A Micro-app is a super-specialized application designed to perform one task or use case with the only objective of doing it well. They follow the single responsibility principle, which states that "a class should have one and only one reason to change." Micro applications help developers create less complex applications while reducing costs by breaking down monolithic systems into groups of independent services acting as one system. [1] . A good example of Microapps would be https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/legacy-archive/downloads/microapps.pdfthat provide single purpose action from Salesforce and over 40 applications on its workspace.
Micro apps usually are accessible on any device, display, or operating system
without installation on the viewer's device. To qualify as a micro app, the entity must:
Micro apps differentiate from traditional web or mobile applications by how the end-user interacts with them. Consequently, they can be embedded in websites or viewed online to bypass app stores and are typically built to provide a focused experience to the user. [2]
Micro apps are typically used for commercial purposes [3] to reduce development costs for projects not requiring the large scope of a traditional web or mobile application. In addition, they are often used to showcase in-depth information or enrich marketing material with interactivity. [4] Lately, micro apps are being used to boost productivity by providing quick tools to people to reuse best practices.
Users have been interacting with micro apps for a while with suites like Office365 and Google Workspace, where each one of their end-user services could be considered as a micro-app. All these micro apps share a unique identity manager to provide a unified user experience.
Replacing monolith systems with micro apps provide several advantages like:
Technologies like Kubernetes, or OpenShift, allow companies to replace their monolith and legacy systems with modular software taking advantage of micro apps on reducing costs and improve reliability and security.
There is a widespread misunderstanding between these two concepts, which is the key difference. Microservices is an architectural style that is systems-centric, meaning it decouples the presentation and data layer using web services APIs. On the other side, micro apps behave more as a super-architecture style (that embraces microservices among other types), and it is user-centric, meaning they decouple the whole monolith system onto modules that are designed to interact with final users.
Both architectural styles rely on modularity to provide high performance, scalability, and resilience.
Developing Micro apps requires a different approach than traditional software, and user experience is crucial. The following considerations are essential for switching to micro-apps. [5]
In computing, an interface is a shared boundary across which two or more separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans, and combinations of these. Some computer hardware devices, such as a touchscreen, can both send and receive data through the interface, while others such as a mouse or microphone may only provide an interface to send data to a given system.
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. SOA is a good choice for system integration. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products and technologies.
Maven is a build automation tool used primarily for Java projects. Maven can also be used to build and manage projects written in C#, Ruby, Scala, and other languages. The Maven project is hosted by The Apache Software Foundation, where it was formerly part of the Jakarta Project.
Workspace is a term used in various branches of engineering and economic development.
DX 200 is a digital switching platform currently developed by Nokia Networks.
Software multitenancy is a software architecture in which a single instance of software runs on a server and serves multiple tenants. Systems designed in such manner are "shared". A tenant is a group of users who share a common access with specific privileges to the software instance. With a multitenant architecture, a software application is designed to provide every tenant a dedicated share of the instance—including its data, configuration, user management, tenant individual functionality and non-functional properties. Multitenancy contrasts with multi-instance architectures, where separate software instances operate on behalf of different tenants.
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for one or more mobile devices, which can include personal digital assistants (PDA), enterprise digital assistants (EDA), or mobile phones. Such software applications are specifically designed to run on mobile devices, taking numerous hardware constraints into consideration. Common constraints include CPU architecture and speeds, available memory (RAM), limited data storage capacities, and considerable variation in displays and input methods. These applications can be pre-installed on phones during manufacturing or delivered as web applications, using server-side or client-side processing to provide an "application-like" experience within a web browser.
In software engineering, a monolithic application is a single unified software application which is self-contained and independent from other applications, but typically lacks flexibility. There are advantages and disadvantages of building applications in a monolithic style of software architecture, depending on requirements. Monolith applications are relatively simple and have a low cost but their shortcomings are lack of elasticity, fault tolerance and scalability. Alternative styles to monolithic applications include multitier architectures, distributed computing and microservices. Despite their popularity in recent years, monolithic applications are still a good choice for applications with small team and little complexity. However, once it becomes too complex, you can consider refactoring it into microservices or a distributed application. Note that a monolithic application deployed on a single machine, may be performant enough for your current workload but it's less available, less durable, less changeable, less fine-tuned and less scalable than a well designed distributed system.
A computer appliance is a computer system with a combination of hardware, software, or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a particular computing resource. Such devices became known as appliances because of the similarity in role or management to a home appliance, which are generally closed and sealed, and are not serviceable by the user or owner. The hardware and software are delivered as an integrated product and may even be pre-configured before delivery to a customer, to provide a turn-key solution for a particular application. Unlike general purpose computers, appliances are generally not designed to allow the customers to change the software and the underlying operating system, or to flexibly reconfigure the hardware.
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs or components to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build or use such a connection or interface is called an API specification. A computer system that meets this standard is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation. Whereas a system's user interface dictates how its end-users interact with the system in question, its API dictates how to write code that takes advantage of that system's capabilities.
Mobile Business Intelligence is defined as “Mobile BI is a system comprising both technical and organizational elements that present historical and/or real-time information to its users for analysis on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, to enable effective decision-making and management support, for the overall purpose of increasing firm performance.”. Business intelligence (BI) refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments or associated costs and incomes.
Canigó is the name chosen for the Java EE framework of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
OpenComRTOS is a commercial network-centric, formally developed real-time operating system (RTOS), aimed mainly at the embedded system market.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Networking is the Networking Products division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise ("HP"). HPE Networking and its predecessor entities have developed and sold networking products since 1979. Currently, it offers networking and switching products for small and medium sized businesses through its wholly owned subsidiary Aruba Networks. Prior to 2015, the entity within HP which offered networking products was called HP Networking.
A mobile workspace is a user's portable working environment that gives them access to the applications, files and services they need to do their job no matter where they are.
In software engineering, a microservice architecture is an architectural pattern that arranges an application as a collection of loosely coupled, fine-grained services, communicating through lightweight protocols. A microservice-based architecture enables teams to develop and deploy their services independently, reduce code interdependency and increase readability and modularity within a codebase. This is achieved by reducing several dependencies in the codebase, allowing developers to evolve their services with limited restrictions, and reducing additional complexity. Consequently, organizations can develop software with rapid growth and scalability, as well as implement off-the-shelf services more easily. These benefits come with the cost of needing to maintain a decoupled structure within the codebase, which means its initial implementation is more complex than that of a monolithic codebase. Interfaces need to be designed carefully and treated as API's.
Citrix Workspace is a digital workspace software platform developed by Citrix Systems. Launched in 2018, it is Citrix Systems' flagship product. Citrix Workspace is an information retrieval service where users can access programs and files from a variety of sources through a central application or a Web browser. In addition to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, Citrix Workspace services include Citrix Endpoint Management, Citrix Content Collaboration, Citrix Access Control, microapp capabilities, usage analytics, and single sign-on capabilities to SaaS and Web apps.
A headless content management system, or headless CMS, is a back end-only web content management system that acts primarily as a content repository. A headless CMS makes content accessible via an API for display on any device, without a built-in front end or presentation layer.
IBM MaaS360 is a SaaS Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solution offered by IBM that manages and protects any existing endpoint including laptops, desktops, mobile devices and apps, wearables, IoT and purpose built devices and allow protected, low risk access to company resources. IBM Security MaaS360 with Watson integrates with current security platforms owned by different companies. It’s AI powered analytics removes friction by reducing actions required from the device user.
The Friend OS or the Friend Unifying Platform is a network based Meta Operating System – a technology that can be used implementing a graphical user interface delivered through a browser, with a back-end that behaves like an operating system. This operating system connects resources and end-user software together in a seamless user experience that can be accessed anywhere. Additionally, it can be customized and prepped for any security requirements and is the first open source cloud operating system that aims to unify web applications and deliver an ecosystem for them to be used across all devices.