A four-tier mobile engagement platform differentiates itself with a separate delivery tier to assist in solving key challenges associated with current delivery systems. The growing size of webpages is not suited to mobile browsing and can be detrimental for users’ experience with brands and apps alike. By using a four-tier architecture, dynamic apps with cache solutions can effectively scale with changing demand.
The Four Tiers
The client tier packages the unique capabilities of both the experience and the device requesting information—anything from various mobile clients and wearables, to objects within the Internet of Things. In this way, it frees developers from having to customize development to each mobile device, which allows them instead to focus on building out a single app, increasing productivity, and decreasing maintenance load.
The delivery tier takes the app- and device-specific information from the client tier to ensure that content is optimized for each device. It caches content so that in the event that a consumer were to lose service while using an app or mobile site they would still be able to have a rich browsing experience.
The aggregation tier manages the API layer and facilitates simple service composition. This tier connects app requests to the right services with bidirectional, real-time translation to the right data format for back-end and third-party systems, as well as client requests.
The services tier continues to maintain functionality for data both internally and externally. By architecting this layer to continuously deploy services, the rate of consumption does not affect the other tiers within the system. Without a strong services layer providing the foundation, and ultimately the execution for your application, maintenance and updating can be costly and difficult.
Embrace the New Platform
While initial mobile architecture may have mirrored the desktop, it is clear that if organizations don’t embrace new architecture they will be providing customers with a less than ideal experience. Developers have many options and tools available for crafting applications. Choosing the best tools for the experience, content, and devices they wish to deliver will remain critical.
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