News

Built.io Unveils Customizable Mobile Back-End

• By David Ramel
• August 9, 2016

Built.io today unveiled a new version of its Mobile Backend-as-a-Service (MBaaS) featuring what it claims is an industry first: a pluggable architecture allowing for greater developer customization.

The pluggability comes in Built.io Backend 3.0, which reportedly also features enhancements such as better performance via database indexing and better security through data set segmentations.

MBaaS is a growing developer space that refers to the simplified provisioning of back-end services to support mobile apps, providing services such as cloud database storage, push notifications, social networking integration and more. "Although a fairly nascent industry," Wikipedia says, "trends indicate that these services are gaining mainstream traction with enterprise consumers."

"Built.io Backend 3.0's pluggable architecture enables developers to integrate custom business logic directly into Built.io Backend's code base," the company announced today. "Developers can write plug-ins that call third-party services, query or write data to another system, or execute custom code whenever there is any API interaction, e.g. between the app and the back-end. This enables the addition of powerful, bespoke capabilities for any app created in Built.io Backend."

The company said its updated offering provides the convenience of proven, ready-make MBaaS along with the developer control usually found in manual, hand-tooled solutions.

"We love the new Built.io Backend pluggable architecture," the company quoted Brianna DeMike of customer ZenContent as saying. "It enabled us to create a custom backend stack tailored exactly to our needs. Because the core is so lightweight, our apps now run 3X faster in the cloud and with fewer resources needed than ever before."

Other highlights of the new release listed by the company include: data set segmentation for upgraded security; database indexing for better performance; direct database access via a new MongoDB SDK; and direct object data access, so data can be accessed in its raw format.

"Previously, MBaaS solutions were either all DIY or 100 percent pre-built," said Built.io exec Matthew Baier. "You had to choose between convenience and control. With the rise of microservices, we set out to build something more customizable for our customers. Now developers can create a best-of-breed backend stack with any combination of out-of-the-box functionality, custom code upgrades and third party enhancements."