SaaS Development – The Best Platforms
July 2 2018Choosing the right platform for your Software as a Service (SaaS) development project can be a complex and overwhelming decision. There are a myriad of technologies, development languages, front end and monitoring stacks to consider.
At Blend we specialise in helping our clients to choose the most appropriate platform for their SaaS development projects, and over the years we have gained experience in a wealth of different solutions that fit our clients exact requirements. Here is just a sample of the different technologies and methodologies that we recommend, deliver and support. It really does give you an idea of how difficult it can be to choose the best platform for you enterprise development project, especially when you’re striving to build a powerful and horizontally scalable solution.
| Database Technologies | |
| · Apache Cassandra | · AllegroGraph |
| · Hadoop | · PostgreSQL |
| · MySQL | · SDB |
| · Percona | · NoSQL |
| · Oracle | |
| Programing Languages | |
| · Python | · Objective C |
| · Java | · Swift |
| · PHP | |
| Frontend Stacks | |
| · Angular | · CakePHP |
| · Flask | · jQuery |
| · Django | · Bootstrap |
| Monitoring Stacks | |
| · ELK Stack | · InfluxDB |
| · ElasticSearch | · Grafana |
| · Logstash | · Telegraf |
| · Kibana | · Nagios |
| · Zabbix | |
| Continuous Integration & Deployment | |
| · Ansible | · Jenkins |
| Best Practices | |
| · Code Coverage | · Static Code Analysis |
| · Unit Testing | · Object Oriented Programming |
| · Automated Testing | · Code Reviews |
As you can see, the options for developing a SaaS platform need careful consideration. There are plenty of tools, libraries, frameworks and strategies out there, but where do you start?
In this article we will primarily focus on Apache Cassandra, one of our favourite database technology platforms. We will explore why you would choose it over other technologies and this in turn will outline some of the critical elements you need to asses before you choose the best SaaS platform for your project.
APACHE CASSANDRA
Cassandra is an open-source distributed database technology that is used to power many high profile SaaS products. The list of market leading companies that have used Cassandra include:
| Adobe | Best Buy | Home Depot | Siemens |
| American Express | Citrix Systems | Intel | Soundcloud |
| Apple | eBay | Microsoft | Target |
| AT&T | PayPal | ||
| Bank of America | Groupon | Yahoo |
Cassandra is extremely scalable and is a highly resilient database. It’s relatively easy to use and straight forward to configure, while being capable of resolving highly complex problems.
Here are just a few benefits of using Apache Cassandra for your SaaS Platform
- Straightforward learning curve – it’s a stripped back version of SQL
- Manage big data with ease
- Scalability for your SaaS platform as it grows
- Extensive monitoring capabilities – easily collect and review events, logs and metrics
- Plugin powerful and integrated applications built for Cassandra
- Superfast data read and write speeds
- Extremely tuneable
- Resilient and highly fault tolerant
- Multi cloud and distributed data centre capable
- A proven pedigree with worldwide recognition
- Massive community of developers and engineers
As you can see, Cassandra excels as a SaaS database platform, so you would think that your decision to use it for your project would be straightforward. However, it does not fit every SaaS project.
When would you use Cassandra?
Cassandra is based on NoSQL, so it inherently offers an excellent solution for problems where your project requires a very heavy write capability and you want to have a responsive reporting system for large datasets.
When is Cassandra not appropriate?
Cassandra does not provide ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) and relational data properties. For example the Financial Industry often requires ACID properties, so most often they select a RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) for their projects.
Although these two statements are not conclusive as there are workarounds in both cases, you can see how important assessing your SaaS technology stacks are when planning a SaaS application.
What are the features that make Cassandra a great SaaS platform?
- Extensive Transaction Support
- Data Distribution & Replication
- Flexible Storage Capabilities
- Operational Simplicity
- Great Architecture
- Fast Linear and Horizontal Scaling
At Blend we have the expertise to define the right technology and development strategy for your SaaS platform, that is fit for purpose, most economical and scalable. We hope this article is useful for your SaaS journey and we would love to help unravel what the best platform is for your SaaS project. Simply get in touch to talk to one of our experts today.