Forem: 2muchcoffee

Mobile Development. React Native Roadmap.

2muchcoffee — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:17:21 +0000

How often did you get an idea to create something of your own, interesting and new, something that you have never done before in your life? You turned on the heat, began to look into how to implement it, but finally burned out at the stages:

When you started collecting information and realized that you did not have enough knowledge/tools/money, etc.;
When you started implementing the idea, faced difficulties and gave up at the very first stage;
Having completed the first steps, you faced new problems, then stopped since there were lots of new and unknown.

Sounds familiar, isn't it? On our Earth, there are more unfinished paintings, unfinished pools, unfinished birdhouses than amateur masterpieces of art, happy children in pools and well-fed birds.

In 90% of cases, all incomplete business was associated with incorrect planning or with a lack of awareness of the whole picture. You simply did not recognize and were not prepared for the difficulties that you faced. You only knew your next step, but did not know how much you still have to go. Having realized that, there was no motivation for further movement.

Who'd have thought that more than one brush would be needed to paint a picture, that there could be stones under the ground, and a hole for birds should be cut before you hang the birdhouse on a tree. You saw the hill, reached it, and only then saw the next one. Demotivating, isn't it?

You can find video podcast of this article on our YouTube channel👇

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LK47nPTwy4

Like the post? Visit our blog for more useful content.

How to Improve Website Performance?

2muchcoffee — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:54:44 +0000

Your website may have the best products, services, and content on the web, but if your site’s performance is off, you’re hurting your brand while driving users to your competitors. Even if you have the most brilliant website redesign (as we had recently), you are not safe from the poor web performance.

Website performance optimization is a big deal, so we’d like to share our story and how we managed to improve our website performance. Our website had an average indicator (50-89) according to Google Lighthouse. We aimed to reach above 90 and get to the green zone due to the technical optimization of our website. To fix this issue we generated reports, analyzed them, and applied best practices of web performance optimization. As a result, our metrics increased from 62 to 93 and continue to improve.

How to Measure Website Performance?

What is the website’s performance? Website performance or website speed is how quickly a browser is able to load fully functional web pages from a given site. If you want to increase the number of people visiting your site and keep them on your website longer once they get there, you need to analyze your web performance metrics.

What website performance metrics are important? There are a few universal metrics which make sense for all sites to measure and optimize for:

Load time is how long it takes for an entire webpage to appear in the browser, which means every HTTP request has to be fulfilled. Almost every page on the Internet will require multiple HTTP requests because multiple resources need to be loaded in addition to the basic HTML of the page.
Page size is the total file size of all the resources that need to be loaded for the page to function. Page size impacts how long it takes for a browser to load the page, and it can also have a big impact on mobile users, who may be paying for data as they load webpages.
Time until the first byte, which is how long it takes until the server responds with some information. Even if your front-end is blazing fast, this will hold you up.
Time until first contentful (and meaningful) paint, which is how long it takes for key visual content (e.g., a hero image or a page heading) to appear on the screen.
Time until interactive, which is how long it takes for the experience to be visible, and react to my input.

We suggest using Google Lighthouse, the tool that gives you access to all the technical performance metrics of any URL. These are much more sophisticated metrics than “how long did it take to load”, and, perhaps more importantly, have a user-centric focus. Detailed tests measure load time, accessibility, and provide recommendations on how to improve the metrics. Improving these metrics should correlate directly with user satisfaction, which is important for SEO ranking.

How We Improved Our Website Performance

After the redesign of our website, we pay close attention to measure the key metrics in Google Lighthouse. The tool executes five audits for performance, accessibility, best practices, SEO, and Progressive Web Apps. The audit gives you an extended overview of the quality and performance of your mobile websites as well as your desktop version.

After running the test, we got a report with a score and some recommendations about problems to tackle. According to the Lighthouse report our Performance was 62, Accessibility - 98, Best Practices - 100, SEO - 91 in April. Since we had an average score only in the section of Performance, we aimed to improve precisely this indicator.

After five months and tech optimization from our side we reached the following results:

What to Look For in the Lighthouse Report?

The website must be fast and it must feel fast. People should not wait to consume content. Users have to interact with your website’s content ASAP. Plus, Google announced that page speed and page experience are ranking factors for SEO, so to fix these issues is a must-have element in the optimization process.

In the brackets, we identified how the Performance score is weighted for each metric. So, metrics with heavy percentage scores have a bigger effect on the overall Performance score.

While measuring your site’s performance, the tool uses the following metrics:

First Contentful Paint (15%): FCP measures how long it takes the browser to render the first piece of DOM content after a user navigates to your page. This includes images, non-white canvas elements, and SVGs but excludes stuff inside an iframe.
Speed Index (15%): The Speed Index measures how quickly content is visually displayed during page load.
Largest Contentful Paint (25%): The LCP is all about how long it takes for the largest content object (for instance, an image or a block of text) to load. This is one of the most important new metrics. Here, having a good score means users perceive your site as loading quickly.
Time to Interactive (15%): TTI measures the time it takes from loading the page to when it is capable of reliably responding to user input quickly. The page might look quick to load, only to find that pushing some buttons doesn’t do anything yet.
Total Blocking Time (25%): The TBT measures the time between the FCP and TTI where blockades can happen, preventing responsiveness.
Cumulative Layout Shift (5%): The CLS looks at the number of layout shifts that happen during the full loading process of the page. Every time an element jumps around on the screen from frame to frame, this counts as a layout shift.

Things We’ve Done to Improve Web Performance

1. We structured the website using lazy-load Angular modules. As a result, by lazy-loading a module we can tell Angular to load it only when its route is being visited, meaning that its weight won't affect the size of the application.

2. We learned the need to use third-party libraries in the application. However, it was decided that there is no sense to include the additional library if its functionality can be reasonably implemented using JavaScript/Angular.

3. For image optimization, we used HTML- element with the specification of different files for different breakpoints. This approach allows the browser to always download the optimal image (e.g. in webp format if supported or png). Also, SVG-sprites were widely used to combine and load small icons at once.

4. We started to use lazy loading images. In order to apply this technique, we used IntersectionObserver API. When rendering on the server, all images are replaced by lightweight placeholders that are replaced with real images when the user scrolls and the image actually become visible. If the user never scrolls, an image that is not visible to the user never gets loaded.

With lazy loading, you are reducing the number of images that need to be loaded on the page initially. Lesser resource requests mean lesser bytes to download and lesser competition for the limited network bandwidth available to the user. This ensures that the device is able to download and process the remaining resources much faster. Hence, the page becomes usable much sooner as compared to one without lazy loading.

5. We stopped using the Angular / flex-layout library. During the webpages optimization, we discovered that the document downloaded from the server contains an excessive number of styles. At that point, when the document size was 1.1MB, the styles were more than 900Kb. We discovered that each HTML-element, to which the library directives were applied, created a unique CSS-class which include styles added by the directive along with the cross-browser prefixes. Since most of the styles were duplicated, we decided to stop using this library in conjunction with SSR. To speed up the migration from angular/flex-layout to regular flex-layout css rules, a set of CSS classes was created, similar in appearance to the previously used directives (for example, fx-layout__column, fx-layout-align__start-center—-gt-md, etc ... ). The whole process was quite easy to implement, but it still was very time-consuming to choose the best fitting option.

6. To reduce the amount of code, we reused gradients on SVG icons. At the same time, sprites with such icons were presented as separate Angular modules. This approach made it possible to create a better-structured code and include component sprites in the DOM tree of pages (icons from the sprite were used through the tag). The second advantage was that the document downloaded from the server already contains icons (you don’t have to make an additional request to download them).

7. compression middleware was applied on the server-side to gzip-compress the server responses. This allowed the browser to fetch resources in a compressed form, which reduced network traffic when loading pages. This optimization gave a significant boost to the website performance - for example, the volume of downloaded resources on the main page decreased from 3.2MB to 1.2MB (by 166%).

There are things that need to be sorted out, like:

Minimizing the Main Thread Work.

At the moment, it is not possible to minimize the Main Thread Work, since the Bootstrap applications, even using server-side rendering, are still quite a resource-intensive process.

The impact of the third-party code.

Third-party scripts can significantly increase the load performance of the webpage. Loading and initializing analytic scripts (Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Twitter Website Tag) has a strong impact (10 - 15 points) on Google Lighthouse performance score. We assumed that reducing the impact of the third-party code would hugely benefit the overall web performance score. To test our hypothesis, we temporarily removed analytic scripts from our website. However, there were no significant changes in the indicators whatsoever.

Why Does Website Performance Matter?

Performance plays a major role in the success of any online product. Poorly performing websites that render slowly in a browser can drive users away and negatively affect the product reputation. Basically:

1) Web performance impacts traffic

Slow load speed can turn the visitors away. When people come to your website, they need to be able to actively engage with your website in a meaningful way. They are able to find what they are looking for fast. Page load speed is one measure of web performance that visitors can quickly relate to.

All of the following are technical tweaks that can help you to improve page load speed and improve the overall performance:

Reduce CSS and JavaScript files;
Minimize image file size;
Leverage browser and server-side caching.

So, whatever the purpose of the website, web performance is going to be critical in helping you achieve the highest volume of traffic and sign-ups.

2) Web performance increases conversions

A great web performance increases conversions. The efficiency and profitability of your website are directly connected to the number of leads that are generated by your business. Google’s Impact Calculator tools show the instant results on your website performance. There are many things you can do to increase conversions on your website while still delivering a satisfying user experience to the people who visit your site. To increase the conversion on your website you can add CTAs, update the main navigation, make checkout seamless, etc.

The dev team can help you to optimize every page of the website for a better user experience, which will in turn create more conversions and profitability for your business.

3) Web performance affects user experience

The third reason web performance matters are because it is about the user experience. The design of your website is critical to whether your audience will enjoy using your website or not. The nature of your business can help determine what your user experience focus should be.

What do you anticipate your customers needing, struggling with, or wanting to do most often on your site? How can you improve that experience, making it faster and easier? Asking questions about how your customers will interact with your site to get the products or services you offer can help you find answers that improve the user experience. For example:

Are there language barriers between your customers and your website? Would adding multiple language options to your site make things easier for your customers?
Are there complex processes that could be simplified?
Are you making each interaction your customers have with your brand on your site as personal as possible? Could adding chat, IM, prominent phone number, and more help?
Are you keeping users’ information safe? Do you tell them that on your site? Are you making that clear to them?

4) Web performance improves brand awareness

SEO is a constant struggle for every brand. Many factors come into play to determine search engine rankings. One of the newer ranking factors is page performance. Google drops pages in the rankings that have slower load times. You might have highly relevant content, but Google will slide you down in the rankings for a page that has better performance.

You also need to consider the impact of pogo sticking in your rankings. If users click on a link and then go back to the search results page, they are pogo sticking. When a user hops into your content and jumps right back out, search engines assume that your content wasn’t relevant to the user’s search query. Search engines want to make sure the content they rank is spot on for the user’s search, so when the user bounces, they guess that your content isn’t any good for the search terms. Therefore, the more users that pogo stick on your content, the lower your site sinks in the rankings for the keywords. Many different things can cause pogo sticking beside irrelevant content such as pop-up ads and hard to find content.

You want people to find your content, and to do that you need your page to make it to the top of the search results. Therefore, for better SEO and improved brand awareness, you need to keep an eye on performance. You are not only striking out on one ranking factor but two: page speed and content relevance. Backlinko also reports that performance is a key factor when users use voice search on devices like Google Home.

In short, your site should be designed around the needs and wants of your ideal audiences. Keep your customers at the center of everything you think, say, and do with your website through questions and solutions that answer them will keep you well on your way to delivering an experience that is satisfying for them and profitable for you.

Like the post? Visit our blog for more posts like this one.

Building GraphQL API with NestJS

2muchcoffee — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:13:28 +0000

I have developed web applications for more than a decade. I'd known the good times when `Web` was built around `PHP`, the dawn of new masters of the industry. In those days I was impressed by the pace of development for new frameworks and their features. But, mostly, I was disappointed by existing approaches of building large, reliable, and what's really important, scalable applications and APIs. Frameworks keep appearing at a fast pace. But most of them, aim at totally different principles, copying attitudes of existing analogs. Most of them have too raw responsibility rules, which, basically, allowed people to `express` themselves in a way and a manner that sometimes can't be or, even, should be, predicted by colleagues. I was seeking to find a framework, which will be flexible enough in a place, but offers predictable and straightforward responsibility rules, so scaling of the application won't raise maintenance effort geometrically.

At the moment when I decided to switch to `Node.js`, to pursue modern technology stack, performance reasons, SPAa development, better tools to work with instant messaging and etc, I was looking for the solution that can replace old frameworks in terms of reliability and scalability, but bring modern development technologies in my life. That's how I found `NestJs`, which is, basically, is higher abstraction level framework on `Express`, which, is turn, built on top of `Node.js`.

Introduction

NestJs is a rising star among `Node.js` frameworks, growing popularity it owes to modular, scalable and robust architecture. Initially inspired by `Angular`, it combines elements of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), FP (Functional Programming), and FRP (Functional Reactive Programming)within full support of `Typescript`. With usage of `Express` (or `Fastify`) under the hood, which makes it compatible with the majority of `Express` middleware.

Why NestJs?

`Typescript` is a key-feature in modern `web` development, we always prefer well-typed codebase if possible.
- Use decorators to observe, modify, validate or replace your classes, while preserving DRY principles and being concise.
- Stay predictable and easy-to-understand. Design fully typed business-logic for your application, for rest - ~~MasterCard~~ SRP (single-responsibility principle).
- You should definitely enjoy `NestJs` if you familiar with `Angular` . Stick to the well-known dependency injection principle, guards, interceptors, modular structure and etc..
One of the `NestJs` advantages - modular approach, we always want to keep our applications robust and scalable.
- Well-planed modular project structure includes a best practice for lion's share of operations you would want to perform, allows you colleagues to predict which code goes where, which kind of class should be used for this type of operation, etc.
- Unlike most of popular frameworks, in NestJs you won't encounter a question how to validate your DTOs. Because of thoughtful structure your incoming data will be typed by DTOs, and validated with best NestJs practices by `class-validator` package.
- You can easily scale your application with `NestJs`. Nest natively supports the microservice architectural style of development. Has a widely covered documentation and different approaches available.
As I mentioned in previous para, most of necessary packages already has an integration with NestJs via `@nestjs/packagename` wrapper designed to keep the project structure still predictable even with third-party libraries.
NestJs is growing very quickly, already passed 7th version and goes on. High community support encourages devs to keep the framework up to modern standards, at the moment more than 28.8k stars proving.After each release you can always find updated, well-structured comprehensive documentation, with step-by-step best practices designs for most of popular cases.
Use modern approaches on building `GraphQL` APIs, wrapped by `@nestjs/graphql` package.
Simple and straightforward request lifecycle makes it easier to understand how service all parts of the request - validation, data interception, transformation, response part and etc.
Scaffold your project with style. Use convenient CLI to start a new project, generate module, build, install or update packages libs.

#### Cons

Due to single-responsibility principle (SRP), `NestJs` requires you to clearly understand which class should be responsible for the action you want to perform, so at the begging it make take some time to recognise / read according docs which class you should use.
Some features or integrations are built on top of certain libs, to follow basic responsibility pattern you should get used to this libs, accept their style and approaches.

Prerequisites

Step 1 - Installing NestJs CLI

To get started with NestJs, you will need to globally install the Nest CLI. It is a command-line tool created to scaffold fresh NestJs app.

$ npm install -g @nestjs/cli

This will give you access to the`nest`command for project installation and other project specific commands.

Next, run the following command to scaffold a new project named`todoapp-nest`within your development folder:

$ nest new todoapp-nest

You will be asked which package manager you would like to use, just follow the prompt and respond accordingly. Next, once the installation is complete, switch your working directory into the newly created project:

$ cd todoapp-nest

Start the application with:

npm run start

You can also run the followingcommand in order to use Nodemon for the project:

// start the application using --watch option
npm run start:dev

Navigate to`http://localhost:3000`in your browser and you will see theHello World! message as shown in the following image:

Step 2 - Adding GraphQL

GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. It provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients more flexibility and customization tools for developer needs.

While REST API is an architectural concept for network-based software. GraphQL, on the other hand, is a query language, a specification, and a set of tools that operates over a single endpoint using HTTP.

The advantage of GraphQL - you can ask data you need in particular, sustain security and increase performance.

NestJs provider two ways of building GraphQL APIs:

We prefer `Code First` approach, because we allowed to use decorators and Typescript classes to generate the corresponding `GraphqQL` schema. Advantages of this approach - we can avoid context switching between different languages, use TS support while writing our schemas, benefit from `class-validator` and `class-transformer` packages, validating our data, use `GraphQL CLI`, to generate our modules, which is accessible only for `code first` approach.

In order to get started with GraphQL, you need to install packages:

$ npm i @nestjs/graphql graphql-tools graphql

Depending on what underlying platform you use (`Express` or `Fastify`), you must also install either `apollo-server-express` or `apollo-server-fastify`.

Next, we should register GraphQL module in `app.module.ts`:

import { GraphQLModule } from '@nestjs/graphql';

@Module({
  imports: [
    GraphQLModule.forRoot({
      autoSchemaFile: true,
    }),
    TasksModule
  ],
...

To maintain GraphQL hints add following code to your nest-cli.json:

{
  "collection": "@nestjs/schematics",
  "sourceRoot": "src",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "plugins": ["@nestjs/graphql/plugin"]
  }
}

With the packages installed, let's create task module.

Step 3 - Creating a Module

In order to generate module, we need to run the following command:

$ nest generate module tasks

This creates a new folder named`tasks`within the`src`folder. Within the`books`folder you will find a`tasks.module.ts`file:

import { Module } from '@nestjs/common';
@Module({})
export class TasksModule {}

This was generated by the command and the module has also been added to the`app.module.ts`which happens to be the root module of the application.

Next, we have to create resolver.

Step 4 - Creating a Resolver

To generate resolver paste this in command prompt:

$ nest generate resolver tasks

The command above will create resolver `tasks.resolver.ts` file inside `tasks` folder and update `tasks.module.ts` listing new provider.

import { Resolver } from '@nestjs/graphql';

@Resolver('Tasks')
export class TasksResolver {}

Step 5 - Add a Model

To describe an object we want to work with, we should create a model for `Task` instance. To do this create `models` folder and add `task.model.ts` inside, than add this code:

import { Field, ID, ObjectType } from '@nestjs/graphql';

@ObjectType()
export class Task {
  @Field(() => ID)
  id: string;

  @Field()
  title: string;

  @Field()
  description: string;

  @Field()
  completed: boolean;
}

To simplify things we won't be connecting to the database now, so let's create a sample mock data for our list. Create `mocks` folder in the `src` folder, than add file named `tasks.mock.ts` with following code:

export const TASKS = [
  { id: '1', title: 'Task #1', description: "This is the description for the task #1", completed: false },
  { id: '2', title: 'Task #2', description: "This is the description for the task #2", completed: false },
  { id: '3', title: 'Task #3', description: "This is the description for the task #3", completed: true },
  { id: '4', title: 'Task #4', description: "This is the description for the task #4", completed: false },
  { id: '5', title: 'Task #5', description: "This is the description for the task #5", completed: true },
  { id: '6', title: 'Task #6', description: "This is the description for the task #6", completed: false },
  { id: '7', title: 'Task #7', description: "This is the description for the task #7", completed: false },
];

Next, we should create a service to implement all the logic for TodoApp.

Step 6 - Generating a Service

$ nest generate service tasks

This command will create a new file named `tasks.service.ts` within ./src/tasks folder and update `tasks.module.ts` with a new provider.

First let's import our mocked data, so we can serve our queries with data.

import { Injectable } from '@nestjs/common';

import { TASKS } from '../mocks/tasks.mock';

@Injectable()
export class TasksService {
  tasks = TASKS;
}

Than we should add 2 methods, `getTasks` and `getTask`, to receive all tasks or certain one respectively.

...
tasks = TASKS;

getTasks() {
  return this.tasks;
}

getTask(id: number) {
  return this.tasks.find(task => task.id === id);
}
...

`getTask` method accepts `id` as a parameter, of type `number`, which we will ensure via validation in next steps.

So it's time to add typical `mutation` method to create entity of `Task`, let's name it `addTask`:

async addTask(input: AddTaskInput): Promise<Task[]> {
    const lastTask = this.tasks.slice(-1).pop();
    const task: Task = {
      id: lastTask.id + 1,
      title: input.title,
      description: input.description,
      completed: false,
    };

    this.tasks.push(task);
    return this.tasks;
  }

You can always take advantage of `async/await` syntax, for asynchronous operations, since `NestJs` supports latest `Typescript`.

In the same manner adding update/delete methods:

  deleteTask(id: string): Task[] {
    const taskIndex = this.tasks.findIndex(item => item.id === id);
    if (taskIndex === -1) {
      throw new HttpException('Task not found', 404);
    }

    this.tasks.splice(taskIndex, 1);
    return this.tasks;
  }

Step 7 - Add a DTO

DTO is a data transfer object, a TypeScript class created for type-checking and to define the structures of what an object looks like upon Task creation.

import { Field, InputType } from '@nestjs/graphql';
import { IsNotEmpty } from 'class-validator';

@InputType()
export class AddTaskInput {
  @Field()
  @IsNotEmpty()
  title: string;

  @Field()
  description: string;
}

Since we will generate a new `ID` for task, we don't want to include it into

Step 8 - Injecting a Service into Resolver

Since `NestJS` is build around `Dependency Inject` concept. we can benefit in performance by injecting instance of `TasksService` into `TasksResolver`. To achieve this we need add respective code to class constructor:

import { Args, Mutation, Query, Resolver } from '@nestjs/graphql';
import { TasksService } from './tasks.service';
import { AddTaskInput } from './dto/add-task.input';
import { UpdateTaskInput } from './dto/update-task.input';
import { Task } from './models/tasks.model';

@Resolver('Tasks')
export class TasksResolver {
  constructor(
    private readonly taskService: TasksService
  ) {}

  @Query(type => [Task])
  async getTasks() {
    return this.taskService.getTasks();
  }

  @Query(type => Task)
  async getTask(
    @Args('id') id: string,
  ) {
    return this.taskService.getTask(id);
  }

  @Mutation(type => [Task])
  async addTask(
    @Args('input') input: AddTaskInput,
  ) {
    return this.taskService.addTask(input);
  }

  @Mutation(type => Task)
  async updateTask(
    @Args('input') input: UpdateTaskInput,
  ) {
    return this.taskService.updateTask(input);
  }

  @Mutation(type => [Task])
  async deleteTask(
    @Args('id') id: string,
  ) {
    return this.taskService.deleteTask(id);
  }
}

Note that `Query` decorator should be imported from `@nestjs/graphql`.

Next, we injected `TaskService` via constructor and created set of `Queries/Mutations`

getTasks() - returns all tasks;
getTask(id) - returns task by id;
addTask(input) - creates task;
updateTask(input) - updates task state;
deleteTask(input) - delete task;

For each `Query/Mutation` we set return type for GraphQL according to the data returned from service methods.

Step 9 - Running the App!

When all setup finished, it's time to test out API. For testing we recommend using `GraphQL Playground`, which is available by default.

By default server starts on `3000` port. To open `playground` visit `http://localhost:3000/graphql`

Get all tasks:

Add task:

Update task:

Like the article? Click here for more information.

15 Surprising Stats About Angular

2muchcoffee — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 16:59:46 +0000

Angular is the most popular frontend framework to create dynamic web apps. We prepared the top Angular usage statistics to prove this statement and illustrate why devs and users are so fond of this web app development technology.

There will be no comparison of Angular vs most popular frameworks (like React or Vue) since all frameworks are different in their features and suitable for different projects based on their type and functionality. So what we are going to do is to focus on entirely Angular statistics. Let’s start with the brief intro of why it is one of the most famous frameworks these days.

Why Angular?

Angular is an open-source framework maintained by Google. Firstly developed in 2010 as an AngularJS, the framework was updated almost every year in its architecture, syntax, and performance to keep Angular run smoothly with the rest of the JavaScript ecosystem. The latest version, Angular 10 was released in June 2020.

Being the JavaScript framework, Angular assists with running single-page applications while model-view-controller (MVC) capability makes app development and testing as easy and fast as possible. Angular-based web applications usually load faster and scale the product without problems.

The main benefits of Angular development include:

Cross-platform compatibility
High app performance
Fast speed load
Clean code
Code reusability
Easy updates

Angular empowers websites with speed, powerful performance, and meaningful user experience. As an example, check out the official site of the National Basketball Association which was developed using Angular for the front end. The website provides the latest basketball news, scores, games schedules, online store to buy merch and tickets. Such projects are characterized by complex content, such as video streaming, a news feed, constantly updated information of games. Regardless of the rich functionality of the website, it’s fast, user-friendly, and neat.

Downloads Angular Statistics

Angular is a TypeScript-based framework which means easier practice to read the code, fewer bugs, and the self-documentation feature. The universality of the Angular framework makes software engineers keep downloading the Angular package. The number of downloads was exponentially increasing for the last two years.

There is a debate that in the war of JavaScript frameworks, React Native will outlive the Angular. However, for the past six months, the Angular package was actively downloaded for software project development.

Creating applications on Angular is a promising area and continues to gain popularity, so choosing it as the next milestone in new product development is a good solution. The following Angular stats present downloads per month, per week and per day to trace the more detailed data on the framework usage.

Angular Usage Statistics

The framework helps to create compound and complex products following the business logic and create more enterprise-like applications. All together with high performance and lightweight capabilities enable to increase the level of Angular-based applications each year.

Web application development using Angular is becoming more and more popular, as evidenced by the rapid growth in the number of websites using this framework.

Modern versions of Angular was a complete rethinking of AngularJS. Today, the very first version of Angular is considered to be less flexible and clean compared to the latest versions. However, AngularJS is actively used for web app development.

Liked that? We’ve done our best! Go to our blog to find more useful articles.

Geography

The US is a leader in using Angular websites. The predominant reason why Angular is so popular in the US is the huge concentration of big enterprises and startups with the focus on software technology business verticals. As a result, Angular is an obvious choice when it comes to complex and scalable projects.

Job Market for Top Technologies

Job statistics helps to identify which technology is on-demand among companies who decide to hire software engineers. As seen from Google Trends data, the current job market suggests learning Angular and React. These technologies are leaders in the skillset of web developers.

Who Uses Angular?

Angular is more suitable for large projects with a rigid structure. It has a lot of ready-made solutions and an efficient system for collecting and storing information. These features simplify the development of large websites and ensure robust performance.

Top Websites Using Angular

Angular is a modern type of framework that allows organizing an integrated custom approach to solve tasks in a large and complex project. The developer is able to split the application into several component JavaScript files, which will greatly facilitate the testing procedure for subsequent downloads. That is why Angular is a favorite technology for media streaming and social media companies.

The Angular web developer is a popular career choice, as more and more companies want to use this framework. The technology is supported by Google and used in Gmail and YouTube applications. Angular has already been chosen by companies like Lego, PayPal, Upwork.

Websites Using Angular

The list of companies that uses Angular is updating every day. There is data on 845,382 companies using Angular. These companies predominantly in the computer electronics and technology, arts and entertainment, and news and media industry verticals. The tech spending of such companies is around $10000 USD while the location mainly in the US.

Websites Using Angular with High Traffic

There are twice as many websites with high traffic volume developed with Angular. The report includes the results of 2,564 companies and updates on a daily basis.

Angular Market position

The statistic shows that the most used tools among software developers are ASP.NET while Angular takes the second place.

Angular beats React in the website market share, which means that there are more web applications were developed using the Angular framework. Angular is leading technology in Top 10K sites, Top 100K sites, Top 1M sites, while React is a leader in the Entire Web.

Among the most popular JavaScript libraries, Angular is a leading tool on the market based on the popularity and website traffic.

When focusing on exclusively web frameworks, Angular is in the top three list of choice among the professional developers.

The framework has tons of benefits form the developer’s point of view (accessibility, code splitting, animations, testing, etc..), we choose to show the top reasons why web devs like Angular.

Community and development

Angular has a vibrant community that helps in the development and improvement of the framework. Precisely, the community assists with custom solutions that can be integrated into the project or resolving complex issues. Additionally, there are plenty of training materials for junior developers.

If you want to know how actively the project is being developed look at the number of commits over time. So, there is more git commits in Angular than in React which means that the framework is constantly updated.

Top 5 Popular Angular Based Platforms

Upwork

Upwork is a platform for freelancers to find a job. It’s a great example of a complex project developed with Angular. Like any other websites build using the Angular framework Upwork illustrates a smooth navigation system and high webpage performance.

The Guardian

One of the top digital daily newspaper in the UK with more than 400 million monthly visitors. It holds the third place by a number of visitors among national newspapers. The Guardian uses Angular for its user interface. It helps to generate thousands of images and media content without overload the webpage. Angular with the combination of RxJS allows achieving the infinite scroll in search results.

YouTube TV

The platform for video hosting and sharing was created with Angular 2. YouTube has one billion users with the same amount of visitors per day. The high volume traffic is not a challenge for platform performance and functionality.

PayPal

The money transfer online works great due to the Angular framework. Allowing transfers between individuals and companies, PayPal has 305 million active users nowadays. Thanks to the Angular framework the platform has easy authorization feature within a few clicks, ability to complete purchase and money transfers without leaving the web store and also high security protection which is essential for every FinTech apps.

Weather.com

The US satellite channel The Weather Channel is the most visited weather website globally. Built with the Angular, the website provides weather forecasts, a news feed, entertainment, and educational content. Angular solution grants the site with integrated multiple maps, real-time broadcasting, and high-quality images and videos.

Like the post? Visit our blog for more article like this one.

Why Startups Need a Project Manager?

2muchcoffee — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 15:52:42 +0000

Startups are not an easy thing to plan and implement. You may come up with an incredible idea of how to solve a problem but have no clue about its practical implementation. You may find a successful business model, and yet a visual aspect of it may be blurred. Or you may gather a lot of possibly-working pieces in your head and be puzzled over what would actually fly.

All it comes to one thing - there are missing parts in your insight, and it’s absolutely OK! You cannot be a true professional in all fields and aspects of life. That’s why the design, development, and business analyst teams exist to help you. However, who would identify these gaps in a from-the-first-glance-perfect-idea? Who would help you to decide what parts are ready and what should be further worked out? Who would help you to find the best approaches for creating your application that would fly?

As a software development company, we have provided high-quality outsourcing services for over 7-years. Based on our experience, it’s really a rare case when the client has a complete vision of the app and its development flow. The task gets more complicated due to the startup nature. Startup projects tend to constantly change and evolve to fit the customer's needs.

This is why projects need IT Project Managers (PM) - guys, who track all the missing parts and solve any occurring issues ASAP. PMs ensure a stable workflow even in the most emergency cases with minimum damage to the budget. So, let’s discuss the step-by-step evolution of the startup project and find out what does a project manager do on each stage.

Step 1: Establishing communication and mutual understanding

Due to the agile nature of the startups, such projects are ever-changing. New ideas arise, and some of them may be critical for the in-progress development in terms of the implementation.

The digital development is pretty similar to the architecture craft. You write certain schematics, build some foundations, create and adjust all the parts together. You can hardly transform a half-built church into regular living quarters. This is pretty similar in the development. Once something was created in a certain way and for certain needs, you cannot be sure it could be transformed for different purposes.

So, very often the business requires to add a new feature or change the existing one. It may seem a minor change to the client but it’s not always true in terms of the development. This is where issues begin to occur. At this stage, the role of PM is to establish effective, frequent, and transparent communication between all of the project stakeholders. In the above-mentioned case, an agreement with the minimum cost for the client can be reached only via a clear discussion. It’s the PM’s responsibility to make sure that all pros and cons are discussed, possible risks are assessed and a desirable agreement is reached between the client and the dev team. It’s also up to PM to translate the ‘technical language’ for the client and elaborate on the ‘business language’ for the developers. In other words, the PM should make sure everybody understands things in the same way.

Another case is when the project documentation lacks details but the client needs to launch the development ASAP. It’s absolutely possible to add documentation missing details and develop at the same time with the professional PM. In this case, the PM wisely separates the workflow into communication and development hours. Moreover, the experienced PM saves time since he/she figures out some missing details with the client on his/her own, while the team works on the already clarified parts. This is especially helpful when the team and the client live in different timezones.

Finally, the client can always check the current progress in the specific status tools configured by the PM or simply schedule a call with the PM to quickly dive into details if needed.

To summarize the 1st Step:

Startups have ever-changing nature;
Though pretty similar to construction, software development still can be adjusted to new ideas on the fly. The PM makes sure the adjustments are optimized as much as possible;
The first thing for the PM to do is to establish a constant transparent communication between the Product Owner and the Development team. Regardless of possible challenging conditions such as early development start or timezone differences, the PM should find the most appropriate way for the stakeholders to communicate.

Step 2: Specifying documentation

It’s of the utmost importance for every startup to identify its minimum viable product (MVP) features. Pretty often the client cannot provide clearly stated product features due to the lack of expertise. The PM along with the developer are the ones, who pinpoint missing key parts and present it to the client. Then it’s up to the client to decide whether he would work on adding the missing details on his/her own or ask us to do a Discovery Phase.

In the latter case, 2muchcoffee provides a team, which consists of a PM, Business Analyst, UI/UX designer, Senior Developer. The role of the team is to ensure effective business logic, high-quality design, and robust development.

The Business Analyst puts under scrutiny the market and main competitors to come up with the recommendations for the startup development strategy. The UI/UX Designer works on the best ideas to ensure a user-friendly experience. The Senior Developer provides suggestions about the tech stack of the app. He is responsible for clear source code which will be resulted in a flexible and scalable app.The PM role is to be a connecting-link in the so-called chain of development. As an official representative of the client-side in the Discovery Phase, the PM makes sure the client’s suggestions and ideas are taken into consideration.

Discovery Phase team’s suggestions then get communicated by the PM to the client for making a final decision. If there are any changes to the existing verified documentation, the PM lets the client know about the impact of these changes on the overall time and scope of the project.

Brief of the 2nd Step:

Initial documentation is provided by the client. The PM’s responsibility is to establish a requirements specification work;
After the missing parts are identified, the client can either work them out or ask 2MC for a Discovery Phase;
Discovery Phase is a process of working on the project documentation with the help of a Business Analyst, Designer, Senior Developer and PM. The PM is the client’s representative in the Discovery Phase.

Step 3: Configuring workflow

After the documentation is agreed upon and accepted by all stakeholders, it's a great time for the PM to come up with decisions regarding an appropriate workflow.

The young startup teams usually make one common mistake. They all stick to the rigid theory of Agile Methodologies and shape the workflow according to it. In fact, like in any other field (and IT Project Management is not an exception), the theory is just information about existing approaches and tools. Would you use a claw hammer, ax, saw, paintbrush, shovel, and chisel altogether to craft a door? You would pick up only the tools you really need.

The same is about the development workflow. If something irrelevant is added to the workflow, it makes the process slower, harder for the understanding, and less effective as a result. It’s critical to understand that each project is a wholly unique venture that requires a unique approach.

The most important things, that the PM should consider before starting the development, are:

task management tool;
time management tool;
methodology.

Would it be a well-optimized Clubhouse project with a Kanban approach and without a time/activity tracker? Or it would be more appropriate to create a classic greatly-customizable project in Jira with a Scrum approach and Hubstaff tracker? The answer is - it depends, and the PM is the one to make a correct and more suitable decision for the client.

When the initial workflow is established, there are two things that the PM should constantly maintain with the team’s help.

1) High-quality task descriptions. From the very beginning, the PM should establish an effective task template. It should include a clear description with specified acceptance criteria and definition of done. Additionally, without it, it would be impossible for the QA to ensure quality by testing the functionality. Also, it creates a ‘version2’ of the project documentation as, very often, there is a lot of communication going in the task comments section. Some important and crucial decisions may be made, and, after the discussion is done, the task description should be updated with the discussion results.

2) Blockers management. For agile software development, it’s quite natural to have some blocked development tasks due to the absence of the designs or final decisions. It’s quite important for the PM to create a system of labels and filters to easily track and memorize the ‘to-does’. If the blocker is dependent on the team, the PM should guide the team’s efforts in order to resolve the blockers. The main point about it is to always minimize the work in progress and reach a logical ending for each task before starting a new one.

A quick run-through of the 3rd step:

Every startup is a unique venture that requires unique approaches;
The PM decides what time and task tracker systems would be the most appropriate for the project along with the methodology to follow;
The PM ensures a transparent development workflow by creating a project roadmap. All tasks get tracked and managed via a wisely configured and Agile-friendly management system.

Step 4: Managing a dream team

It’s a client’s common outsource decision - to gather the best professionals from all around the world and create a dream team with the most appropriate cost. However, managing people from different timezones is not an easy task for the client, who, very often, has other businesses to do, besides the startup.

Again, it’s also the PM’s responsibility to manage the remote team work to facilitate the project’s progress. The easiest and the most right way to do this is to set up a transparent workflow when everybody understands his/her role and tasks. The PM also makes sure everyone in the team is up-to-date, so all stakeholders are on the same page.

PM's job includes taking care of a state of each member in a team. How come? When the deadlines are tight and the tasks are reaching the highest Fibonacci numbers, people start pushing themselves too hard. This may result in burnout, which is unacceptable for professional management. It’s up to the PM to come up with an idea of how to reduce the stress without any damage to the quality.

The 4th step in a nutshell:

Sometimes the client assembles a few remote teams to work on the same startup. The PM configures the flow in a way it is transparent for everybody. With PM’s help, 2MC members understand their roles and tasks as clear as other remote teams do on such a project.
PM takes care of people on the project, not letting them burn out regardless of working pressure.

Step 5: Troubleshooting issues

Troubleshooting is needed both on the live product maintaining and during the MVP development. From time to time it’s needed to prioritize the critical bug fixing or key features development over the in-progress work. With the PM on the project, the client can just inform a team about the urgent task to do. The PM then takes care of assigning the task to the appropriate team member. The Project Manager also assesses risks connected to the workflow violation and let the client know about the possible consequences.

A recapped vision of the 5th Step:

The PM manages tasks with different priorities. The main tricky thing is to minimize time cost when the developers switch between different tasks. The PM decides on the most appropriate moment to do it.

Step 6: Creating the automized process

2MC Project Managers are striving to establish self-sufficient workflows that do not require a manager’s daily help. A key point to evaluate the quality of the PM’s work is to take a look at how many hours per day the PM spends on a certain project. The less the amount of hours, the more professionally the project was configured.

Especially great opportunity to assess the project’s transparency is to examine it when its PM is on vacation. If the process continues flying, then you hired the right person.

Step 6 - short and sweet:

A good PM does not babysit the project. The main PM’s task is to establish automatic processes when the work is planned and calculated.

Conclusion

Instead of repeating all the material above, we want to stress that the agile nature of startups may transform even the most solid plan into a chaotic mess. Therefore, the role of the Project Manager is to ensure the most stable workflow even in most emergency cases with minimum damage to the budget.

Looking for a Project Manager for your startup? Or do you have some questions about the software product development? Do not hesitate to contact our team and we will assist you in any inquiry.

The Ins and Outs of Sustainability Measurement and Reporting in 2020

2muchcoffee — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 15:51:50 +0000

Can you imagine such a scenario: it’s mid-21st century, the whole planet is suffering from the dust storms and the shortage of food as a result of crop blights which are a major threat to humanity’s survival. Taking into account current environmental issues, such a plot could easily become a reality for our children. Therefore, if you don’t want the future generations to be the main characters of the movie Interstellar (2014) - the actions need to be done today!

“We - the current generation - have the responsibility to make the world better for future generations.” - Priscilla Chan.

Recently it’s been clear that our planet is in crisis. Precisely, global economic challenges and political instability as a cause of extreme poverty, scarcity of natural resources and food shortages. Moreover, according to the NASA analyses 2019 was the second warmest year on record. Consequently, the record-breaking temperatures were the reason for devastating Amazon fires in Brazil, the massive bushfires across Australia, and the fact Antarctica just hit 65 degrees, which is the warmest temperature ever recorded.

Nowadays, reducing the carbon footprint is the predominant indicator to stabilize the initial crisis. From the global perspective, governments and big corporations understand and communicate the policies that could conduct to the improvement of the environmental situation. However, our planet reached its peak point where each and every individual should commit to the sustainability principles for the sake of future generations. In that case, starting measuring personal effects on the planet using sustainable reporting systems is the first thing to do. Hence, it facilitates real action to establish social, environmental and economic benefits for everyone.

At 2muchcoffee we are passionate about modern tech solutions to existing challenges, it is crucial to have a profound level of expertise in a particular market niche. The urgency of the issue and the experience working with 20+ startups focusing on sustainable development made us create an overview of the market. We created introductory guidance on sustainability and the growing value of sustainable reporting systems for everyone who is interested in it.

What is Sustainability?

Still, for the majority of the population, the notion of Sustainability is quite a blur one. “Sustainability is treating the planet as if we planned to stay” - this is how Heartly Green, a sustainability consultant and activist is defined as the concept on her Instagram account. It is consciousness and awareness that human activity will impose certain costs on the natural environment.

Origin of sustainability. The notion of sustainability first appeared in the Brundtland Report (known as Our Common Future), published in 1987. This document was developed for the United Nations in order to warn about the negative environmental consequences of economic development and globalization. The aim of this document was to offer solutions to the problems arising from industrialization and population growth.

In the 21st century, the new academic discipline emerged - sustainability science. The main focus of which is to examine the interactions between human, environmental and engineered systems in order to comprehend and contribute to solutions for urgent challenges (such as, pollution, land and water degradation, climate change, etc.).

Moreover, sustainability is managed and studied over different frames and contexts of environmental, social and economic organisation. The focus differs from the overall sustainability (carrying capacity) of the planet earth to the sustainability of specific ecosystems, economic sectors, regions, states, individual goods/services, lifestyles, behavior patterns and so on. Basically, sustainability can entail the full compass of biological and human activity or any part of it.

Three pillars of sustainability. Talking about today, sustainability tries to secure present needs without compromising future generations. The main condition to do so is not to avoid any of the essential 3 pillars of sustainability: environmental protection, social development, and economic growth.

Environmental sustainability suggests that nature and the environment are not an inexhaustible resource and so, it is necessary to protect them and use them rationally. There are several ways of reducing negative human impact, like environmentally-friendly chemical engineering, environmental resources management and environmental protection.
Social sustainability promotes social development while seeking cohesion between communities and cultures to achieve satisfactory levels in quality of life, health and education.
Economic sustainability concentrates on the equal economic growth that generates wealth for all without harming the environment.

So, why sustainability important? In fact, many of the challenges that humans face today (climate change and global warming, water scarcity, food shortages, etc.) can only be tackled from a global perspective and by promoting sustainable development. Sustainability is defined as a process of creating and maintaining conditions, under which population and nature can exist in a harmonious environment, in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are all in equilibrium. Such conditions increase both current and future opportunities to meet human needs and aspirations.

Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the United Nations General Assembly's current harmonized set of seventeen future international development targets. These include the following goals:

To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
To achieve universal primary education
To promote gender equality and empower women
To reduce child mortality
To improve maternal health
To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
To ensure environmental sustainability (with a focus on providing access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation)
To establish a global partnership for development.

Sustainability in business has become a common trend nowadays. Sustainability stimulates businesses to reevaluate their economic analysis and frame decisions in terms of years and decades considering more factors than simply the profit or loss on the next quarterly reports. It is a common practice to establish sustainability goals first and then work towards them. For example, the goal could be to cut the emission by 10%, lower energy usage or sourcing products from fair-trade organizations. So, when the company would achieve its sustainability goals and reduce their carbon footprint, they will be able to call themselves “sustainable” or “green”.

Why Sustainability Today is More Important Than Ever?

From the dawn of time, the Earth has gone through warm and cold phases. Forces that contribute to climate change include the sun’s intensity, volcanic eruptions and changes in naturally occurring greenhouse gas concentration. However, the records indicate that today’s climatic warming is appearing much faster than ever before and can’t be explained by the natural causes alone.

Precisely, devastating floods, storms, and fires are all the outcomes of the anthropogenic causes of global climate change. More specifically, greenhouse emissions (GHG) generated by humans are the leading cause of the earth’s rapid change in the climate.

The cause of climate change is simple. When energy from the sun is reflected off the earth and back into space (mostly by clouds and ice), or when the earth’s atmosphere releases energy, the planet cools. When the earth absorbs the sun’s energy, or when atmospheric gases prevent heat released by the earth from radiating into space (the greenhouse effect), the planet warms.

Greenhouse gases play an important role in keeping the planet warm enough to inhabit. But the amount of these gases in our atmosphere has skyrocketed in recent decades. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides “have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.” Indeed, the atmosphere’s share of carbon dioxide—the planet’s chief climate change contributor—has risen by 40 percent since preindustrial times.

The burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas for electricity, heat, and transportation is the primary source of human-generated emissions. A second major source is deforestation, which releases sequestered carbon into the air. It’s estimated that logging, clear-cutting, fires, and other forms of forest degradation contribute up to 20 percent of global carbon emissions. Other human activities that generate air pollution include fertilizer use (a primary source of nitrous oxide emissions), livestock production (cattle, buffalo, sheep, and goats are major methane emitters), and certain industrial processes that release fluorinated gases. Activities like agriculture and road construction can change the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, leading to local warming or cooling, too.

Though our planet’s forests and oceans absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and other processes, these natural carbon sinks can’t keep up with our rising emissions. The resulting buildup of greenhouse gases is causing alarmingly fast warming worldwide. It’s estimated that the earth’s average temperature rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider this: When the last ice age ended and the northeastern United States was covered by more than 3,000 feet of ice, average temperatures were just 5 to 9 degrees cooler than they are now.

Hence, the Earth's global surface temperatures in 2019 ranked second-warmest since 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). So, we won’t even discuss whether is global warming real or not, simply watch the following video to clear everything out.

Outcomes of climate change. As climate change transforms global ecosystems, it affects everything from the places we live to the water we drink to the air we breathe.

Extreme weather

As the earth’s atmosphere heats up, it collects, retains, and drops more water, changing weather patterns and making wet areas wetter and dry areas drier. Higher temperatures worsen and increase the frequency of many types of disasters, including storms, floods, heat waves, and droughts. These events can have devastating and costly consequences, jeopardizing access to clean drinking water, fueling out-of-control wildfires, damaging property, creating hazardous-material spills, polluting the air, and leading to loss of life.

Air pollution

Causes of air pollution and climate change are inextricably linked, with one exacerbating the other. When the earth’s temperatures rise, not only does our air gets dirtier—with smog and soot levels going up—but there are also more allergenic air pollutants such as circulating mold (thanks to damp conditions from extreme weather and more floods) and pollen (due to longer, stronger pollen seasons).

Health risks

According to the World Health Organization, “climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year” between 2030 and 2050. As global temperatures rise, so do the number of fatalities and illnesses from heat stress, heatstroke, and cardiovascular and kidney disease. As air pollution worsens, so does respiratory health—particularly for the 300 million people living with asthma worldwide; there’s more airborne pollen and mold to torment hay fever and allergy sufferers, too. Extreme weather events, such as severe storms and flooding, can lead to injury, drinking water contamination, and storm damage that may compromise basic infrastructure or lead to community displacement.

Indeed, historical models suggest the likelihood of being displaced by a disaster is now 60 percent higher than it was four decades ago—and the largest increases in displacement are driven by weather- and climate-related events. (It’s worth noting that displacement comes with its own health threats, such as increases in urban crowding, trauma, social unrest, lack of clean water, and transmission of infectious diseases.) A warmer, wetter world is also a boon for insect-borne diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.

Rising seas

The Arctic is heating twice as fast as any other place on the planet. As its ice sheets melt into the seas, our oceans are on track to rise one to four feet higher by 2100, threatening coastal ecosystems and low-lying areas. Island nations face particular risk, as do some of the world’s largest cities, including New York, Miami, Mumbai, and Sydney.

Warmers, more acid oceans

The earth’s oceans absorb between one-quarter and one-third of our fossil fuel emissions and are now 30 percent more acidic than they were in preindustrial times. This acidification poses a serious threat to underwater life, particularly creatures with calcified shells or skeletons like oysters, clams, and coral. It can have a devastating impact on shellfisheries, as well as the fish, birds, and mammals that depend on shellfish for sustenance. Rising ocean temperatures are also altering the range and population of underwater species and contributing to coral bleaching events capable of killing entire reefs—ecosystems that support more than 25 percent of all marine life.

Imperiled ecosystems

Climate change is increasing pressure on wildlife to adapt to changing habitats—and fast. Many species are seeking out cooler climates and higher altitudes, altering seasonal behaviors, and adjusting traditional migration patterns. These shifts can fundamentally transform entire ecosystems and the intricate webs of life that depend on them. As a result, according to a 2014 IPCC climate change report, many species now face “increased extinction risk due to climate change.” And one 2015 study showed that mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and other vertebrate species are disappearing 114 times faster than they should be, a phenomenon that has been linked to climate change, pollution, and deforestation—all interconnected threats. On the flip side, milder winters and longer summers have enabled some species to thrive, including tree-killing insects that are endangering entire forests.

What is global governance for sustainable development?

Almost all accounts of the world at the beginning of the 21st century acknowledge that social, political, economic and ecological environments are fundamentally changing. Attempts to grasp the nature of this transformation along with the structures and qualities of the emerging new order make frequent reference to two central concepts: globalization and global governance. Their relationship, however, is less clear. One valuable approach to delineating the two phenomena says the process of globalization creates the demand for global governance.

In simple terms, globalization may be thought of as the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of social life, ranging from the cultural to the economic and spiritual. This interconnectedness is a key reason for government failures. As sovereign borders are getting porous and the frontier between national and transnational forces are blurring, external effects have a much greater impact on the responsiveness and problem-solving capacity of nation States. In this view, global governance has emerged as the social, political and economic reaction to the process of globalization, incorporating many of its ontological assumptions. In short, global governance is a distinct form of sociopolitical steering in the era of globalization.

Moreover, global governance that supports sustainable development is one of the great challenges facing political decision-makers, in Europe and beyond. The vital question for European societies is to design effective, stable and legitimate governance systems at local, national and international levels that ensure sustainable development.

Nevertheless, global governance is failing when we need decisive actions towards sustainability issues. The paradox of our times is that, as global problems become more complex and threatening, our global institutions lose their force as organizing frameworks for inter-state cooperation. David Held, Master of University College, Durham and Professor of Politics and International Relations at Durham University, explains what are the reasons for such paradox during the TEDx event.

We suggest watching the video “Global Challenges - Kristian Rönn” (2017). A project manager and researcher at a global challenges foundation and CEO and co-founder of Normative - software tool for measuring corporate sustainability, Kristian Rönn, presents the topic of his talk Why effective altruists should care about global governance. The presenter stressed on the fact that there are precise risks currently transcend national borders, and we need to have new global solutions that our system of global governance struggles to deliver.

The early years of the new millennium are often described as an era of profound transformation. The end of the Cold War altered the international system from a bi-polar world to one of the multiple spheres of power. Technological developments have changed the ways we process and distribute information. At the same time, humankind is no longer limited to simply modifying local and regional environments but has entered into a phase of change of a truly planetary dimension so profound that some scholars are using a new label to describe our time: the Anthropocene.

In a talk about how we can build a robust future without wrecking the planet, sustainability expert Johan Rockström debuts the Earth3 model - a new methodology that combines the UN Sustainable Development Goals with the nine planetary boundaries, beyond which earth's vital systems could become unstable. Learn about five transformational policies that could help us achieve inclusive and prosperous world development while keeping the earth stable and resilient.

In this context of large-scale transformations, social scientists of all stripes are concerned about the perennial question of governance, how humans regulate their affairs to achieve common goals and react to an increasing environmental threat. In particular, attention has focused on steering politics in the nation-state and the international community.

Global Governance and Sustainable Development. Global governance for sustainable development features a plurality of actors, in particular the increasing involvement of non-state actors.

Hence, business used to be depicted as a primary source of the world’s environmental problems. Today it is increasingly a vital contributor to solving those problems. However, any serious attempt to solve the challenge of climate change will require that the substantial contributions of business and civil society be taken into account.

Even though many companies initiate corporate sustainability programs, the majority of them do not identify proper metrics and consider how to monitor the success of the program in a substantial manner.

Why Do We Need Sustainability Reporting?

Corporate sustainability reporting and the measurement of environmental, social, economic and governance performance are going to be discussed in this section. These are necessary tools of top management for the company strategy choice of sustainable success. In doing so, the relationship between company performance and these factors is important, therefore, the need to develop the modern and advanced methods and metrics to identify them mainly based on the quantification with the possibility of utilization of information and communication technology.

What is sustainability reporting? Sustainability reporting is a process of creating organizational reports that provide information about environmental, social and economic impacts caused by its everyday activities. Additionally, a sustainability report introduces the organization’s values and governance model as well as indicate the link between its strategy and dedication to a sustainable global economy.

Sustainability reporting can help organizations to measure, understand and communicate their economic, environmental, social and governance performance, and then set goals, and manage change more effectively.

Reasons for doing sustainability reports. There are many companies now producing an annual sustainability report and there is a wide array of ratings and standards around. There are a variety of reasons that companies choose to produce these reports, but at their core, they are intended to have a positive impact on society, the economy and a sustainable future.

Often they also intended to improve internal processes, engage stakeholders, persuade investors and ensure trust due to being transparent about the risks and opportunities they face. Consequently, it leads to better decision-making practice, which helps build and maintain trust in businesses and governments.

Many companies are actively integrating sustainability principles into their businesses, according to a recent McKinsey survey, and they are doing so by pursuing goals that go far beyond earlier concern for reputation management—for example, saving energy, developing green products, and retaining and motivating employees, all of which help companies capture value through growth and return on capital.

The corporate annual sustainability report has become a common way for businesses to report out annual progress on sustainability initiatives. Needless to say that sustainability reporting has a lot of benefits.

Benefits inside the business/corporation:

Increased understanding of risks and opportunities;
Emphasizing the link between financial and non-financial performance;
Influencing long term management strategy and policy, and business plans;
Streamlining processes, reducing costs and improving efficiency;
Benchmarking and assessing sustainability performance with respect to laws, norms, codes, performance standards, and voluntary initiatives;
Avoiding being implicated in publicized environmental, social and governance failures;
Comparing performance internally, and between organizations and sectors.

External benefits consist of:

Mitigating negative environmental, social and governance impacts;
Improving reputation and brand loyalty;
Enabling external stakeholders to understand the organization’s true value, and tangible and intangible assets;
Demonstrating how the organization influences, and is influenced by, expectations about sustainable development.

Who should report? Sustainability reports are released by companies and organizations of all types, sizes and sectors all around the world. Thousands of companies, public authorities and NGOs across all sectors have published reports that reference the GRI Standards.

Major providers of sustainability reporting guidance include:

GRI (GRI's Sustainability Reporting Standards);
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises);
The United Nations Global Compact (the Communication on Progress);
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO 26000, International Standard for social responsibility).

Sustainable Reporting Process. The process of sustainability reporting is similar to all performance-based business management processes. It usually involves such steps as:

Setting the sustainability goals of the company. The most crucial step since it should guide the rest of the process. The company should depict the clear vision of why it wants to integrate sustainability efforts into business operations. A company will need to evaluate whether its focus is on continuous improvement in its own individual actions or if it is measuring its performance relative to a broader target, such as a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Measurement stage. The next move is to develop the key performance indicators (KPI) that will be used to measure progress toward the goals. It is needed to take into account the company’s financial, human and information technology resources while choosing the suitable KPIs. At this stage, data needs to be collected, validated for accuracy and stored.
Evaluation of the performance. The main aim of this is to convert raw data into useful information so the thoughtful organizational decisions will be undertaken in the future. The main components include data compilation, data analysis, and communication.
Managing the performance. The company should be prepared to react according to the sustainable report outline. This stage is the prerogative of management. Management should review sustainable performance information routinely. The reporting process is a cycle and the management phase then proceeds back into the first step of defining initial sustainability goals.

The Sustainable Business Case Book provides you with more detailed specifications on what needs to be included in the sustainability reporting process.

Challenges with Sustainability Reporting. Sustainability is now seen as the business paradigm for the 21st century. Decisions regarding corporate sustainability pose a significant dilemma for managers: to weigh social and environmental concerns against economic results.

Integrating sustainability indicators into daily decision-making is a fundamental element of sustainability performance management systems (SPMS). Defined as the process of identifying social, environmental, and economic drivers that influence the success of an organization and measuring progress against those drivers, SPMS has been regarded as the best way to capture the complexity of the triple bottom line framework.

In fact, like any other performance-based business process the accuracy is the key to produce the relevant data. Sustainability investing continues to grow in popularity, but the lack of standardization in sustainability reporting poses a challenge for investors wishing to maximize the social responsibility, and minimize the social damage, of their investments. The authors, who previously studied sustainability ratings issued by the mass media, now turn their attention to rankings used by the investing community itself. The findings indicate that they may be a more reliable barometer of a company’s commitment to environmental, social, and governance impact; nevertheless, further research into the long-term link between sustainable practices and value creation is needed.

Corporations are moving in the right direction; however, more work needs to be done to improve the quality of sustainability reporting.

Conclusion

There are a lot of sustainability articles that elaborate on the scientific relevance of a sustainable environment. However, humanity reached the pick-point where severe climate change is a vivid consequence of human activity on the planet.

Consequently, the greenhouse emission is the leading cause of the rapid change in the climate. That is why reducing the carbon footprint is the predominant challenge that needs to be solved.

In order to stabilize the crisis, businesses (both startups and big corporations) have to generate sustainability reports - in order to validate and ensure that the whole process from the raw material to the finished product or services was done correctly. Currently, the sustainability report identifies the impact enterprises (big or small) had on our planet and global sustainability.

In fact, such reports are a crucial element in the mechanism of detecting turbulent areas and improving sustainability worldwide. However, the idea is far from reality. There are a lot of challenges while producing sustainability reporting, therefore, there are some platforms that strive to change it and automate the whole procedure. For example, Normative - a platform that is able to change the old approach towards the reporting system and develop strong sustainability initiatives worldwide.

Like this article? Visit our blog for more articles!

SaaS Platform For Web Apps - Station | Project Details

2muchcoffee — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 14:49:49 +0000

Have you ever calculated how much time you spend everyday checking your social and working accounts? I bet a lot. To be more accurate, it’s over 2 hours a day!

As a solution to stop wasting your time and boost your productivity - the SaaS software emerged to our workplaces. New trends in SaaS development allow you to use functional and high performing apps which saves tons of your time.

One such example is Station. This web browser of the future was specifically designed for efficient work. One single and elegant app to rule your other web applications. Based in Paris, Station was elected Product of the Year 2017 on Product Hunt. Additionally, the team graduated from the YCombinator W18 batch. The startup was noted for its innovative idea and product - a workstation unifying within a single interface all of the applications you use at work.

In order to have a clear vision of why Station is so great to let’s elaborate on the biggest pitfalls of the productive work life that we all experience on a daily basis.

What are the Biggest Threats to Your Productivity at the Workplace?

Nowadays, time management is a crucial element of success no matter the niche you’re working at. Time is a huge value and the most important resource that should not be underestimated. Especially, time at the workplace. Each day from 9 to 6 you have got a myriad of different tasks, so to follow the schedule it is important to be productive and use the time wisely.

Let's get into some statistics here. The average person spends 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. While occasional breaks are great for the mind, excessive time waste leads to lost productivity, lower morale and decreased employee retention. Even employees who would otherwise be high performers can get caught in time-wasting traps. In fact, eighty-nine percent of employees waste at least some time at work every day. Thirty-one percent waste about 30 minutes, but the top 10 percent waste three or more hours each day. That extrapolates to more than 15 hours per week of wasted productivity, shedding light on the immense costs associated with poor time management.

So, what gets in the way of getting things done? The recent survey examined how employees wasted their time at work. Workers were asked how much time per day they spend on tasks such as communication, meetings, researching for information. As a result, activities related to contacting customers, partners or colleagues were the most time-consuming.

On the other hand, a huge time-consuming practice is working with a lot of different applications. Did you ever ask yourself how much time you spend checking out all your web apps every day? Surely, it takes ages to check the required accounts during the working hours. In fact, an average office employee spends around 1,5 hours simply by checking his working accounts and adjusting his web tabs for work.

Ask most people where they spend the majority of the day and you’ll hear email, Slack, or some other communication tool. When we looked at communication time across job titles we found that software developers spend, on average, 21% of their day on communication. While executives and product managers spend upwards of 37%.

Surely, it’s not just the pure amount of time spent on a daily basis that killed our ability to focus. It’s the frequency we use these tools. For example, based on recent research, there were found that knowledge workers, on average, check email and Slack every 6 minutes (with 35.5% checking in every 3 minutes or less).

Most of us spend our days bouncing from task to task or trying to make up for a lost time by multitasking. On average, we use 56 different apps and websites a day and switch between them nearly 300 times.

It’s well established that multitasking is impossible for all but 1-2% of the population. And to do our best work, we need long stretches of focused time. Yet, 40% of knowledge workers never get more than 30 straight minutes of focused time in a workday.

Looking at multitasking with communication tools alone, most people on average spend 40.1% of their time during the workday multitasking. If we’re constantly switching our focus to check emails or Slack messages, we never have the chance to truly focus on our most important work.

The workplace is filled with distractions. But some of the worst ones aren’t coworkers, meetings, or emails. But our own pull to distracting and unproductive activities. However, 21% of our device time during working hours is spent on entertainment, news, and social media.

As you can see, quite often the allure of time-wasting activities (e.g. communication overload, checking work applications, finding the right tab or researching for suitable extensions) is just the main pitfall to completing tasks on time and the main threats to the work-life balance. When it happens, it’s up to modern technologies to keep everyone back on track.

“A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….” ― William Faulkner

Introducing Station - SaaS Platform for All Your Web Apps

The quote of William Faulkner, an American writer, and Nobel Prize laureate, perfectly describes the state of our work lives. The work station is the place where we spend the predominant amount of hours on a daily basis. As a result, our work station should work for us and not against us.

Over the years, our browsers have evolved to become the central way of our lives. Working, shopping, reading, watching, writing, listening, sharing and much more. However, as the times go by, web browsers started to show some weaknesses since billions of people were shifting to the browser as their main work tool.

From the very inception, the Station team was focused on easing the user’s experience during the workday. Station is a free desktop application that unifies all your work tools in one neat and productive interface. It is an alternative to your browser that's entirely dedicated to web applications you use at work, and that's designed to help you focus and get work done. SaaS focused platform for working with web apps is incredibly simple in use. The Station, available for both Mac and Windows, aims to ease the whole process of using apps while working. App provides the opportunity to have one app to centralize all of your work. Therefore, Station supports 600+ apps including G Suite, Slack, Asana, Trello, etc.

You’ll find below a showcase of Station:

The recipe for the Station's success is within its features.

Smart dock which helps you neatly organize all your work tools. Are you tired of switching tabs? The smart dock instantly cleans your desktop.
Focus by design eliminates any temptation to get distracted. Designed as a distraction-free platform, Station separates work from personal applications.
App Store allows you to have easy access to 400+ web apps which are sorted by categories and popularity.
The notification center gives the opportunity to disable notifications to avoid unwanted distractions without missing out on anything.

Business model. As was mentioned above, Station is free of charge app. Since the team is committed to helping the users be more productive at work, for that reason the Station team does not plan on charging individual users. On the other hand, the team is planning charge companies starting in 2020.

Why is Station better than a traditional web browser for work? Station was designed from scratch with focus and efficiency in mind. The app benefits users in many ways, specifically:

Get rid of your tabs. All your work tools are neatly organized to avoid ending up with 20+ tabs stacking up on top of each other. Station was designed to keep even the messiest users organized throughout their workday.
Work faster. Since Station doesn't accumulate unnecessary tabs it also means that it runs faster than a classic browser. Only the apps you really need are loaded when you launch Station and it makes sure to save your memory to avoid slow down or crashes.
Stay focused. Station only offers work applications, therefore, it's impossible to be distracted by non-work related topics inside the app. It's your ultimate medium of focus.
Quickly find the content you need. Thanks to features like quick-switch or bookmarking, you can easily organize your most important pages and find them in the blink of an eye.

We asked the CEO of Station, Julien Berthomier, what was the inspiration to create such app and what are the scaling plan for the nearest future for the team and the product:

“We wanted to solve our own frustrations around finding information and accessing our work tools. Then we quickly realized after putting it into the hands of a few hundred users that we were not alone facing this problem. We were also inspired by tools like Franz that were among the first to build app aggregators.

(Regarding the scaling plan) Focus on providing value to entire teams by building a single source of truth about tools and SaaS apps in companies. On top, launching an SDK to allow any third party developer or SaaS editor to build deeper integrations between SaaS apps and the Station interface.”

How to Build an App like a Station?

While Station combines all your messy web apps into a single app, the 2muchcoffee combined the best practices to contribute to the development of Station. It’s fair to say that Station is a product of collaborative work between two teams - Station and 2muchcoffee.

The scope of our work included:

Code review
Caching GraphQL queries
Changing the database structure
Data migration to Airtable
Refactoring the existing front-end architecture
Implementation of a full redesign
Creating new layouts for the app
Extending the app functionality
Adding new functionality
Technical optimization

Development Process Details. As Station is the browser for work it was crucial to reach a native desktop experience- something that could be achieved due to high-quality codebase. Our team significantly improved the code. First of all, we made a code review to detect possible issues in the codebase which potentially could negatively affect the work of the app.

The back end tasks include caching GraphQL queries and changing the database structure (from services to applications). Additionally, the data was migrated to Airtable to make the process of an organization much easier.

Moreover, devs entirely refactored the existing front-end architecture. There was decided to switch to GraphQL cache instead of Redux as a main application’s Store. Such a decision provides huge benefits for the user-experience. There was implemented a full redesign by means of creating completely new layouts for the app. Additionally, our dev team extended the app functionality and added new ones, e.g. edit/delete of custom apps, infinite scroll, correct applications’ search functionality. Finally, Google Lighthouse metrics were improved to achieve better technical optimization.

The tech stack we used: Typescript, React (including Hooks), GraphQL, Node.js, PostgreSQL, React Router, React Virtualized, React Apollo, React Jss.

What was the technical challenge?

The initial task was to implement the onboarding process when the employer (on the vendor's servers) creates and manages ready-made sets of offers for his employees. The next step is to implement the onboarding process on the part of the employee when a new employee in a few clicks receives an already configured set of applications for work.

The other task was to create a dynamic stepper (Stepper React component - Material-UI) that could be used in both linear and non-linear forms. In open form, each tab would represent a form for filling with different data, which would be regulated by the main Smart component.

The final task was to implement of a table with the data of all onboardings in the system.

What was achieved?

The routing system has been redesigned and optimized using React Router v5, including hash routing if necessary;
Most of the components (previously implemented) were translated into React Hooks;
With the help of React Hooks, a fully typed Stepper was created with render optimization (React.UseCallback and React.useMemo Hooks);
The Stepper also supports a smooth system of steps (new steps may not appear at all until you complete the previous one). Linear and non-linear operating modes are involved here;
Routing was switched from working with the internal state to the React Router (it was one of the difficult issues in terms of architecture/performance).

What can be highlighted?

The whole mechanism of interactions between Steps (wrappers for the content of the stepper) and Stepper was invented (it was optimized in structure and was added the support for several modes). Additionally, it was made as a dumb component (customer requirement), so it can be reused quite conveniently.
All the functionality (logic) was implemented to create and edit Onboarding on the client (front-end), which managed data for Stepper.

As a web development company, we understand the importance of producing high-quality and scalable products. That is why we used the modern architectural decisions and React best practices to build a top-notch and innovative product on the SaaS market.

It’s no doubt that we are at the beginning of the new era where the workplace will be significantly transformed due to SaaS applications which serve as the backbone of productivity.

Like this article? Visit our blog for more articles!

Global Software as a Service (SaaS) Market Analysis

2muchcoffee — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 17:42:12 +0000

Recently the world is focusing on software-as-a-service solutions as an option for many businesses to step back from the traditional installations. If you are wondering how hard it is to enter the market with a new SaaS product, let’s see the brief market analysis.

Working with over 25 SaaS startups, we structured our knowledge and practice within this article. The findings will make your business grow.

What is SaaS?

The SaaS industry has been growing viral as the demand for SaaS applications, SaaS products, and the SaaS platform is gaining acceptance in small, medium and large enterprises worldwide.

Software-as-a-Service application is a cloud-based service that allows you to access an application via an Internet browser. Basically, SaaS freeing you from complex software and hardware management, since you don’t have to download software to your PC or business network to run and update.

You can think of the SaaS model as a bank that provides services and at the same time protects the privacy of each user. A bank’s customers all use the same financial systems and technology without worrying about anyone accessing their personal information without authorization.

Being fully maintained by a central provider, and based on a software distribution model, SaaS tools offer feature-rich online services you can access via web or mobile browsers, without any need to download and install “heavy” programs or updates. It proves why 78% of respondents stated their companies would run on the SaaS platform by 2022, according to a BetterCloud survey.

Types of SaaS. SaaS is integrated with and works alongside other cloud computing platforms such as Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Information technology management as a service (ITMaaS) among others.

We can divide SaaS-based software and companies into a few types as follows:

Vertical SaaS stands for a specific market, end-user, pain points, and designed specifically for one particular industry, such as banking, healthcare, financial and insurance, information technology and telecommunication, education, etc.;
Horizontal SaaS, on the other hand, stands for vast usage, multiple end-users, and designed for various industries to utilize the product in the same way, like email platforms, chatbots, etc.
SaaS B2B companies offer their products to other companies only. SaaS B2B software trends are related to that particular company-to-company sphere.
SaaS B2C companies provide their services and goods to customers directly.

Moreover, SaaS applications categorize from messaging software, financial ledgers, customer relationship management applications, to gamification, virtualization, or learning management systems. Precisely, there are various types of SaaS applications, such as:

Web Hosting and E-Commerce — From content management systems (CMS) and message boards to web hosting and shopping carts, SaaS applications enable business on the web;
Communication Platforms — Instant messaging and file-sharing software to enhance collaboration for teams based out of multiple locations;
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) — For managing customer information, tracking sales, and automating marketing functions;
Accounting — SaaS accounting applications have done it yourself functionality to help you keep track of your firm’s finances, big or small;
Payment Gateways — These applications based on the SaaS model include accepting credit cards, processing bank transfers, run offers and rewards programs, and publish and track coupons among others;
Human Resources — SaaS products which enable organizations to track employee hours, automate payroll processes, schedule interviews and streamline the hiring process are quite popular worldwide;
Project Management — SaaS products offer end to end project management solutions for processes such as composing plans to listing requirements and tracking progress with respect to deadlines and deliverables.

Surely, there are plenty of other SaaS products and applications which cater to niche segments and are deployed for use for only targeted segments of the populace. Depending on your business goals and quantifiable fields of enterprise processes, you can opt for a specific application to enhance speed and delivery.

Overview of SaaS Market Landscape

The world is shifting to SaaS no matter how we look at it. This section provides a glimpse into the future and will help you to know how SaaS would innovate the tech industry in the upcoming years.

The global business ecosystem has been greatly reshaped by cloud-driven products. Thus, as one of the leading and most promising cloud computing branches, SaaS has significantly transformed the way most businesses operate.

The emergence and penetration of messaging applications, emails, and video calls for private and business needs have made the end-users to depend on smartphones and tablets. Therefore, a growing number of end-users are looking for remote access at affordable costs, as a result, influencing the demand for SaaS solutions.

Based on Deployment Type, the market is segmented into:

Public Cloud refers to the cloud computing model with which the IT services are delivered across the Internet. The computing functionality may range from common services such as email, apps and storage to the enterprise-grade OS platform or infrastructure environments used for software development and testing. The cloud vendor is responsible for developing, managing and maintaining the pool of computing resources shared between multiple tenants from across the network. The defining features of a public cloud solution include high elasticity and scalability for IT-enabled services delivered at a low cost subscription-based pricing tier.
Private Cloud refers to the cloud solution dedicated for use by a single organization. The data center resources may be located on-premise or operated by a third-party vendor off-site. The computing resources are isolated and delivered via a secure private network, and not shared with other customers. A private cloud is customizable to meet the unique business and security needs of the organization.
Hybrid Cloud refers to the cloud infrastructure environment that is a mix of public and private cloud solutions. The resources are typically orchestrated as an integrated infrastructure environment. Apps and data workloads can share the resources between public and private cloud deployment based on organizational business and technical policies around security, performance, scalability, cost and efficiency, among other aspects.

Industry snapshot. According to the Forbes report in 2018 public cloud platform adoption was highest in services companies (28%), with engineering (30%) and government (29%) having the highest adoption of private clouds. Private cloud-only adoption was lowest in services companies (16%) due to concerns over IT security skills.

The current situation shows that whether you’re a public scale cloud business or a fledgling startup if you’re not focused on modern technological solutions you’ll be left behind.

Geographical market snapshot. The software as a service market has been geographically segmented into North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, South America and Middle East & Africa.

North America is the most mature market in terms of cloud computing services adoption, due to several factors, such as the presence of many enterprises with advanced IT infrastructure, and availability of technical expertise.APAC is expected to offer significant growth opportunities for cloud computing vendors during the forecast period. Rapid advancements in emerging technologies, IT infrastructure services, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have led many organizations to adopt cloud computing services.

The Key Players. Since its inception SaaS has been benefiting businesses a lot, helping companies attract and retain customers while boosting service. They have found tons of applications in different industries, specifically in the areas of marketing, sales, and customer service. This development has greatly contributed to the increase in the SaaS market size.

SaaS has also been experiencing growth in the B2B sector, making use of technologies such as machine learning and AI to improve automation further. There are likewise SaaS tools for small businesses that can help them compete with larger companies.

To keep up with the very purpose of SaaS, vendors have been designing their tools to blend well with different software environments through vast arrays of integrations and APIs.

Microsoft has a worldwide market share and is now the leading SaaS vendor. Microsoft's annual revenue growth is running at 45%, far surpassing overall market growth. Oracle, SAP and Adobe are followed after Microsoft, with Oracle achieving the highest growth rate among these three. Salesforce remains the dominant player in CRM, but this segment is relatively low growth compared to other SaaS segments. In aggregate these top five SaaS vendors now account for just over half of the market.

So, by revenue, Microsoft is the largest worldwide provider of SaaS services, with an 18% market share. Salesforce has the second place (11.5%), while Adobe has the third (6.7%).

How fast is the SaaS market growing? It was expected that the public cloud SaaS market would reach 157 billion U.S. dollars in size in 2020, more than doubling the market size in 2014 (see graph below).

Talking about the SaaS market size from a global perspective - it continues to enjoy robust growth, with the sector seen to reach a total value of $623.3 billion by the year 2020, showing by far the most notable Saas growth statistics. Saas market research has also revealed that businesses and organizations’ push for increased agile and automated processes will fuel this growth.

It is undeniable that SaaS has changed the global business landscape. For companies, cloud computing proved to be a boon, allowing them to harness the power of automation without breaking the bank. Some have claimed that these platforms made their organizations more successful compared to other types of systems, while others have decided to embrace the technology fully.

SaaS Solution - Revolutionary Approach in a Business

Once we have a slightly better understanding of the SaaS market, let’s discuss the main advantages of the SaaS applications for the business. Recently SaaS is becoming a popular method for companies of all sizes to offload the management of many different types of applications.

The main SaaS characteristics include:

Multitenant Architecture. A multitenant architecture, in which all users and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained. Because SaaS vendor clients are all on the same infrastructure and code base, vendors can innovate more quickly and save the valuable development time previously spent on maintaining numerous versions of outdated code.

Easy Customisation. The ability for each user to easily customize applications to fit their business processes without affecting the common infrastructure. Because of the way SaaS is architected, these customizations are unique to each company or user and are always preserved through upgrades. That means SaaS providers can make upgrades more often, with less customer risk and much lower adoption cost.

Better Access. One strong advantage of any SaaS application is the ability to run through an internet browser, so it doesn't matter which Operating System is used to access it. So regardless of whether the user is trying to run the application on Windows, Mac, or Linux machines (or even smartphones running Android or iOS), the application still remains accessible. This makes SaaS applications incredibly versatile in a couple of different ways.

Indeed, it means you don't need to worry if your operating system or other software will be compatible with SaaS applications. Perhaps more importantly, not only can they be used in the office on desktop computers, but they can also be used on mobile devices such as tablets. SaaS applications are overwhelmingly designed to be mobile-friendly so that they can be used in a whole range of situations and circumstances, not least on the go.

Saving and storage. On-premise storage of data means the need to invest in reliable backups such as through online cloud storage or other disaster recovery plan to mitigate any serious hardware crash that might otherwise cause a significant loss of data. However, with SaaS, data is routinely saved in the cloud anyway. What makes this double advantageous is not just the redundancy aspect, but also that employees can switch between devices without losing work or data, simply by the fact of logging into the single account, regardless of which device is being used.

Data and analytics. Because everything is run through a centralized platform this means it's easy to capture data and provide it for analytics use. Businesses using SaaS software usually have access to reporting and intelligence tools and visualizations that can provide valuable insights into business operations, allowing for workflows to be streamlined and efficiency savings to be actioned. For the vendor, because access depends on a paid subscription there's no need to be concerned about piracy which might otherwise cost the supplier and damage both access and pricing models.

Conclusion

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a delivery model on a subscription basis and centralized hosting. The users have the ability to access the software via the web browser from different devices. SaaS is a runaway train that’s showing no signs of stopping. Companies use 16 SaaS apps on average today, up 33% from last year. 73% of organizations say nearly all (80%+) of their apps will be SaaS by 2020.

As a result, a new type of workplace called the SaaS-Powered Workplace is emerging. It creates incredible benefits like bolstering communication, cutting costs, and improving employee satisfaction. Therefore, one of such SaaS-Powered Workplace examples is Station. Being a SaaS based web app for controlling all of your other applications it easily becomes an irreplaceable tool for every busy person.

Like this article? Visit our blog for more articles!

Wellness Step Tracker - Stepler | Project Details

2muchcoffee — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:32:52 +0000

Being physically fit is a necessary element of your mental health and overall wellness. Nevertheless, we are living in an age where the pressure of working and personal to-do lists put aside the time for gym sessions or any fitness activity on that matter. We tend to substitute physical activity with more important things like staying late at work to finish some tasks, or catching on the time with family or rushing through to meet a long time no-see friends during the weekends.

At the same time, the global mHealth market value is growing each year. It’s expected to reach $511 billion in 2026 while the competition becomes fierce every day. Ironically enough, the recent studies show that over 60 percent of American adults don’t get the recommended amount of physical activity and over 25 percent of adults are not active at all. Many reasons contribute to this. For example, the lack of free time, childcare responsibilities, the gym is always busy, you can’t afford sports classes or you have a lack of confidence.

Surely you can think of millions of reasons why it’s not rational to sign up for gym membership. But, what if you could improve your health with minimum effort and what is more important to buy products depending on how well your “training” was today? Sounds great, doesn't it? All you need to do is to download Stepler.

So, what is Stepler? How will it help to motivate you to stay fit? How to create an app from scratch? What are the main tech challenges with the developing step tracker apps? Answers to all of these questions and even more you will find below.

To Exercise, Or Not to Exercise - That is the Question

This is the eternal question of every person who decides to step on the road of digital health and wellness.

Recent studies show that over 60 percent of American adults don’t get the recommended amount of physical activity and over 25 percent of adults are not active at all. As a result, 27.5% of all adults worldwide are not physically active. Other statistics stress that only 1 out of 3 children are physically active. Perhaps, this is because children spend more than 7 hours per day in front of a screen of their mobile phones and tablets.

Even though we know all the positive reasons why we should stay physically healthy, still sometimes we need to put some effort to sign up for a gym class or put ourselves together to do a morning running session. From the hectic schedule to not seeing results, there are various reasons why people don’t exercise. Let’s briefly discuss why is it so?

The lack of free time

“But I simply do not have enough free time” - this is the first thing that came to your mind once the topic of fitness pops up. It’s a fact, that modern society in comparison with society even 30 years ago is tighter on the ability to have free time. We are living in the swirl of constant to-do lists, where multitasking and the ability to keep a finger on the pulse are must-have skills. The reason for this is the development of advanced technologies, gadgets and modern tech solutions that provide us with a myriad of opportunities on a daily basis. So, we simply can’t miss the opportunity to catch on the latest trends for your job or perhaps start your own small business. Therefore, the idea of exercise routine might fade away compared to the more important goals.

Can’t afford a gym/sport class membership

Surely the price of the gym membership will depend on many factors. For example, the state/region, location, the monthly or yearly commitment, type of classes (group or individual, yoga or bootcamps), additional convenience like pool and sauna or option 24hr fitness, etc.. Whether the gym is average or elite the cost for a gym membership can vary from $10 to $100. So, probably not all young families or teenagers can afford it.

You have childcare responsibilities

Cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, having a carpool duty and it’s only a small portion of the daily activity of every parent. Therefore, exercising with kids requires planning, which is not always possible to arrange. With school or after school activities and sports, kids and teens can have schedules as busy as their parents. Therefore, making sure the kids get to practice on time some parents sacrifice their own time to contribute to their health and wellness.

The lack of confidence

Not feeling secure in the gym due to worrying about how you look and what others think is another crucial reason why people tend to neglect exercising. The lack of confidence may come from expecting too much too soon. In that case, if you go from no exercise to hitting the gym seven days a week, you’re bound to feel burned out. Since not every sports activity is for everyone, it’s important to find a routine that fits your personality and lifestyle.

The gym is too busy

What could be more frustrating than a crowded gym? In the recent survey, people identify that substituting equipment for the one which is free is the most annoying thing that influences their willingness to visit the gym. The ‘jams' in the gym usually happen in the morning and evening when people visit it before or after their working hours. Still, it doesn’t defeat the reason why you should waste your time in the gym standing in lines.

So, let’s discuss one of the wellness step counter apps as an example of a simple but effective tool on how to battle the lack of motivation and get fit.

Wellness Step Tracker - Stepler

You may have noticed that the notions of fitness and wellness are usually used together. And while we all know what fitness apps are, let’s take a minute to find out what does wellness means.

The search query “wellness meaning’ suggests that it is the state of being in good mental and physical health. Wellness can be achieved by surrounding yourself with positive and supportive people, finding activities that provide you with a sense of purpose and connectedness, taking care of your nutrition and what is more important is paying attention to your physical development and exercise on the regular basis.

That’s exactly why Stepler was created for - to boost your motivation to stay fit. The application tracks your steps and converts them into points. These points you can exchange in the app for real goods and services. Easy as that. Currently, the app is available on AppStore and GooglePlay only for Sweden, however, the team is working to expand it worldwide.

Why is it the best app on the market? Simply because you can take care of your health and buy whatever products you like. All within one application. Stepler is a new vision of a healthy lifestyle and a new step in getting benefits from your activity tracking sessions.

We suggest you see how Stepler approaches the most common reasons why people do not exercise:

The lack of free time -> The step counter app saves tons of your time while contributing to your healthy lifestyle. We mentioned that scheduling the extra time for the gym routine or running session sounds unrealistic, nowadays. But spending a lot of time exercising doesn’t mean it will be effective. So, why don't we concentrate on simple exercise that we all do every day - walking. And, if you look more closely at how you spend your time, you might realize that we walk more than you thought. Put your application to track the taken steps. Keep a calendar on your achievements so you can track your progress and stay motivated.

Can’t afford a gym membership -> It’s free of charge, plus you can get real products by exchanging your earned points from the walking. There’s no reason you have to join the gym to exercise, but if you’re determined to leave the house to work out, there are more affordable options such as long and intensive walking. Such an activity can be used for core work, cardio, and even weight training. All you need for this accessible workout is a good pair of shoes and a walking app. Therefore, without any equipment, you can get a great workout.

Moreover, you not only save your money but also have the opportunity to buy real goods and services. The app will track the steps for you and automatically convert them into points. These points can be exchanged for any product or service from the in-app catalog. There is a wide selection of goods that you can choose from since the Stepler team cooperates with top labels and brands to provide the users with useful and interesting product options.

You have childcare responsibilities. -> Walk with the kids and cultivate a healthy relationship with the fitness activity from a young age. Just because you have carpool duty or need to make sure your teen gets to practice on time doesn’t mean you have to neglect your own fitness goals. In that case, exercise can be a great activity for the whole family. Making time for a workout doesn’t just benefit your health; it also sets a good example for your kids. Moreover, put on the tracking app when the kids are napping or you’re waiting for dinner to cook. If children are old enough, invite your kids to be part of your routine and take them along on your daily walk.

The lack of confidence. -> Boost your confidence by walking, staying fit and being motivated by buying goods as a self-treat. With Stepler you should not be worried about how you look and what the other will think. Be in your natural habitat while taking care of your health. Build your confidence step by step. Moreover, you have the opportunity to treat yourself with a new purchase. Purchasing different products by the points you’ve earned could motivate you significantly. So, every time you’ll take Stepler in your hands and press the button to track the steps - you already can think of your next purchase for your friends, family or yourself.

The gym is too busy. -> Walk tracker is a great workout routine and substitution for a crowded gym. The greatest thing about the step counter is that you don’t have any equipment at all - just your mobile phone and intention to make you a more healthy person.

As a result, among the best walking apps, Stepler works as a trigger to take care of your health and wellness while purchasing real products for your pleasure.

The co-founder and CEO of Stepler, Niklas Frisk commented on how exactly the app will contribute to the current market of mHealth:

Niklas Frisk: “I think many see Stepler as an alternative to the gym card you carry in your pocket. Far too many give away their New Year’s resolutions of a healthier lifestyle for different reasons - lack of time, money, motivation, etc. So, Stepler is a cost-effective alternative that is actually complied with. It’s an easy and convenient app to use on a daily basis. Moreover, companies see Stepler as a fun platform where they meet their target audience in a playful and innovative way.”

Taking into account the growing percentage of the digital mHealth market, it is clear that fitness and wellness apps would have a great demand among the customers of all the age in the future. So, if you want to start a small business or develop a mobile app for medical, healthcare and wellness industries - then let’s take a look at how to build a step-tracking app. Based on personal experience, the 2muchcoffee team will briefly discuss all the necessary aspects of the building the wellness step tracker app.

Stepler in Details: form the Idea Definition to the Development Challenges

A fitness app or sports tracker, a walking app or step tracker - regardless of the name Stepler will motivate you to stay fit while exchanging the points for any product you like. Stepler automatically counts your steps, walking, and running distances. And, if you have an Apple Watch, it automatically tracks all of your activity data. So, it’s time to look at the idea behind the application and what tech challenges were faced by our devs team.

The idea. We believe that the beauty and convenience of any mobile app lies in its simplicity. Therefore, the key advantage of the Stepler is clear and simple user-interface and functionality. The mobile app was created to simplify the lives of the users and not vice versa.

One should take into account, that the rapid growth of the mHealth market and the consequent high demand for feature-rich fitness apps created a tendency to produce feature creep apps. The apps with an excessive number of features that are not necessarily useful for targeted consumers. As a result, the market is full of applications doing multiple things like cardio tracking, fitness activity tracking, calorie calculating, providing workout exercise templates and many others.

Having such an app, a user could find it quite confusing to navigate such a complex feature flow. Instead of it, users are willing to use simple apps with the focus on the specific activity. Therefore, simplicity in functionality will be more appealing to your targeted audiences and potentially create an emotional connection with the app.

Moreover, simplicity and clarity can even help your product to survive severe competition in the mHealth market. How? A user or a new customer should know what exactly to expect before downloading the app. In the myriad of different mHealth apps (precisely, step tracking ones) your application should stand out. In this case, balancing simplicity with functionality is the foundation of sophistication of mobile app development.

In this regard, Stepler is focusing on one particular goal and feature - user motivation to move. While the simplicity and functionality reflect in its main advantages, such as:

Step synchronization. The application synchronizes all steps from the moment of the first sign in. Even if the app was deleted at some point, still the step data will be synchronized until the present moment;
Google Fit / Apple Health integration. Thanks to the integration with Google Fit / Apple Health, we allow users to synchronize any steps in the application from any device that supports synchronization with Google Fit / Apple Health;
Real products instead of discounts. Unlike other step-counting apps, Stepler doesn’t grant you with products’ discounts. There is a much better option. The app has a wide catalog of goods and services that you can get for an exchange for your step points. The Stepler team collaborates with local and international suppliers and brands to provide the app’s users with relevant products;
The onboarding procedure. Basically, the onboarding procedure explains how the application works. Quite a useful feature if you never use a tracking app before. The app guides you from the very start and assists you to navigate the basic principles of app use;
Get a bonus for inviting a friend. Invite a friend or a family member and get additional points for that. You can set up a Wellness step challenge with your friends while getting fit together. This feature was achieved due to Firebase dynamic links, which allow you to send existing links to the potential users to any location with your iOS or Android app;
Progressive errors monitoring system. This is a smart and useful tool for the identification of any sort of bugs and mistakes that took place in the system and sending the message to the support team with the whole description of the problem and localization.

We asked co-founders of Stepler to elaborate on what was the inspiration to create an app and its main advantages form his point of view:

Niklas Frisk: “The idea was born when we ourselves lacked the motivation for exercise and movement. At the same time, nowadays it’s difficult to solve the life puzzle with family, work, and training. So Stepler was the answer to several questions. Regarding the main advantages, of the app, I would say that downloading the app is an extremely low threshold. Everybody walk, who wouldn’t wanna get fit and get paid at the same time? The timing is also a factor. Plus, the app (even if not directly) contributes to sustainability, climate, and a healthy lifestyle, which are on everybody’s lips today.”

Technical challenges and solutions. Stepler was developed to count the steps. And while it may sound simple on the surface, in reality, there are a lot of pitfalls that need to be solved. The development of step counting apps could be quite tricky - both the storage of the huge amount of data and synchronization could be the most difficult challenges even for the experienced devs.

Check out the other tech challenges that might pop up during the development process:

Storing a huge number of step records. The main challenge with tracking applications is storing a huge amount of data. The case with Stepler implies storing a huge number of step records in such a way that you can quickly work with them. That was achieved due to a clear codebase that was developed on React Native, NodeJS, NestJS, GraphQL, MongoDB.
Quick synchronization. One of the most difficult tasks was to ensure the quick synchronization of the data. A huge number of steps need to be operated and converted to the data immediately. At the same time, the application should be synchronized quite quickly once the user doesn’t visit the app for a while (for example, a month). At this point, the clear operations without the default is a must.
Privacy terms peculiarities. When requesting synchronization with Apple Health, we cannot find out if the user gave us the ability to read steps (apple health privacy terms). For this reason, we give a hint about turned off synchronization in the case when the user has 0 steps in the last 24 hours.
Anti-cheat checks. At this point the logic of operations is crucial. For example, the application should clearly identify why step 2 begins after step 1 or that the app shouldn’t take into account the steps that are imposed. Therefore, there were a lot of checks for anti-cheat, so there could be implemented the ban on the self-entered steps in Health-Fit.
Orders management. Mobile app integrated with the Zendesk ticket system for convenient management of user orders. As a result, we get a user-friendly and simple application for tracking activity.

The tech stack we used: React Native, MongoDB, Zendesk API, Rabbitmq, Nestjs, Sentry.io, Firebase Analytics, Apple health integration, Google Fit integration.

Our team, as well as the Stepler team, are proud of the result and the quality of the work we did. We provided a full cycle of development from idea to release. Highload project with thousands of users is never easy to handle, especially since each user has to synchronize huge amounts of steps/data. Therefore, it needs to be highlighted that we are proud to find solutions and manage the real-time data updating and create a simple but elegant mobile app for step counting.

The product perspective. Millions of people have already verified the fact that Stepler is the best app in the market niche. The application became the number one in Sweden and was mentioned in the local newspaper as the most rapidly developed startup in the fitness and wellness mHealth market.

Based on such success, the leaders of Stepler commented on the scaling plans for the next 5 years:

Niklas Frisk: “We start out in Sweden where we expect to grow to 250K+ users before we expand to Europe and the USA. We have a great ambition with Stepler and sees a market across all 7 continents.”

Among the best walking apps, Stepler works as a trigger to take care of your health and wellness while purchasing real products for your pleasure. Don’t wait for tomorrow to pay attention to your health. Start moving today, collect points and get great discounts in the shops.

Conclusion

In 2020, being fit sounds easier than it looks. Why? Simply because with the innovation in healthcare the market became overcrowded with the feature creep mobile apps. Consequently, such applications are stuffed with unnecessary features. Therefore, being the user of such an app and having to navigate all functionality of the app might be frustrated and overwhelmed.

At 2muchcoffee we believe that the mobile app should be user-friendly and elegant in its functionality and design. That is why we value the unique idea and product potential. Developed from scratch - it’s no brainer, that Stepler was our favorite project to work on.

Stepler tracks your steps and converts them into points. These points you can exchange in the app for real goods and services. As a result, among the best walking apps, Stepler works as a trigger to take care of your health and wellness while purchasing real products for your pleasure. It is considered the best app on the market due to its simplicity and functionality that creates a sophisticated user experience.

Walking app, step tracker or step counter app, best pedometer, a fitness app or sports tracker - call it whatever you like, but Stepler is about to rock your world!

See for yourself by downloading the app (AppStore, GooglePlay).

Like this article? Visit our blog for more articles!

Mobile Health (mHealth) Market Analysis and Forecast

2muchcoffee — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:01:03 +0000

Digital healthcare solutions are booming right now. Nowadays, healthcare and technology are coming together to improve your health and wellness condition, identify the first signs of chronic diseases and assist with the necessary doctor's appointments.

Did you know that 59 percent of the people have a mobile health app while over 65 percent of the digital health tool users address their applications at least once per day. The statistics vividly show that global healthcare is on the verge of change and ready to battle current healthcare issues.

It’s fair to say that among all the healthcare industry trends the leading position is occupied by the fitness apps. Such mobile applications focus on maintaining physical health and wellbeing while saving user’s time and money. In fact, being fit is becoming a modern global health strategy due to the contemporary lifestyle pattern. Having long working days at the office, using gadgets that negatively affect the posture and finally, a busy schedule that doesn’t allow you to go to the gym creates urgent health issues for everyone.

The following market analysis and forecast was created due to our profound experience in the new product development in the digital healthcare market. Based on the 50+ mHealth startups, we would like to share recent data on the mobile health market. This article will cover all the major components of the mHealth industry - a consumer snapshot, competition, types of mHealth apps, and market potential.

Digital Health Industry: Market Outlook

The fast-paced digital technologies start merging with health and wellness industries creating a digital health symbiotic relationship. Moreover, over the last few years, the market of mobile health (mHealth) apps has been steadily growing while adopting new technologies - all of that contributed to the growth of digital medicine.

Subsequently, the digital health and wellness sector evolved into a powerful ecosystem that not only provides great opportunities nowadays but also has great potential in the future. With the adoption of mobile in the healthcare sector, the business opportunities for mHealth apps are huge.

A consumer snapshot. Modern healthcare consumers are more open to using intelligent technologies, sharing data and allowing a combination of man and digital technologies to power a new model of healthcare.

The report Accenture 2018 Consumer Survey on Digital Health stressed that consumers continue to show strong use of digital technology. Moreover, the numbers are rising exponentially each year. Recently there have been decreases in using websites. On the other hand, using self-service digital health tools like mobile, electronic health records (EHRs), social media and wearable technologies are increased. The mentioned healthcare industry sectors raised significantly in 2018 in comparison to 2016 (see the graph below for the detailed numbers).

In addition, significantly increased in the use of health apps and wearable devices since each year more and more consumers are willing to wear technologies to track their fitness, lifestyle and vital signs. The use of wearable devices, such as smartwatch and activity tracker, has more than tripled since 2014, from 9 percent to 33 percent. Speaking of mobile/tablet apps, nearly half (48 percent) of consumers use these devices, compared to just 16 percent in 2014.

Nowadays, consumers are willing to share their wearable health device data with their doctor (90 percent) or other healthcare professionals (88 percent). So, we can observe the shift of trust regarding the consumer’s privacy data. Consumers have less interest in sharing wearable device data with the government agency (41 percent) or their employer (38 percent). Instead of it, mHealth app users are willing to share data with their health insurance plan (up from 63 percent in 2016 to 72 percent in 2018) and with online communities or other app users (up from 38 percent in 2016 to 47 in 2018).

Competition. A significant rise in the number of health apps is also one of the reasons that have stimulated the growth of the market. The digital health market continues to grow and attract new entrants. At the moment, more than 84,000 mHealth app publishers have released mobile apps for the medical and health and fitness market.

According to Research2Guidance,the types of mHealth app publishers have increased in diversity. Therefore,

32 percent of the global mHealth market is traditional healthcare stakeholders such as hospitals, health insurers, and pharmaceutical companies;
28 percent of the market is occupied by purely digital market players such as mHealth app companies;
23 percent of the market is represented by non-healthcare companies including technology and app developer companies;
10 percent of the market is universities, NGOs and educational organizations;
Around 1 percent of the market is telecommunication companies.

Comparing the data from 2016 and 2017, it is noticeable that the mHealth app downloads reached 3.7 billion app downloads in 2017 - which is 16 percent more than in 2016. Nevertheless, with competition fierce, getting significant mHealth app reach is a big challenge. In fact, only 4 percent of the mobile health app publishers achieve more than 1 million downloads annually and only 15 percent achieve between 50,000 and 250,000.

Regarding the download statistics, wellness apps (diet and nutrition, lifestyle and stress, exercise and fitness) take the predominant place in the chart of the downloads.

Drink Water Reminder was the most downloaded Health and fitness category app worldwide for 2019 with around 13.5 million downloads. Swiggy, Flo, MiFit, BetterMe are rounded out the top five most installed health and fitness category apps worldwide.

Types of mHealth Apps. Technology in healthcare created a myriad of opportunities for everyone. From step tracking to pharmacy applications - nowadays a healthcare customers are able to have the full analysis of their health just with a couple of clicks. Nevertheless, the majority of healthcare businesses are general wellness related.

Health-related mobile apps and technologies manage the patient experiences through different applications, for example, step tracker or diet and calorie-counting mobile apps. In addition, “connection to doctors” has a great demand on the market, too. So, let’s take a look at different types of mHealth apps:

Fitness apps: a great helper during the work out routine, since it contains tips and popular workout programs with the focus on strengthening muscles and tone the body;
Activity tracking: step tracker or walk tracker are the great examples here - so on the daily basis applications tend to motivate you to take care of your health;
Diet and nutrition apps: provide the information on how many calories in a banana or calculate orange calories or calories in grapes to balance the healthy diet;
Stress management and meditation apps (including sleep cycle analysis apps): such apps include the different practice of meditation and how to deal with stress to help users to build a stress-free approach to different challenges;
Pregnancy tracking apps: such applications are no substitute for professional medical advice, however, this is an excellent way to track the baby’s growth over time;
Pharmacy apps: include up-to-date information on the latest prescription drugs, their interactions, side effects and uses;
Appointment management apps: works great for doctors and patients, since it gives doctors the list of available times to manage patients visits and clients get information about when they can enroll for a meeting, treatment and service.

A digital health market potential. The demand for digital health is rising on account of the increasing need to improve workflow efficiency across hospitals and other healthcare organizations, reduce healthcare costs, while at the same time focus on improving the quality of patient care.

As a result, the global digital health market is expected to rise exponentially in the coming years. The already multi-billion industry is likely to grow at an accelerated pace, as the healthcare sector welcomes digitization. Recent advancements in technology illustrate the inclusion of mobile, big data, cloud, and other developments. Thus, digital Health Market size was valued at USD $95.7 billion in 2018 and is expected to witness approximately 27.7% CAGR from 2019 to 2025.

Among the different regions (Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and Latin America), the North America digital health market has emerged dominant. The expansion of this market is supported by both the presence of sophisticated healthcare infrastructure and the high adoption of advanced technologies. Factors like cloud-based storage systems and increased adoption of smartphones and tablets to track and monitor patient health and history work as a major trigger for the market growth.

It is predicted that mHealth apps' market size in 2025 will be around $50 billion. One of the major driving factors fuelling the growth of the mobile health market is the increased adoption of smartphones, as well as the continued heavy investment in the digital health market. Thus, there are over 318,000 mHealth apps available on the top app stores worldwide, nearly double the number of apps available in 2015 - with more than 200 apps being added each day.

The research Accenture 2018 Consumer Survey on Digital Health suggests that emerging technologies in healthcare are shifting the composition of the care team. Nowadays, consumers are increasingly benefiting from the current trends in healthcare. Thus, using digital technologies to manage their health, people are adopting virtual care, and they see the advantages of harnessing the collective power of humans and machines. It is no exaggeration to describe this is the emergence of a new era in healthcare. Patients, doctors, and digital innovations can work together to improve the accessibility, effectiveness, and affordability of healthcare.

And while the statistical majority of consumers take great advantage of mHealth technologies, specifically fitness and activity tracking apps; still there are a lot of people who aren't motivated enough to work out on a regular basis.

Conclusion

The involvement of digital technologies in the healthcare sector builds a myriad of opportunities for the modern healthcare consumer. Precisely, the emerging digital health and wellness industries create new products to track and manage your health and wellbeing.

Thus, the analysis shows that mHealth market segments include fitness apps, activity tracking apps, diet and nutrition apps, stress management and meditation apps, pregnancy tracking apps, pharmacy apps, and appointment management apps. Among all the segments the leading role occupies the step tracking apps, which will motivate you to stay fit with minimum money and time spendings.

The market analysis assumed an exponential increase in digital health tools consumption. It is suggested that digital Health Market size will be valued at $511 billion in 2026. These statistics prove the transformative pattern among the consumers towards the digitalization of the healthcare sector. Nowadays, consumers are willing to use wearable health devices and share their data with their doctor or other healthcare professional.

Finally, the growing value of the digital healthcare industry suggests the improvement of health conditions and prolonging life expectancy for every healthcare consumer. In fact, new technology in healthcare creates endless opportunities for human wellbeing. Even today implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) and AR/VR start to be an ordinary practice in healthcare. Can you imagine the possibilities of digital healthcare in 20 years then?

Like this article? Visit our blog for more articles!

Car Design EdTech Platform - inktank.academy | ProjectDetails

2muchcoffee — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 17:50:28 +0000

What is the digitization of education? It’s a changing pattern of possibilities within teaching and learning. Digital learning frames the new reality of delivering high-quality and effective digital education. EdTech develops a variety of products and services which include everything from learning games to tutoring platforms.

The market analysis suggests that the EdTech market share would reach $40.9 billion by 2022. The reason for such vivid growth is the symbiosis of modern technologies with the best practices in education. Such an approach creates new trends in educational practices that no one could avoid in contemporary society.

Moreover, EdTech involves the solution to the previously unsolved issues, like creating digital learning platforms for creative and non-traditional skills, for example, car design specialists. If you always wanted to design your own car or you simply were always into the car designs’ trends, you have to check out Inktank.academy - the very first platform for car design online classes. You can watch a small sneak peak of what to expect from the e-Learning plarform.

Based on the personal experience of Inktank.academy web development, we will share the most relevant details about the product development process and web technologies that were used. So, whether you are a junior web developer or an entrepreneur who is willing to start a small business in EdTech we hope that this article will answer some of your questions.

Pain Points of the Online Education

So, before discussing the web development of the car design platform, let’s mention the main pain points of contemporary digital education, which were solved by the mentioned application.

The modern educational process is a mixture of schools’ classes, online courses, YouTube channels, books, podcasts, blogs, and search engines, like Google. Today we have plenty of channels to receive education and boost our knowledge, however, at the same time, users may experience certain pain points. Such pain points create dissatisfaction with the process of online education. For example, there are some of the mentioned pain points:

“Difficult to find the right resource to achieve the learning goals”. Currently, the excess of information could be a major problem in filtering the relevant digital courses for users. In that case, achieving the learning goals are more difficult than ever before.
“It’s difficult to find a mentor”. People got used to a certain level of mentorship when talking about learning. Nevertheless, some of the digital platforms don’t have this one-on-one practice when a student can ask questions or get clear visual instructions. As a result the impression of the learning process doesn't have much value.
“Courses are boring”. Quite often the courses are very basic in their curriculum with simple graphics and main bullet points without the depth into the learning subject. Consequently, the courses can be quite boring for the students.
“It’s not quite clear how to apply the acquired knowledge”. Since it’s much easier to learn about something rather than apply this knowledge in practice, the essence of practical usage of the learning might be twisted.
“What’s the impact of learning?”. Sometimes it could be hard to measure the progress and judge how far you’ve come along in anything you learn. Additionally, it’s quite unclear what the learning goals even are.

It's crucial to understand that online education provides a great opportunity for everyone, however, it’s not a panacea and certain pain points may occur. So, the new product which is entering the market should be focusing on solving these issues and provide a unique approach to certain challenges.

Precisely, inktank.academy was developed to make digital learning efficient and find solutions for the major challenges in the educational sector.

> > ## Inktank.academy: Revolutionizing Approach to e-Learning

Inktank.academy is an online platform dedicated to teaching car design. The platform offers courses with video tutorials that explain different aspects and techniques of car design.

So, if you always wanted to learn how to draw an awesome care design, this platform was developed specifically for you. The car design courses have no restrictions regarding the level of your skills and will be suitable for design students, design professionals, and design enthusiasts.

What is the Inktank Academy mission? The first and foremost purpose of the platform is to make high-quality car design teaching available for everybody. Whether you are studying a design field and want to be qualified as a car designer or you already working as product design and want to improve your skills - you will get a high-level course from the top professionals in the industry. One way or another the EdTech platform offers the online courses that start at a basic level and steadily develop its complexity throughout the course.

Moreover, inktank.academy has the aim to support design universities, students and professional car designers in their education, to improve their skills, knowledge and creativity. The team is willing to support everybody in the world to reach their goals in car design.

How does it work? The modern learning system suggests that every student can learn at his own pace, when and where is the most convenient for them. Moreover, the learning process is based on personal preferences which are more interested to learn for him/her at the moment. The process of e-learning is quite simple. You watch the course videos, make the assignments, upload your work and receive feedback. At this point, the smart combination of the videos, assignments, and system of feedback creates the individual learning experience.

We asked the inktank.academy product owners to comment on what was the inspiration to create such a platform? So, that’s what we’ve got:

- “Most LMS [Learning management system] out there are highly focused on theoretical subjects. They are great solutions to offer an education that is provided through dry text, images, and video. Our online academy is focused on a creative niche subject; Car design.

We don’t need a lot of the features that the conventional LMS’s offer and have specific needs which they do not offer. In our app, we deliver the content through videos and allow the students to upload their work on the assignments. Nothing special so far. What sets our platform apart is the feedback and social learning tools. We have created a great feedback tool that allows tutors to sketch over students’ uploads, giving them very precise and helpful feedback without having to leave the app. The feedback from other students and tutors (likes, comments, sketches) are directly linked to the skill areas of our subject, Car design. This way the students have a great overview of which skill areas they are strong in, and in which they can still improve."

![online-learning](https://2muchcoffee.com/blog/content/images/2020/03/online-learning.png) ## Inktank.academy Features

Let’s discuss what is distinguish the Inktank from the other EdTech platforms:

The variety of skill areas. Hand sketching, digital sketching, modeling, creative methods, concept development, background knowledge - all of these and more are covered by the online academy.
More than 60 high-quality car design courses. The EdTech platform offers video-based courses recorded and produced by the professional film team. The high-resolution videos allow students to watch every single tiny element of sketching while the detailed explanations of the process shown will guide students in their learning experience.
A strong group of tutors. Having skilled tutors with an exceptional experience is the predominant reason for the success of the inktank.academy. The team consists of chief designers, design directors, exterior designs, etc.. who were working with brands such as Porsche, Bentley, Volkswagen, and Mercedes.
Interactive feedback. The feature that certainly stands out from the wide majority of the learning platforms, nowadays. While sharing and receiving feedback from tutors and the community, the student gets the essence of transparency in the digital learning process. Consequently, such practice helps to improve the work of the team and create new ideas for education.
Flexibility in learning. As with any other digital classroom, the platform suggests learning what you want and when you want it. Choose what to learn and do it buy your own speed.
Leveling system. You have the chance to get a certain number of experience points after you finish the course or when other students like your work. Besides, the coin system allows you to unlock the courses and level up to make better results.
The full spectrum of car design skills. If you are worrying that only people with a specific background can benefit from InTank - you are wrong. The platform covers the full spectrum of car design. So it’s no matter what level you have - from beginner to professional, from hand sketching to CAD modeling, from the first design to complete concepts - all that is matter your time and willingness to learn a new skill with the help of modern technological solutions.

The inktank.academy leaders elaborated on the main advantages of the product, how it will contribute the current market of EdTech and the scaling plans for the next 5 years:

“It is a bespoke solution for our niche product. By building it completely to our needs the end result is much cleaner and stronger than trying to force an existing LMS to our needs. Speaking of the market contribution it’s fair to say that LMS’s that fulfill the needs for creative fields are still very underdeveloped. Our app is a great addition to the market that serves our niche very well. Our app is currently focused on one specific niche in the creative field. We hope to expand the app functionality to be able to serve other creative fields as well.”

Inktank.academy: The Project in Development

In case you are wondering how to develop the EdTech web app or you’re currently working on a similar project, this section of the article will be useful to you. We will mention the main challenges that we face during the development process and the solutions that were implemented.

So, using a supplied prototype by the inktank.academy team, 2muchcoffee developed an eLearning platform from scratch. Our team used Angular to create a functional frontend, and REST API for a customized backend.

User roles. Educational platform related to professionalization in car design has 3 types of users:

Student - after becoming a member, has access to a variety of courses with different difficulty levels.
Tutor - has the option of adding his lessons for admin review and look through students' work after they have finished the course.
Admin - who has the option to add and edit content for students.

2muchcoffee contribution. Our team provided a full cycle development, including specification and docs preparing, project managing, Linux server setup and configuration, UI/UX designs creation, front-end development using Angular, back-end development using NodeJS and API integration, QA and testing, prototyping of PWA UI/UX structure.

Tech Stack: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, Angular, MongoDB, Nest.js, SCSS, REST API, Material, TypeScript.

What was the technical challenge? Integrate taxamo service into the existing payment model in the application, which means to make some additional layer between the application and the payment systems Stripe and Paypal.

What is the most difficult issue in terms of architecture/performance? Additional libraries for the implementation of this integration were not used, however, its implementation directly affected the architecture of the application on both the front and the backend.

Moreover, on the front end, our devs had to partially remake the registration system and completely remake the payment system, replacing the own custom form with the one prefaced by this library, etc.

Also, a lot of architectural changes had to be made on the backend. For example remaking, the receipt of web hooks, since now they had to be received through the taxamo service, and not from payment systems directly.

One of the issues that arose during the integration of taxamo was that we lost the ability to receive hooks about transaction errors from PayPal. The bottom line was that in the settings of the PayPal account it is possible to specify only one address for sending web hooks, and for the taxamo service to work here it was necessary to specify the address provided by the service itself, this condition is necessary for its operation. After that, we were no longer able to receive webhooks on our server, where the application backend is located, and, accordingly, perform the necessary actions if the payments were not successful. But since we still had the opportunity to independently access the payment system from the backend, it was decided to request the necessary data from the payment system on our own.

For this, crowns of tasks with certain logic were created, which in turn requested the necessary data in PayPal at the right time. Yes, of course, this greatly complicated the logic associated with the application working with PayPal, however, we needed to solve this situation in such a way that we could use both the PayPal payment system and the taxamo service and we succeeded. The created crowns themselves did not in any way overload the work of the server-side and did not degrade the application performance.

Conclusion

While the EdTech market is lacking the courses in creative niches - the inktank.academy goal was to change this pattern. Therefore, the idea of the Inktank team was to create a top-notch car design platform - something that turned out to be a great collaboration between both of our teams. Based on the brilliant idea our devs were able to develop robust and scalable products using the best practices of Angular.

At 2muchcoffee, we are always very conscious of the new trends in our niche market. Therefore, to be a part of such a web development project is to contribute to the future of EdTech.

Having 6 years of experience in full-cycle complex projects we are ready to assist projects with complex architecture, such as inktank.academy. The EdTech platform is the first digital learning application for everyone who wants to become a car designer. The platform incorporates the best industry trends and multimedia (video, assignments and the system of feedback) to create a smooth educational experience. You can try a one week for free to test the full power of the digital learning practice.

Like this article? Visit our blog for more articles!

Educational Technology (EdTech) Market Research

2muchcoffee — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:39:19 +0000

Education technology solutions have become one of the hottest topics of discussion among parents and educators around the world. Nowadays students are thriving to get new knowledge while using modern educational technology tools and top trends in digital education technology.

The education technology industry is focusing on solving different challenges in education. For example, EdTech allows you to obtain skills in non-traditional and creative spheres - like a car designer. In that case, the digital classroom contains all the necessary multimedia tools for effective digital learning. One such example is InkTank Academy - a digital learning platform for everyone who is eager to learn how to design a car.

The aim of the article is to shed light on the EdTech market. Working with over 50+ EdTech startups, we were operating with loads of data consisting of market analysis and competitors' research. Therefore, we have compiled the latest data on market size and market potential, so you can have a deeper understanding of the EdTech market perspective.

What is EdTech?

Education Technology (the short form is EdTech) could be applied to the area of technology dedicated to the development of digital tools (including software, hardware, and processes) intended to enrich the educational experience and improve educational methods.

Although EdTech is in the early stage of development, yet it shows a great promise of revolutionizing the traditional approach to learning. Since different students have different abilities and interests, digital learning proposes a method of customizing the curriculum by introducing new content at a pace that would be more natural for students.

You can define several types of educational technologies, such as:

Synchronous and Asynchronous
Linear Learning
Collaborative Learning

EdTech has already had a huge effect on education. With the development of advanced technologies, the boundaries of educational methodology have been expanded. It is fair to say that educational and technological advances are combined together with a new revolutionary landscape in the traditional market of educational possibilities. EdTech not only allows educational institutions to serve a larger and more diverse audience but also enables both teachers and students, to foster relationships in an interactive fashion.

Why is EdTech Important?

Every year more and more corporations adopt EdTech while a lot of entrepreneurs start their small businesses using education technology. Since most people acknowledge the existing benefits of EdTech for the present and future students, it’s not a surprise that the global education technology market is expected to grow to $40.9 billion by 2022.

The main goal of EdTech is not to substitute the current practices, but rather simply change the approach of educational delivery. We are not talking about changing the education material from books to digital form. Hence, it’s a much more deep integration of innovative solutions to the education system by improving the pedagogy and learning process.

Therefore, there are only a few of the benefits that digital learning platforms can bring to the age-old education process:

Build strong student engagement by using all the necessary multimedia for more convenience;
Students, parents, and teachers can easily track the progress of learning;
Students have the ability to collaborate with other students, teachers or influencers, consequently gaining the practical experience;
Input to sustainable development, since there are no paper books so EdTech doesn't affect the deforestation;
Everyone can improve their digital literacy.

As we continue to move forward, it is clear that digitization of education is becoming more of a significant factor in the educational sector. We truly can be optimistic about the future of education since there are hundreds of thousands of options out there following the top educational technology trends. Cloud computing, virtual and augmented learning experience, 3D printing are all available nowadays and are increasing exponentially every year while creating a custom learning experience for every student.

Global EdTech Market Potential

Therefore, the global EdTech and e-learning market is forecasted to grow at 5.08 percent CAGR by 2022 making the total worth a whopping $243 billion. Observing this massive growth even the investors are lured to fund education startups while more and more entrepreneurs are eager to develop EdTech startup.

Educational technology is moving fast, and some level of digital adoption and tech solutions are required to be implemented now. However, not all EdTech companies stick to the smart plan of adopting innovative technologies. Some of the companies choose to stick with “tried and true” technologies and subsequently risk to be left in the dust as other, more forward-looking companies develop new, more engaging teaching and assessment tools.

By the same time, living in the swirl of endless opportunities, modern solutions, and advanced technologies, it’s important to navigate the process of new product development. So, companies that leap into new educational technologies without thoroughly understanding market potential and limitations may run into serious problems as their products fail to deliver educational value. In this case, the first thing to do is market research. Consequently, it will help in framing your product/market fit and overall business strategy to become a leader in the specific market niche.

The global education statistics in 2017 reached skyrocketing $4.5 billion funding 813 EdTech companies. As you can see there was a steady increase in global education venture capital investment over several years. However, in 2018 EdTech shattered its previous records with $8.2 billion in investment in the first half itself, funding a total of 437 companies.

Such a jump could be explained that today’s digitally connected generation of students strives to get a unique way of delivering learning practice. That is why multimedia and interactive course content are predominant features of every digital learning platform.

The market snapshot of the advanced education technology suggests that it will begin to hit the strides by 2025 with AR/VR and Artificial Intelligence becoming increasingly integrated into core education delivery and learning processes. It’s most likely that such a process will begin in the corporate and non-accredited sectors.

At the same time, digital spending is changing fast. Comparing the two years (2018 and 2025) the growing percentage of digital spending is vivid. In 2018, education spent $142 billion on digital technologies. It is suggested that spending on digital education technology will reach $342 billion by 2025.

The global education technology industry analysis shows that market share crossed $17.7 billion in revenue in 2017 and is expected to grow to $40.9 billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.3%.

Liked that? We’ve done our best! Go to our blog to find more useful articles.