Cloud Application Architecture Patterns

Chapter 8. Cloud Application Clients

A cloud application must provide consistent functionality to users accessing the application from a variety of devices.

Today’s frontend client world is challenging. Your user community will often be spread across multiple devices from multiple vendors, operating across several different potential technology platforms such as smartphones, tablets, or laptops. When you want to provide the best user experience on each device and need the interface to be best-in-class on each platform, it is difficult to build a single application in one form factor that serves the diverse user community at all points in the interaction lifecycle.

Perhaps the best example of this that we have encountered took place at a major airline. In this airline, there are three major vehicles for customer interaction: the airline’s mobile application, the airline’s website, and the check-in kiosks available at the airport. What we saw is that the same users would sometimes use all three points of interaction; they would buy tickets on the website and check in on the mobile application but print bag tags from the kiosk! Of course, there was significant functional overlap between all three points of interaction; you could, for example, print a boarding pass at home or at the airport or display a mobile boarding pass in the mobile application.

Introduction to Cloud Application Clients

This chapter explains how to design applications that can be accessed by users via not just ...