How to use Cloud and Serverless Technologies to Build Successful Startups | TechVision Unleashed - Backend

Today we bring to you a highly debated and well-received revolutionary technology that boosted a huge wave of startups. What about the one you are working on?

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Allow Radu Molnar, a highly skilled and talented developer at Linnify, to introduce you to the main aspects of MVPs, Cloud, and Serverless Technologies you must know if you’re building a digital product startup.

By understanding how cloud and serverless technologies revolutionize the startup landscape, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts can make informed decisions, optimize their operations, and unleash their full potential. 

‍The important aspect at the beginning of a startup is taking the right risks that do not get your product sunk, but take it out of mediocrity safely. Here’s where MVPs come to play. 

Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) are an iterative development approach that allows startups to test their ideas with real users while minimizing risks. 

MVPs are stripped-down versions of products or services that include only the core features necessary for validating assumptions and gathering feedback.

They help validate ideas by testing assumptions and defining the market demand you want your product to respond to. For real. No hunching or guessing.

So what’s important when building an MVP from a tech standpoint?

Tools

Selecting the right development tools can greatly impact the efficiency and effectiveness of building an MVP. Some essential tools to consider include version control systems like Git, project management tools like Jira or Trello, and collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

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Language

Choosing a suitable programming language depends on the project requirements, team expertise, and scalability needs. The language choice for an MVP should weigh more towards speed of development and facilitate changes that may come up, rather than looking only at performance and stability.

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At the same time, in your decision making about programming languages, look for the ones which have strong communities that build up open source libraries.

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Popular languages for web & backend development include JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and Java or C#. 

For mobile app development, languages like Swift (iOS) or Kotlin/Java (Android) are commonly used.

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Frameworks

Utilizing frameworks can significantly speed up development and provide essential features out of the box. Frameworks offer pre-built components, libraries, and architectural patterns, saving time and effort. Some popular frameworks include Next.js and Angular for frontend, Django and Ruby on Rails for backend, and React Native for cross-platform mobile app development.

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Infrastructure 

Setting up the right infrastructure is crucial for the seamless operation and scalability of an MVP. 

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Cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provide scalable and cost-effective solutions. Consider infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings for hosting servers, databases, storage, and other resources.

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This article will focus on infrastructure, but you should know and get informed about choosing the appropriate Database Management System, ensuring the security of your MVP via tools like firewalls, IDS, and SSL. And of course, the scalability of your product. Think about it like a plan for future growth. But with this, we’ll touch base below. 

What you need to know about infrastructure -> It is a recurrent payment - usually monthly

What are you actually paying for?

You’re paying for a cloud provider:

• to get rid of the responsibility of managing the servers on-premise or on colocation and 
• to have the option to much more easily deploy your product all around the world.

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Your gain from this investment?

• No server maintenance,
• No internal tooling for deployments/complex infrastructure management,
• Deployment regions on all major continents

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So, cost-effectiveness: hardware and human resources.

And less of a headache. ;)

What are the advantages of using Serverless Services?

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Let me start off by clarifying what Serverless means.

‘Serverless is a cloud computing model in which the cloud provider manages the infrastructure and automatically allocates computing resources as needed to run applications.’ (Source at the end)

Simplified Management 

As opposed to Kubernetes or Virtual Machines usage, you will no longer need specialized staff to design and maintain the architecture. (such as DevOps)

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In the cloud, the management is taken care of in terms of instances and resource allocation when it comes to: 

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Cost-Effectiveness 

As opposed to Containers or Virtual Machines, you only pay for what you use, and drop the costs for the time your app is idle.

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With serverless technology, you pay for the time when the code is executed. 

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On the other hand, for the IaaS services, one needs to pay for the time the resources are allocated for usage. Even when the app is idle, and the resources are not actively used.

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Automated Scaling

There's no need to setup any autoscaling mechanisms by yourself. They are provided by the cloud services, and only need a couple of parameter configurations, like the number of minimum and maximum instances, or the down- and upscaling rules. Intuitive and easy. 

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Also, the default configuration offered by the cloud provider comes as ready-to-use.

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So the next time when you’ll have a spike of users, your servers will easily know what they need to do to accommodate them within your digital product. 

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But,

Be aware that this will raise the costs and here serverless comes in and saves us with instances maximum count.

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Serverless computing has emerged as a revolutionary paradigm, this is why there is so much to talk about - we’re barely scratching its surface. 

‍And because we’re dedicated to growing a community of passionate developers, consider this your official invitation to an event yet to be launched.

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Be one of the first ones to pre-register to the upcoming Backend Meetup. 

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*The article I mentioned above.