to develop their own software rather than use commercial, turnkey products are as varied as businesses themselves. Although initially more costly and time-consuming, building your own apps gives you more control over their features, scale, security, updates, and ability to integrate with your current IT assets.
Here are some of the more popular types of apps that modern organizations choose to develop themselves:
- New service offerings for customers such as productivity apps, expense reporting tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms
- Line of business apps to consolidate data from multiple sources and improve employee productivity
- Automated document processing to speed up business workflows and eliminate human errors
- Mobile workforce apps that enable remote workers to access the information and tools they need from the field
App development techniques
There are many ways to approach application development. Often the complexity, desired availability, and real-world uses of an app that a business wants built—as well as the resources available to build it—will dictate which development approach makes the most sense.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common app development methodologies:
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This is the classic application development methodology. Waterfall development can take several months, with the team or client that requested the build waiting to see the final product until it’s complete. A drawback of this method is that core functions and features of the product can be hard to change.
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This type of application development is more flexible than the waterfall methodology and is commonly used in software development. In agile programming, developers separate projects into features to be delivered in batches during a series of sprints throughout the project’s development process.
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A type of agile development, RAD supports quick, iterative software development and updates to product features as needed. Developers and clients work closely together to create and test product prototypes, with clients providing feedback and developers delivering quick changes throughout the process.
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Users who don’t have any coding experience can quickly build fully functional apps with no-code development software. These development platforms let users drag and drop pre-coded images, videos, forms, and other visual elements to easily create simple business apps without waiting for or hiring a developer or development team.
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Similar to no-code development, low-code development lets users with limited coding experience create apps using drag-and-drop interfaces and templates. Low-code development platforms are more customizable than no-code development platforms. This makes them appealing to both “citizen” and professional developers, who are increasingly using these platforms to reduce their time spent coding.
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Building your own apps from scratch—without the use of no-code or low-code development platforms—frees your team or organization to create the precise app with the precise features needed for your business operations. While building custom apps takes longer than developing no-code or low-code apps, custom apps can reduce the number of apps needed for a particular business function and are easier to update when business needs change.
App development languages and frameworks
The languages and frameworks available to app developers are legion. Here are a few of the most popular ones.
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is an open-source web framework created by Microsoft. Use it to build modern websites, web apps, and web services with the .NET platform. ASP.NET is a cross-platform framework that runs on Docker, Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Azure Spring Apps
Azure Spring Apps—formerly Azure Spring Cloud—is a fully managed service offered by Microsoft and VMware. It simplifies the app development, deployment, and management processes for developers who are building Spring Boot apps.
Java
Java is one of the most widely used programming languages around the globe. Spring, the popular open-source Java framework created by VMware, allows developers to build cloud-native web apps and enterprise systems.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a web programming language that has quite a few frameworks associated with it, including the libraries KnockoutJS and ReactJS and the frameworks Gatsby, Meteor, and Vue.
PHP
PHP may not be the most widely used programming language, but it has a number of highly regarded development frameworks, including CakePHP, Laravel, Phalcon, and Symfony.
Python
Python is a powerful web programming language that’s simple to use. Its frameworks include Django, which is popular for its sizable extension library, and the microframework Flask.
Ruby
Ruby is a web programming language that has many frameworks associated with it, including the popular Ruby on Rails, which boasts a large, supportive developer community.
7 building blocks of modern application development
1. Cloud-native architecture
Cloud-native app development involves building and running apps in and for the cloud. Such cloud apps are designed to take advantage of the scalability, performance, and continuous delivery of cloud computing environments, including public, private, and hybrid clouds.
Using cloud-native architecture allows companies to respond to fluctuating business needs and pursue new opportunities faster. Cloud-native apps are built by bundling code into containers (standard, portable packages of software) and deploying them as microservices (core functions that are built and delivered independent of one another), which makes these apps more portable and allows you to run them across environments with minimal modifications. This microservice architecture lets you modify an app’s distinct components without compromising the integrity of the entire app.
2. AI-powered user interface and app logic
Give users a richer experience and broaden the insights derived from your business data by building AI capabilities into your apps. For example, you can increase global customer engagement on your website by adding chatbots and language translation. You also can improve the business logic of your apps by incorporating AI into capabilities such as search, speech analytics, image analytics, and personalization.
3. Integration using out-of-the-box connectors and API management
Configuring your apps to work together—a process known as “integration”—can help your business access data more easily, boost productivity, and keep various systems up to date. Connectors—ready-made software designed to interact with other technologies and data—offer one way to do this. Lightweight APIs—which enable apps to easily grab and share data between services—offer another.
4. Fully managed databases
Modern databases need to be continuously available, highly responsive, and limitless in scale while providing advanced security features and quick access to rich data. Fully managed cloud-based databases offer all of these capabilities, allowing businesses to spend less time managing their databases and more time innovating.
5. Software delivery using DevOps practices
To keep pace with an ever-changing marketplace and satisfy customer demands, you need to be able to accelerate app builds and releases. DevOps practices bring together once-siloed teams to collaborate more effectively and rapidly on these software builds.
6. Maximizing automation in operations
Employing cloud automation can make your apps run more efficiently, simplify troubleshooting, and save your customers downtime, data loss, and other frustrations. Actionable alerts, routine checkups, logging, and availability are just some of capabilities you can automate in your apps when building them with a fully managed platform.
7. Multilayered security
Today’s business apps need multilayered security and real-time threat protection across all operations, infrastructure, and datacenters. Fully managed development platforms offer the necessary level of intelligent, built-in security controls for this.
10 best practices of app development
Successful app development entails much more than writing great code. To deliver the expected functionality and results, app developers must also give careful thought to the planning, deployment, and management aspects of their projects. Here’s how:
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Take the time to map out your projects before you begin development. This includes gathering details from your organization or client on all necessary features, functionalities, and other requirements.
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When hiring vendors and other partners to help with your app development, ensure they have experience that’s relevant to your current project. Choose a partner that communicates clearly and frequently to stay on the same page throughout the development process.
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If you’re buying app services, ensure that you understand what you’re getting. If you’re using a development platform, ensure that it best suits your needs. Consider how what you’re purchasing will integrate with your other apps and technology investments.
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Build your apps to be as fast, responsive, reliable, and intuitive to use as possible.
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Meet or exceed user expectations about the look, feel, and usability of the apps you build.
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Prioritize protecting your apps, users, and organization from accidental and malicious security breaches. Go out of your way to keep your users’ data private. And, stay current on regulatory requirements to avoid paying penalties.
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Give your users ample instructions and support so that they derive the most benefits from your apps. Put all the pertinent details—including app configuration, usage, and troubleshooting—in writing.
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Ensure that your users have as inclusive an experience as possible. Be mindful of the various disabilities, preferences, work styles, and constraints (for example, shared workspaces) that your users may have.
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If you’re developing apps rapidly and iteratively, test your prototypes as soon as possible. Continue testing throughout the development process to improve performance, functionality, and user satisfaction.
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Rather than consider your apps finished products, think of them as works in progress that will always have room for improvement. Your users and customers will thank you.
App development tools and services
The commercial software market is filled with products built to help simplify the modern app development process. Azure, for example, is a cloud platform designed to help you create applications that are scalable, reliable, and maintainable using the skills that you already have.
Following are some of the more popular Azure services:
Azure API Management
Publish APIs to developers, partners, and employees securely and at scale with this hybrid, multicloud management platform.
Azure App Service
Quickly build enterprise-ready apps for any device or platform and deploy them on a scalable, reliable cloud infrastructure. Plus, migrate ASP.NET apps from on-premises locations to the cloud.
Azure Blob Storage
Get highly scalable, secure object storage for cloud-native workloads, archives, machine learning, data lakes, and high-performance computing.
Azure AI Services
Add cognitive capabilities to your apps using APIs and AI services. Use customizable, pretrained models built with breakthrough AI research.
Azure Container Instances
Build apps quickly without needing to manage virtual machines (VMs) or having to learn how to use new tools—it's just your app, in a container, running on the cloud.
Azure Cosmos DB
Create high-performance apps of whatever size or scale you need with a fully managed, serverless distributed database that supports open-source PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Apache Cassandra.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Accelerate your app innovation with this fully managed, intelligent, and scalable PostgreSQL database.
Azure DevOps
Plan smarter, collaborate better, and ship faster with this set of modern services for development teams.
Azure Event Grid
Simplify your event-driven and serverless apps with a single service for managing the routing of all your events—from any source to any destination.
Azure Event Hubs
Stream millions of events per second from any device or any other source to create dynamic data pipelines and respond to business challenges as quickly as they arise.
Azure Functions
Build apps more efficiently—and help solve complicated orchestration issues—with this event-driven serverless compute platform.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Innovate, deploy, operate, and scale containers on managed Kubernetes.
Azure OpenAI Service
Use large-scale, generative AI models with a deep understanding of language and code to build cutting-edge apps.
Azure Service Bus
Implement highly reliable cloud messaging between apps and services, even when they’re offline.
Azure Service Fabric
Easily package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices and containers with this distributed systems platform.
Azure SQL
Migrate, modernize, and innovate on the modern SQL family of fully managed, highly secure, intelligent cloud databases.
Azure Traffic Manager
Route incoming traffic for high performance and availability—and improve the responsiveness of your apps.
Azure Spring Apps
Develop and run Spring Boot apps more easily with this fully managed service jointly offered by Microsoft and VMware.
Azure Virtual Desktop
Deliver a secure remote desktop experience to your users, no matter where they work. Plus, use this service with existing app virtualization environments.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Help protect your multicloud and hybrid environments with this cloud app security service.
