What Is Features as a Service?
Think about any app you’ve ever used. You could probably log in, chat, upload media, or pay for something. At some point, those were all just bullet points on a project manager’s “feature list.”
In fact, those have been bullet points on every project manager’s feature list, because they’re software application commodities — every app has some of them. And, right now, the industry makes software engineers build them over and over.
One Feature, Lots of Stuff
Under their hoods, app features like authentication aren’t just one thing. When most users log in to their apps, they probably have a choice between email and password or using social login through a third-party provider like Apple, Azure, Facebook, or Google. For developers, that means plugins, REST APIs, and back-end consoles. Plus, they need a database to actually store user information. Then they have to consider the edge cases and what-ifs. What happens if a user loses Internet connection? Do they get logged out automatically? Are their access tokens refreshed after a set amount of time?
Then there’s maintenance.
Software changes. A lot. In June of 2021, Meta deprecated using embedded browsers for Facebook Login over security concerns. They gave development teams an ultimatum: Change your implementation by August, or your users just won’t be able to log in with Facebook anymore. It turned out, on that short of a timeline, nobody would have been able to log in with Facebook anymore, and Meta extended its deadline to October. That gave developers the time they needed to make the necessary updates.
But in software engineering, app-breaking changes and near-miss catastrophes are par for the course. That time, it worked out for everybody.
Okay, well, not for them (actually, I think that was a different time Facebook Login changed how it worked).
And it’s not just the cloud integrations development teams have to monitor. New operating systems and device hardware introduce exciting enhancements… but also bugs and version incompatibilities.
It shouldn’t be surprising that 77% of global tech leaders surveyed by Rimini Street said the biggest obstacle to IT innovation was basic app maintenance and support.
Changing App Dev with Features as a Service
Features-as-a-Service was created to solve these problems. Each Onymos Feature like Chat, DeepLink, or Media is the “lots of stuff” I talked about earlier. Under the hood, they have everything they need to just work out of the box in an Ionic, Angular, React Native, or other kind of app — and a simple API makes them easy for software engineers to integrate and use.
Onymos Features also come with a subscription to receive regular updates and improvements (with security as a top priority). That’s the service part of Features-as-a-Service.
All of this means enterprises can use their most valuable developer resources (the developers themselves) to focus on building the real innovations and business value that separates them from their competitors. When our customers use Onymos Features, we’ve seen them build their apps faster and build them bigger.
“We began working with Onymos to leverage its innovative Features-as-a-Service platform. It allowed our internal engineering team to accelerate our development and focus on engineering the business features, rather than reinventing the wheel and building all the basic feature requirements for our app. For instance, we were able to add a restaurant menu selection feature ahead of schedule because of all the time saved using Onymos Chat.”
-Manish Rathi, CEO of JoyRun (acquired by Walmart)
Now, the only thing left for you to do is to see what the hype’s all about… and try Onymos Features for yourself.