In the realm of software development, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the linchpin that connects disparate systems and powers digital innovations. They empower different software components, applications, or systems to communicate and share data seamlessly, enabling the digital experiences we take for granted today. However, with this increased connectivity comes a critical concern — API security. This blog post explains why protecting your APIs against threats is crucial and what you should do to prevent various threats.

## The Critical Role of APIs

APIs are the bridges that allow software applications to interact and share information with each other. From the moment you check the weather on your smartphone, book a ride through a ridesharing app, or even share a post on social media, APIs are at work behind the scenes. They have become the lifeblood of our digital experiences, enabling applications to provide real-time data and functionality.

## The Vulnerability of APIs

While APIs enable unprecedented connectivity and functionality, they are not immune to threats. In fact, APIs are often prime targets for cybercriminals and malicious actors seeking to exploit vulnerabilities. This vulnerability stems from the very nature of APIs, designed to be accessible and usable, potentially exposing entry points into sensitive data and critical systems. When left unguarded, APIs can become open doors to data breaches, unauthorized access, and a host of other security risks.

## The Significance of API Security in Outsourcing

Outsourcing software development has become prevalent in today's globalized business landscape. Companies often collaborate with external development teams to create cutting-edge applications and systems. While this approach offers various benefits, it introduces new challenges, particularly API security. When you entrust your software development to external partners, you extend access to your APIs. This places a premium on ensuring these APIs are fortified against threats and vulnerabilities.
API security is not merely an optional layer of protection but a critical necessity. Neglecting it can lead to dire consequences, including data breaches, financial losses, legal liabilities, and reputational damage. Therefore, as you embark on the journey of outsourcing software development, it's paramount to recognize the central role of API security in safeguarding your digital assets and the sensitive data of your users.

## What Are API Threats?

API threats are vulnerabilities or potential avenues of attack that malicious actors can exploit to compromise the security and integrity of your APIs. These threats can manifest in various forms, from unauthorized access to data breaches and denial-of-service attacks. API threats are the Achilles' heel of your digital infrastructure, making them a top concern for businesses and developers alike.

## Why Are API Threats Significant?

API threats are significant for several reasons:
- **Data Exposure:** APIs often handle sensitive data, such as user credentials, personal information, or financial data. A breach can lead to disastrous consequences, including legal liabilities and loss of trust.
- **Business Disruption:** Attacks like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) can disrupt your API's availability, causing downtime and financial losses.
- **Reputation Damage:** A successful API breach can tarnish your organization's reputation, making it hard to regain trust from customers and partners.

## Common API Threats

To effectively safeguard your APIs, it's crucial to recognize and understand their specific threats. 

Here are some common API threats:
1. **SQL Injection:** This attack involves injecting malicious SQL queries into API requests, potentially gaining unauthorized access to databases or sensitive data.
2. **DDoS Attacks:** This attack floods your API with traffic, overloading its capacity and causing service interruptions.
3. **Unauthorized Access:** Malicious actors may attempt to gain unauthorized access to your API endpoints, potentially compromising data or functionality.
4. **Data Exposure:** Inadequate data protection measures can expose sensitive information to unauthorized parties.
5. **Broken Authentication:** When authentication mechanisms are weak or faulty, attackers can impersonate legitimate users and gain access to confidential information.
6. **Rate Limiting Bypass:** Attackers may attempt to bypass rate limiting controls to flood your API with requests, causing performance issues.

## Consequences of API Vulnerabilities

**Data Breaches: The Unforgiving Fallout**
A data breach is one of the most dreaded outcomes of an API security breach. In a world where data is the new currency, such breaches can be catastrophic. Sensitive user information, financial data, or intellectual property can fall into the wrong hands. As an example, 147 million individuals' personal information was exposed by Equifax's notorious data breach in 2017. The fallout was immense, including massive financial penalties, loss of customer trust, and legal battles that continue to this day.

**Financial Losses: More Than Just Numbers**
API vulnerabilities can have a direct impact on your bottom line. A successful breach can result in substantial financial losses, apart from immediate costs related to fixing the violation, fines, legal fees, and potential compensation to affected parties. Moreover, downtime caused by breaches or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can lead to lost revenue and brand damage.

**Damage to Reputation: Trust is Fragile**
Trust is a delicate asset, painstakingly built over time, yet it can crumble instantly. Your organization's reputation is at stake when an API security breach makes headlines. Customers and partners may lose confidence in your ability to protect their data and may seek alternatives. Rebuilding a tarnished reputation can take years if not decades.

**Illustrating the Impact**
To underscore the gravity of API vulnerabilities, consider these statistics:
According to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, t[he average data breach cost in 2023 was $4.45 million](https://cybersecurityventures.com/annual-cybercrime-report-2020/{externalnofollow}). This includes detection, response, notification, and legal expenses.
According to Ponemon Institute research, detecting and containing a data breach takes, on average, 287 days. That's nearly a year of potential damage.
A study by Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that cybercrime damages will reach [$10.5 trillion annually by 2025](https://cybersecurityventures.com/cybercrime-damages-6-trillion-by-2021/{externalnofollow}), highlighting the alarming growth of digital threats.
As these statistics reveal, API vulnerabilities pose severe financial and reputational risks to businesses.

## Best Practices for API Security

### Critical Principles for Securing APIs
To shield your APIs against threats, you need to establish a robust security framework. Here are key principles to adhere to:
- **Authentication:** Implement robust authentication mechanisms to ensure only authorized users or applications can access your APIs. Consider techniques like OAuth or API keys.
- **Authorization:** Define and enforce fine-grained access controls to limit what users or applications can do within your API. Role-based access control (RBAC) is a commonly used method.
- **Encryption:** Make sure data is encrypted during transit and at rest. Use HTTPS for communications and secure storage solutions for sensitive data.
- **Input Validation:** Thoroughly validate and sanitize input data to prevent common attacks like SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS). Input validation ensures that data received by your API is safe and trustworthy.

### Actionable Tips and Guidelines
1. **Use rate Limiting:** Implement rate limiting to prevent abuse and potential DDoS attacks. This limits the number of requests a user or application can make within a specific timeframe.
2. **Regularly Update Dependencies:** Keep all software dependencies, including libraries and frameworks, current. Vulnerabilities in third-party components can compromise your API's security.
3. **Security Testing:** Regularly monitor security vulnerability scans and penetration tests to identify potential vulnerabilities.
4. **Logging and Monitoring:** Implement comprehensive logging and monitoring to detect suspicious activities and respond promptly to security incidents.
5. **API Gateway:** Consider using an API gateway as a centralized point for managing and securing API traffic. It can handle authentication, rate limiting, and more.

### Proactive Security Measures
Security should not be an afterthought; it must be an integral part of the development process. Here's how you can ensure proactive security:
- **Security by Design:** Incorporate security into the design phase of your API. Perform threat modeling to identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies.
- **Security Training:** Train your development team on secure coding practices and the latest security threats and best practices.
- **Regular Audits:** Conduct security audits and code reviews to identify vulnerabilities early in the development cycle.
- **DevSecOps:** Embrace the DevSecOps approach, where security is integrated into the entire development and deployment process, ensuring continuous monitoring and improvement.

By following these best practices and adopting a proactive security stance, API vulnerabilities and security breaches can be significantly reduced. Remember that security is an ongoing process, and staying vigilant is crucial to protect your APIs and the data they handle.

## Tools and Technologies for API Security

### API Gateways: Guardians of Your APIs
API gateways act as the first line of defense for your APIs. They are intermediary components that manage and secure API traffic between clients and your backend services. Here's how they enhance security:
- **Authentication and Authorization:** By enforcing authentication and authorization policies, API gateways can ensure that only authenticated and authorized applications and users can access your APIs.
- **Rate Limiting:** They can throttle the number of requests from a single source, preventing abuse and DDoS attacks.
- **Logging and Monitoring:** API gateways provide centralized logging and monitoring, allowing you to track and analyze API traffic for suspicious activities.
- **Security Policies:** You can define security policies to filter and inspect incoming requests for malicious payloads or threats.

### Web Application Firewalls (WAFs): Protecting Against Attacks
WAFs are specialized security devices or services designed to protect web applications, including APIs, from various threats, including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and more. Their key features include:
- **Traffic Inspection:** WAFs inspect incoming API requests and responses for malicious patterns and payloads.
- **Threat Detection:** Known and emerging threats are detected and blocked by predefined rules and heuristics.
- **Content Filtering:** WAFs can filter out harmful content, preventing it from reaching your API.
- **Anomaly Detection:** Some advanced WAFs use machine learning to identify unusual traffic patterns, helping to detect zero-day attacks.

### API Security Testing Tools: Identifying Weaknesses
API security testing tools are essential for identifying vulnerabilities in your APIs before attackers can exploit them. These tools often include features such as:
- **Scanning:** They scan your APIs for common vulnerabilities like injection attacks, broken authentication, and data exposure.
- **Penetration Testing:** Some tools simulate attacks to assess how well your APIs withstand real-world threats.
- **Reporting:** They generate detailed reports highlighting vulnerabilities and recommended fixes.
- **Automation:** Many API security testing tools can be integrated into your development pipeline, allowing continuous security testing.

#### The Role of These Tools
These tools and technologies collectively reinforce your API security by:
- API gateways and WAFs ensure that only authorized users access your APIs, while API security testing tools help identify potential weaknesses in these mechanisms.
- WAFs act as a shield against known and emerging threats, while API security testing tools proactively identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited.
- API gateways provide centralized monitoring and logging, which is critical for compliance and threat detection.
- API security testing tools help uncover weaknesses and improve your API security posture.

Incorporating these tools and technologies into your API security strategy is a proactive step toward safeguarding your digital assets. However, it's important to remember that no single tool is a silver bullet; a comprehensive security approach combines these technologies with best practices and a security-focused mindset.

## Secure Development Life Cycle (SDLC): A Necessity, Not an Option

SDLC is a structured framework that outlines the various phases of software development, from ideation to deployment and maintenance. The quality and security of the end product are dependent on each phase.

### The Role of SDLC in API Security
Integrating security into the SDLC is crucial because it places security considerations at the forefront of the development process. Rather than treating security as an afterthought, it becomes an inherent part of every stage, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and threats.

### The SDLC Stages and Security Integration
Let's explore how security can be integrated into the critical stages of the SDLC:
1. **Planning and Requirements:** Define security requirements and goals for your APIs. Identify potential security risks and threats specific to your project.
2. **Design:** During the design phase, consider security architecture and ensure the API design incorporates best practices. Define access control, data encryption, and authentication mechanisms.
3. **Development:** Developers should follow secure coding practices, conduct code reviews to identify security issues, and use security-focused development tools and libraries.
4. **Testing:** Incorporate security testing into your testing phase. This includes vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and assessing the API against predefined security criteria.
5. **Deployment:** Securely configure your servers and environments, implement proper access controls, and ensure that encryption is enabled for data in transit and at rest.
6. **Monitoring and Maintenance:** Monitor your APIs for suspicious activities, apply security patches promptly, and conduct regular security audits.

## Collaboration with Development Teams
Outsourcing companies often work with external development teams to create software solutions. To ensure security is prioritized, consider the following:
- **Set Clear Expectations:** Clearly communicate your security expectations to your development team from the beginning of the project. Define security requirements and policies that align with your organizational goals.
- **Training and Awareness:** Ensure your development team knows secure coding practices and your project's requirements.
- **Regular Communication:** Maintain constant contact with your development team. Regular check-ins and status updates allow you to stay informed about security progress and address any concerns promptly.
- **Security Assessments:** Include security assessments as part of your project milestones. Conduct regular security reviews to identify and address issues.

## Shielding Your APIs: Final words

APIs are the gateways to your digital kingdom, and their security is paramount. They facilitate vital functions, from processing payments managing user data, and delivering content. A breach of API security can lead to financial losses, reputation damage, and data breaches. The statistics and real-world examples we've explored leave no room for doubt: the threats and stakes are real.

In this blog post, we've delved into essential best practices for securing your APIs like Authentication and Authorization, Encryption, and Input Validation. 
API gateways, Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), and API security testing tools stand ready as your allies in the fight against threats. They bolster your defenses, detect vulnerabilities, and provide extra protection. Pay attention to these valuable assets in your API security arsenal.
By emphasizing security from the outset and collaborating effectively with your development teams, you can build resilient APIs against threats.

If you need professional assistance with API security, don't hesitate to reach out. Our expert team is here to help you navigate the complex terrain of API protection. [Get in touch with us](https://calendly.com/ecdev-studio/discovery-meeting?month=2023-09{nofollow}) today to discuss how we can partner with you to safeguard your digital assets.
Knowledge and proactive measures are your most potent shields in the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats. Your APIs remain secure, your data protected, and your digital endeavors thrive.

Stay vigilant, stay secure.

🧐 This blog post explains why protecting your APIs against threats is crucial and what you can do to prevent various threats.

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Shielding Your APIs: A Guide to Protecting Against Threats

This article describes the latest Fintech trends🌠 

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AI and Machine Learning in Fintech: Trends for 2023

Many businesses prioritize caution in a highly competitive market, and as a result, outsourcing has risen to become the second most common trend in software development.

However, just offsetting development responsibilities is not enough to develop a strong team or to ship out a great product.

When utilizing the agile approach in conjunction with outsourced software development, it facilitates improved project management for the team while also establishing a versatile communication platform between the outsourcing vendor and the customer.

One may wonder if it is feasible to maintain agility while outsourcing software development. With diverse teams, various resources, potential time zone differences, and the risk of miscommunication, is it achievable to sustain an agile development process?

Incorporating agile methodologies while outsourcing is crucial for surviving in the fast-paced digital world. Without it, the question arises whether survival is even possible in the Digital Darwinian era.

## What is Agile project management?

Agile project management is a methodology used to manage software development projects, while outsourced software development refers to the process of hiring external vendors or contractors to develop software applications or systems.

Agile project management emphasizes collaboration, flexibility, and continuous feedback throughout the development process. It involves breaking the development process into smaller, iterative cycles, with frequent reviews and adjustments made based on user feedback. Agile project management is designed to accommodate changing requirements and shifting priorities as the project progresses.

Outsourced software development, on the other hand, refers to the process of hiring external vendors or contractors to handle the development of a software application or system. This can involve hiring developers, designers, project managers, and other experts to handle various aspects of the development process. Outsourced software development can be used for a variety of reasons, including to access specialized expertise, reduce costs, or to scale up development capacity.

While Agile project management can be used for both in-house and outsourced software development, outsourced software development projects often require additional considerations such as communication protocols, contract negotiation, and project governance to ensure successful collaboration with external vendors or contractors.

Adopting Agile methodology in outsourcing development is the smartest way. It helps companies to access a larger talent pool, reduce cost, and ensure flexibility with Agile development processes.

Before you opt for the Agile software development models, it is important to keep in mind the four values of the Agile Manifesto. These 4 foundation values are applied in different ways and help in guiding development while ensuring the delivery of high-quality software.

## The Agile values

- Individuals’ interactions over various processes and tools.
- Working the documentation part over software development.
- Letting customers collaborate over contract negotiation.
- Responding to the changes while following the plan adequately.

Apart from these 4 values, there are 12 principles that are considered as the guiding principles for Agile custom software development solutions:

- Ensuring customer satisfaction from the start of software delivery.
- Make amendments to the requirements throughout the development process.
- Frequent delivery of software at various stages of development.
- Collaboration between software developers and business stakeholders throughout the project.
- Support, trust, and motivate the people involved in the entire process of software development.
- Enable face-to-face interactions.
- Measure the primary progress of software development through working software.
- Support consistent development through Agile processes.
- Agile helps development by ensuring the correctness of technical details and designs.
- Simplicity in Software Development Processes
- Self-organized and motivated teams deliver great architectures, requirements, and designs.
- Regular enhancements to deliver more effective software.

These values and principles are intended to align the software development life cycle and guide those who are willing to follow Agile development.

## Why do we need agile project management?

The agile management process helps us focus on the things that matter. Becoming agile in organizations and teams allows flexible adaptation and helps deliver value by continuously receiving feedback. The objective is not agile, just improvement. Our incremental approach improves predictive capabilities and controls risks. Please find out more.

## Why do Companies Use Agile Custom Software Development Services?

Most custom software development companies across the world use the agile scrum method to develop successful and relevant end products. Agile is all about delivering projects with outstanding teamwork and smart roadmaps. It ensures flexibility throughout development.

Here’s why Agile development is the most preferred by the most custom software solutions providers:

**1. Quick Feedback**

After receiving feedback from prospective customers, companies can make the required changes in their project requirements. So, it’s important to stay updated with the latest market trends and customers’ interests.

It does not matter how fast your custom software development company can deliver the product if it can fulfill the required specifications. Receiving quick feedback from customers can help accommodate instant changes in agile sprints.

**2. Smart Software Development Management**

Agile sprints help companies to manage software projects with more efficiency. From sprint planning to sprint meetings and reviews, everything can guide team members to stay focused on the end goal.

It gives a proper idea of the project and helps them understand the effort they must put into the project to get the desired results.

**3. Amazing Team Building**

To ensure hassle-free Agile Development, you must have an amazing Agile team too.

Although, it takes a lot of time to build a healthy, engaging, and enthusiastic environment to motivate the team members. So, there should be a smart working strategy to consolidate the team efforts.

Here are the four stages the agile teams go through:

- **Forming Stage** where team members interact with each other better, share useful information, and understand the rules to be followed throughout the project.
- **Storming Stage,** where team members must follow certain guidelines and rules to keep themselves on the same page of the software development lifecycle.
- **Norming Stage,** where the company builds strategy and the project roadmap based on which the team plans their efforts.
- **Performing Stage,** is where the team members collaborate and work on a shared product to deliver greater value in the market.

**4. Smart & Effective Use of Tools**

While working in teams, people need relevant tools to organize, assign, and categorize tasks to work efficiently. Using the right tools in Custom Web App Development helps in the following ways:

- Categorizing the project requirements.
- Prioritizing important tasks.
- Assigning the task to people with the required skill set.
- Following the project’s timeline to ensure timely delivery.
- Change the project status from in progress to review to complete.

**5. Greater Productivity**

A team with clear goals and a timeline can accomplish the task with greater productivity. Because of this higher level of transparency, developers individually and as teamwork towards achieving their separate goals.

## What are the principles of an Agile way of working?

The agile management model is designed to empower people and their interactions and provide timely, consistent value to a firm. Iterative or agile project management emphasizes providing maximum value for business priority within the time and budget available, especially if the drive for the product exceeds its risk. 

## Agile principles

Agile principles are a set of core values and beliefs that guide the agile project management approach. While all the agile principles are valuable, here are five of the best agile principles that have proven to be highly effective:

- **Customer collaboration over contract negotiation:** This principle emphasizes the importance of active collaboration and engagement with the customer throughout the project. It prioritizes building a strong relationship with the customer, understanding their needs, and incorporating their feedback into the development process. By fostering collaboration, teams can ensure that the final product meets the customer's expectations and delivers maximum value.
- **Individuals and interactions over processes and tools:** Agile places a strong emphasis on the value of people and their interactions within the development team. This principle recognizes that effective communication, teamwork, and collaboration are essential for project success. It encourages open and frequent communication, knowledge sharing, and a supportive team environment where individuals can contribute their expertise and work together towards a common goal.
- **Responding to change over following a plan:** Agile methodologies embrace change and recognize that requirements can evolve over time. This principle encourages teams to be adaptable and flexible, embracing changes in priorities, technology, and market conditions. It emphasizes the need for regular feedback loops, continuous improvement, and a willingness to adjust plans as necessary to deliver the most valuable software solution.
- **Working software over comprehensive documentation:** This principle emphasizes the importance of delivering working software as the primary measure of progress. While documentation has its place, agile methodologies prioritize the tangible outcome of functional software that can be tested, validated, and used by the customer. By focusing on delivering working software, teams can quickly gather feedback and make adjustments, leading to faster value delivery and customer satisfaction.
- **The sustainable pace and self-organizing teams:** Agile recognizes the significance of maintaining a sustainable pace of work. This principle emphasizes the need to avoid overloading team members with excessive work or unrealistic deadlines. Agile teams are encouraged to self-organize, determine the best way to accomplish their goals, and make decisions collectively. Empowering teams to take ownership of their work and allowing them to self-manage leads to increased motivation, productivity, and a healthier work-life balance.

While these five principles represent some of the best agile principles, it's important to note that the effectiveness of agile project management lies in the collective application and understanding of all the principles. Each principle complements and reinforces the others, creating a framework that promotes collaboration, adaptability, and continuous improvement for successful software development.

## Who uses Agile project management?

The Agile methodology is developed in the early years of software development and has become increasingly adopted by more than just IT teams. Those businesses that look at agile methodologies and other agile frameworks for the design and delivery of innovations in uncertain conditions include: Many organizations have great potential for agile project management, and it is easily established and utilized. In the software industry, when it comes to developing existing technology, an end product is difficult to define. Agile provides such uncertainty because of its flexibility in the direction of development as projects advance.

## Get the right people on board

Agile methodologies rely upon hiring excellent people who can do great things. This is also defined by agile values: people over processes. That means you have to hire the best employees. Find the right people and let them use their talents to solve problems rather than rushing them.

## Benefits of Agile Project Management: Final words

In conclusion, the benefits of agile project management for outsourced software development cannot be overstated. Agile methodologies have revolutionized the way software projects are executed, bringing increased efficiency, flexibility, and collaboration to the development process.

First and foremost, agile project management promotes a customer-centric approach. By involving the client throughout the development cycle, agile methods ensure that the final product meets their specific needs and expectations. Regular feedback loops and frequent iterations allow for quick adjustments and course corrections, resulting in a software solution that aligns closely with the client's vision.

Additionally, agile project management enables better adaptability to changing requirements. In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, software development projects often face shifting priorities, emerging technologies, and evolving market demands. Agile methodologies, with their iterative and incremental approach, provide the flexibility to incorporate changes as they arise. This allows for faster delivery of valuable features and a reduced time to market.

Another significant benefit of agile project management is enhanced collaboration. By fostering cross-functional teams and encouraging open communication, agile methodologies promote collaboration between developers, designers, testers, and stakeholders. This leads to better problem-solving, increased innovation, and a shared sense of ownership, resulting in higher-quality software and improved project outcomes.

Furthermore, agile project management provides greater transparency and visibility into the development process. Through practices such as daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, and visual project boards, stakeholders have a clear understanding of the project's progress, potential risks, and upcoming deliverables. This transparency builds trust and helps manage expectations, reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings or dissatisfaction.

Lastly, agile project management supports continuous improvement. By regularly reflecting on the development process, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes, agile teams can enhance their efficiency, productivity, and overall project outcomes. This iterative approach allows for ongoing optimization, ensuring that the software development process evolves and adapts to meet the needs of the project and the client.

In summary, the benefits of agile project management for outsourced software development are numerous. From customer-centricity to adaptability, collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement, agile methodologies offer a comprehensive framework that drives success in software development projects. Embracing agile practices can enable businesses to maximize the value they receive from outsourced software development, leading to higher-quality solutions, faster time to market, and improved client satisfaction.

This blog post shows the benefits of Agile management for outsourced software development🏆🏆🏆

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The Benefits of Agile Project Management for Outsourced Software Development

🔍👀This blog post explores the fundamental principles of microservice architecture and how they can be applied to create a reliable and efficient system.💡💻

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Microservice Architecture Principles: What They Are and Why They Matter

Although DevOps is a practice, not a tool, tools are needed to implement it. Creating visibility and trust between all the teams involved in delivering software and technology is challenging. With the right tools, integrations and automation across functional teams can be seamless, open, and scalable.

In this article, we look at the top tools used in DevOps pipelines.

## How to select the right DevOps tools?

DevOps cannot be ordered just by anyone. Software, only one vendor will provide some functionality required to support DevOps practices or pipelines. Knowing what tools to choose when you've decided upon a product or tool can be helpful. These objectives vary depending on the organization's structure, operation, and environment. Several important factors should be considered when selecting the appropriate tool for a particular project.

### Step 1: Establish a collaboration

DevOps opposes waterfall methods of planning out all the work and dependencies for a release. Agile Development reduces risk and improves visibility as software is built and tested in smaller chunks, and customer feedback is iterated upon. Due to this, many teams plan and release in sprints of around two to four weeks.

It's important to consider feedback from the previous sprint's retrospective when your team shares their ideas and plans at the start of every new sprint. This will help you improve your team and services on a continuous basis. You can create a plan using various tools to organize your learning and ideas. The first step is to identify your target personas and map customer research data, feature requests, and bug reports to them. Then, user stories are created by grouping common themes and using sticky notes. By mapping user stories to specific personas, you can ensure that customer value is emphasized. Finally, tasks are organized and prioritized using a tool that tracks project burndown and daily sprint progress.

### Step 2: Create a request-tracking system

The DevOps process should not be bypassed when implementing changes. Whenever the software needs to be changed or added, DevOps should capture the request. By automating the process, the system can accept change requests from both the business and the DevOps team - for example, making software changes to improve database access.

### Step 3: Implementing Agile Kanban project management

The primary advantage of Kanban is that it promotes teamwork by encouraging teams to improve the system's flow. Kanban helps teams continuously deliver the work they have completed as they adopt it. Kanban can aid in the gradual release of new product features or fixing defects by dividing them into smaller, manageable chunks. Kanban's continuous delivery and deployment feature makes it an ideal tool for DevOps.

Moreover, Kanban provides a visual representation of your entire value stream and ensures smooth flow. This allows you to combine the workflows of different functions and activities from development to integration, testing, deployment, and monitoring. You will be able to work more collaboratively with your team of developers and operators. All Dev and Ops activities can be integrated into a single team and workflow over time. As a result of Kanban, the entire process can be seen - and the transformation into a DevOps culture is easier.

### Step 4: Usage of tools to Log Metrics

In both automated and manual processes, one should always use tools that help understand the productivity of the DevOps processes. It is possible to determine whether it favors one's interests from this. The first step is to determine the metrics that are most relevant to the DevOps process, such as speed to effective action versus errors. The next step involves utilizing an automated process to address and resolve issues without the need for human intervention. For example, you are trying to automatically scale software on a digital cloud platform.

### Step 5: Start implementing

Automated testing has many parts, but it is only one of them. It involves the implementation of code and data and the resulting solution to ensure its high quality. With DevOps, continuous testing is essential.

## Step 6: Performing acceptance tests

Testing acceptance is necessary to ensure the infrastructure is accepted after each part is deployed. Apps, data, and test suites should also be subjected to acceptance tests as part of the testing process. To ensure that the selected criteria align with the tests, a considerable amount of time is required to test and retest DevOps. A new instruction is fed into an application as it develops, so testing should be done again as it evolves.

**Testing automation**

By automating your testing and development cycles, you can save time and money over time. Moreover, in a DevOps environment, awareness is essential.

To ensure successful development builds, Operations require insight into the testing process and its thoroughness. Automated tests offer an advantage over manual testing as they are executed consistently and with equal rigor each time. Moreover, they generate trend graphs and reports that highlight any potential risks.

It is impossible to mitigate risks that you cannot anticipate when it comes to software. Make your operations team part of the process. To enable everyone to contribute to the project, choose a tool that supports wallboards. Tools that make it easy for Operations to participate in blitz testing and exploratory testing are more effective.

### Step 7: Provide continuous feedback

Regularly discussing an employee's strengths and weaknesses is crucial for providing ongoing feedback and coaching. The primary objective is to recognize gaps and inefficiencies in the app, and constant feedback helps achieve this. Feedback loops significantly enhance automated conversation between tests. Manual or automatic mechanisms should be equipped with the right tools to identify any issues. A collaborative approach should be taken to solve problems and achieve impeccable results.

**Release dashboards**

The most challenging part of shipping software is getting all the changes, tests, and deployment information into one place. Before a release, no one wants to spend time in a long meeting discussing its status. This is where release dashboards come in.

It's a good idea to seek out tools that seamlessly connect your code repository with your deployment tool. A centralized platform that displays all of your branches, builds, pull requests, and deployment alerts are highly beneficial.

## The DevOps tools
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The DevOps tool categories include the following:

**Version control:** a set of apps that track any changes made in a set of files in due course of time. It tracks software both manually and automatically. Compared to early version control systems, modern Version control uses distributed storage using either one primary server (subversion) or a web of distributed servers (git or mercurial). Version control systems, such as type, brand, and database, track dependencies in a version.

**Building and deployment:** a set of tools that automate the building and deployment of software throughout the DevOps process, including continuous development and continuous integration.

**Functional and non-functional testing:** tools that provide automated testing in DevOps's functional and non-functional aspects. A set of testing tools should provide an integrated unit, check performance updates, and ensure the app's security. The sole motive of these testing is to check the whole automation system.

**Provisioning: **Configuration management is part of provisioning. That's using a tool like Chef, Puppet, or Ansible to configure your server. "Provisioning" often implies it's the first time you do it. Configuration management usually happens repeatedly. The tools that help create provisions podium required for deployment of the software and monitor the functions along with logging any changes that might occur to the configuration of the data or software. It helps in getting the system back in a state of equilibrium.

## The Top-rated DevOps tool list
![1669536631600-Devops Tools and Technologies-02.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/4/20/1669536631600_Devops_Tools_and_Technologies_02_017ec5e76e.png)

### Jenkins

Jenkins is a leader in DevOps tools for monitoring and implementation for repeated jobs. By merging changes and accessing outputs, DevOps teams can quickly identify problems.

**Key Features:**

- Self-contained Java-based program ready to run out of the box with Windows, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like operating systems
- Continuous integration and continuous delivery
- A web interface facilitates setup and configuration
- Hundreds of plugins in the Update Center

**Website:** [https://www.jenkins.io/](https://www.jenkins.io/{externalnofollow})

**Price:** Free

### Ansible

DevOps professionals recommend Ansible as the preferred tool for orchestrating, automating, configuring, and managing IT infrastructures. In DevOps, Ansible enables scalability and response to demand.

**Key Features:**

- 750+ built-in modules for automating, configuring, deploying, and orchestrating the IT infrastructure
- Agentless system for easier management and storage

**Website:** [https://www.ansible.com/](https://www.ansible.com/{externalnofollow}) 

**Price:** Contact sales

### Docker

Container-based distributed applications can be created, shipped, and operated with the Docker technology stack. Users will be able to build programs from components on this platform, develop applications, and exchange container images with enterprises.

**Key Features:**

- Fast deployment, trial run, and rollback capabilities enable a consistent and isolated environment at a cost-effective price.
- Provide consistent performance across multiple environments, including AWS, Azure, Google, and others.
- Organize, manage, and configure image caches privately and publicly with a public registry for sharing and collaboration

**Website:** [https://www.docker.com/](https://www.docker.com/{externalnofollow}) 

**Price:** Free — $5/license/month

### Kubernetes

Kubernetes automates application deployment, scaling, and management using open-source code. Compute cluster nodes are scheduled on them, and they are actively managed so that their state is in accordance with the intentions of their users.

**Key Features:**

- Run anywhere: on-premise, hybrid, or public cloud
- Automated rollouts, rollbacks, and scaling
- Service Discovery and load balancing
- Storage orchestration
- Helm charts to deploy multiple projects with the same customized applications
- Largest community among container orchestration tools

**Website:** [https://kubernetes.io/](https://kubernetes.io/{externalnofollow}) 

**Price:** Contact sales

### Git

Git is an open-source, free, and highly efficient version control system for handling small and very large projects.

**Key Features:**

- Allow team members to collaborate and manage code repositories together
- Intuitive integration with Eclipse, Visual Studio Code, and IntelliJ

**Website:** [https://git-scm.com/](https://git-scm.com/{externalnofollow}) 

**Price:** Free 

### Monit

This tool acts as a watchdog to ensure that a specific process runs smoothly on the software. It is user-friendly and can be easily set up and configured for use in a multiservice architecture.

**Key Features:**

- Small open-source utility for managing and monitoring Unix systems
- Conducts automatic maintenance and repair
- Executes meaningful causal actions in error situations

**Website:** [https://mmonit.com/monit/](https://mmonit.com/monit/{externalnofollow})

**Price:** Free

### Vagrant:

Vagrant can aid in facilitating a DevOps culture within your organization, while also improving the development and operational processes of Puppet for both developers and professionals.

**Key Features:**

- No complicated setup process; download and install within minutes on Mac OS X, Windows, or widespread distribution of Linux
- Create a single file for projects describing the type of machine you want, the software you want to install, and how you want to access the device, and then store the file with your project code
- With a single command "Vagrant up," Vagrant creates your complete development environment so that all members of the DevOps team have the same development environment

**Website:** [https://www.vagrantup.com/](https://www.vagrantup.com/{externalnofollow})

**Price:** Free

### Chef

With Chef, developers can express infrastructure, security policies, and application lifecycles as code, modernizing how applications are developed, packaged, and delivered to any platform.

**Key Features:**

- With little human interaction, deploy simple or complex system changes to a large number of servers
- Easily automate legacy desktop applications that are hard to automate. 

**Website:** [https://www.chef.io/](https://www.chef.io/{externalnofollow}) 

**Price:** Contact sales 

### Prometheus

Prometheus is a widely-used tool in the DevOps community, often used alongside the Grafana framework. As an open-source service monitoring system, it offers a flexible query language that allows for efficient analysis of time series data, generating useful alerts, tables, and graphs. With support for over ten languages and the ability to execute custom libraries, it is a user-friendly and versatile option.

**Key Features:**

- A flexible query language for slicing and dicing collected time series data to generate graphs, tables, and alerts
- Scales through functional sharing and federation of memory and local disk storage
- Supports more than ten languages and includes easy-to-implement custom libraries
- Signals based on Prometheus's flexible query language
- Alert manager handles notifications and silencing

**Website:** [https://prometheus.io/](https://prometheus.io/{externalnofollow})

**Price:** Free

## The Best DevOps Tools: Final words

DevOps tools and technologies are vast and constantly evolving, with new tools and techniques always emerging. However, based on our analysis and research, we can confidently recommend several top tools and technologies to help organizations streamline their development, testing, deployment, and operations processes.

These tools include popular automation tools like Jenkins and Travis CI, containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, collaboration platforms like GitHub and GitLab, configuration management tools like Puppet and Chef, and monitoring tools like Prometheus and Grafana.

While the tools and technologies an organization uses may vary depending on their unique needs and requirements, implementing these best-in-class DevOps tools can help businesses achieve greater agility, efficiency, and productivity in their software development and delivery efforts. 

In today's fast-paced, technology-driven world, organizations can stay ahead of the curve by utilizing the right DevOps tools and practices.

This article describes the best DevOps tools and technologies💪🧑‍🔧

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The Best DevOps Tools and Technologies

Cloud migration has many benefits, and few will argue that it is not worth the effort and investment. In spite of this, organizations transitioning to the cloud will encounter challenges along the way.

Nevertheless, knowing the common pain points of cloud migration can go a long way toward helping make your organization’s cloud journey more seamless and less problematic.


>The cloud can stimulate profit growth by up to 11.2% in organizations that migrate at least 60% of their IT operations and systems to the cloud. It is impossible to beat total reliance on on-premise computing!

However, if you're implementing this level of digital transformation internally or with the help of cloud migration service providers, you'll encounter some prevalent challenges. Here are some statistics to look at: 

- The failure rate of 50% of projects is high{arrow} 
- Approximately 56% of CIOs encounter compliance and security risks{arrow}
- Approximately 55% of business leaders are not able to optimize their processes to fit clearly defined business objectives{arrow}
- CIOs fail to plan adequately for migration 44% of the time{arrow}

Based on the preceding trends, nearly half of IT-driven organizations are battling cloud migration challenges. In this article, we revise the steps of the cloud migration process, highlight the common cloud migration problems alongside their solutions, and the benefits your business reaps in the long haul. Let's start!

## What is Cloud migration?

Cloud migration is when you move your computer stuff, like apps, data, and systems, from your own place to a cloud-based service, like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. It's important because it can save you money, make your work more flexible, and help you focus on what you're good at instead of worrying about maintaining servers and stuff. Plus, it's a lot easier to work with people from all over the place, and the cloud has better security and protection for your data. Basically, cloud migration is becoming super popular because it can make your work easier and more efficient!

## Cloud Migration Strategies: Why are they crucial for businesses?

Cloud migration strategies describe an organization moving data and other business processes to the cloud from its on-premises infrastructure. The strategy involves defining the goals and objectives of the migration, selecting the appropriate cloud service provider, deciding on the type of cloud deployment model (public, private, or hybrid), choosing the migration approach (lift-and-shift, re-platforming, or refactoring), and identifying the necessary tools and resources required to carry out the migration process.

The migration strategy should also include assessing the organization's infrastructure, security and compliance requirements, budget, and timeline. A well-planned cloud migration strategy can help organizations to achieve their desired business outcomes, such as improved scalability, flexibility, cost savings, and enhanced security and performance.

## How does the cloud migration process work?

Before making a decision, the business must fully understand its role. The transition to the cloud is transforming your entire business, and you must first take the entire journey through cloud services. It will allow for identifying capabilities and activities required at each stage of successful cloud migration. Cloud computing is far from a simple technical exercise.

## Why Cloud Migration is Important to Business Growth?

Cloud migration involves the deployment of digital assets and resources to the cloud where the moved data is unattended. Cloud-based applications are becoming more popular as technology has exploded and become increasingly popular among business users. There's no time to think of migration into the clouds. Smart application development and user interfaces - a new industry standard - promote cloud computing success and attract non-cloud users with this disruptive business-changing step.

## A Guide to Successful Cloud Migration

Taking a cloud migration strategy to the cloud successfully requires a unique solution since there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Due to every organization's individual needs and goals, many factors must be considered. 

Here are **some of the steps** you should be aware of before beginning the migration process: 

### Make a plan

A migration journey should begin with a thorough evaluation of the organization's characteristics and goals. You should never lose sight of your company's core business goals regarding cloud migration strategies since they are designed to increase productivity, improve communication, and enhance customer satisfaction. 

To achieve the desired results, planning also involves knowing the existing assets (human and technological).   

### Modeling your cloud in the right way

Every company has its own requirements for cloud computing, which must be clearly defined. Each provider offers various services, and it is vital to have the right information to make the best decision.  

Another alternative is to hire consulting services to help your company develop a precise strategy for migrations and deployments.  

These are some of **the categories of cloud computing services** you should be aware of:   

- **IaaS** has the essential components of cloud computing and provides access to network functions, computers (virtual or dedicated hardware), and data storage space. Offers flexibility and management control over IT resources. 
- **PaaS** allows organizations to dispense with managing the underlying infrastructure and focus on deploying and managing applications. This reduces maintenance tasks to keep applications running. 
- **Serverless computing** allows applications to be built without needing infrastructure management, but both models have differences. For example, serverless computing (which does not imply that there are no servers) enables faster scalability because it does not require developer configuration. Another distinction is that this model is pay-as-you-go rather than a flat fee like PaaS. 
- **[SaaS](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/awesome-saas-ideas-for-product/{nofollow})** offers a complete product run managed by the service provider. 

### Select a Cloud provider that meets your needs

When [hiring a cloud service provider](https://calendly.com/ecdev-studio/discovery-meeting?month=2023-04{nofollow}), we are entrusting some of the most valuable assets of a company: data and applications. That is why it is essential to **take these aspects into account before making the purchase**:  

- Reliability
- Security and compliance with data protection policies  
- Legal protections and SLAs  
- Performance  
- Disaster recovery  
- Support 

### Develop a team to make the project a success

Once the plan is defined, you will need the right professionals to execute it smoothly. [A team of developers with the proper knowledge and experience](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/how-to-hire-developer-for-startups-in-ukraine/{nofollow}) will increase the chances of a successful migration. 

These are some of **the critical positions** an organization needs to make a successful migration to the cloud:   

- Project Manager 
- Solution Architect 
- DevOps Engineer 
- Cloud Administrator 
- Cloud Security Manager 

## Best Practices for safe Cloud Migration

### Invest in security

[Security](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/cyber-security-meaning-options-tools-best-practices/{nofollow}) is the most crucial aspect of cloud migration. The cloud can only be protected if data and workloads are protected carefully. Customers and providers share responsibility for cloud security, as customers are responsible for cloud infrastructure security, and providers are responsible for cloud security. 

Some of **the issues to consider when thinking about cloud security** are:  

- Governance  
- API vulnerability  
- Regulatory and compliance requirements  
- [Disaster recovery](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/cloud-disaster-recovery-services-critical-business-need-in-2023/{nofollow})    

### Establish your goals

Migration to the cloud is not a goal, just as digital transformation processes are not a goal in themselves. Making the process more efficient requires companies to analyze its benefits and challenges. Documenting each stage of the process and communicating progress to the entire team are two other essential aspects to keep in mind. 

### Think about outsourcing

Outsourcing providers can help organizations move to the cloud, and they can also recruit the best talent for critical roles in the application development process. Professionals with experience and skills in these technologies are crucial to the successful migration process. 

## What is the best provider for your business?

There is a wide variety of cloud products and services with high security, quality, and performance standards. The differences between the benefits of the world's leading providers are very subtle. To make the best decision and hire the service that best suits your needs, you will have to analyze each company's pros and cons in detail. 

The following are **some of the features of the leading cloud platform providers** that share most of the market share: 

#### AWS

Amazon Web Service is the [number 1 provider in the market](https://aws.amazon.com/{externalnofollow}). It offers excellent flexibility and ease of use. It lets you choose the operating system, programming language, web application platform, database, or other services. Its flexibility lets you focus resources on other core business aspects instead of infrastructure. 

AWS services also are recognized for agility and scalability thanks to a wide range of tools that allow you to always have access to resources and storage. 

AWS employs a comprehensive approach to infrastructure protection, including physical operational and software measures. And has certifications and accreditations to manage companies' IT infrastructure in a secure and long-term way. 

#### Azure

It is the second-largest platform in the market. It is a cloud service suitable for companies and incredibly convenient for those who have contracted the entire Microsoft ecosystem. 

The pricing scheme shows that it is up to [5 times cheaper](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/#product-pricing{externalnofollow}) than other clouds precisely because the optimization scheme is very efficient. 

Azure can provide both a public and private cloud in a computing environment that allows your applications to be shared between them. It will enable the flexibility and convenience to customize the needs that best suit your business, and you can feel secure whether you choose a SaaS or PaaS route.  

Cybersecurity has an AI system with the ability to prevent threats. It also allows you to encrypt backup information and data transferred to the cloud. 

It is compatible with multi-cloud environments, so it can manage AWS and GPC solutions to provide companies with better management of their clouds.  

#### Oracle

Oracle's differential is the [adaptive intelligence](https://www.oracle.com/technical-resources/articles/cloud/building-adaptive-intel-process.html{externalnofollow}) that allows for identifying market trends, generating a competitive advantage. Supplying a more personalized service is also possible to improve the customer experience. 

#### GCP

It stands out for easing [innovation for organizations](https://cloud.google.com/{externalnofollow}) because it supplies the latest tools to work on AI, machine learning, and Big Data projects.  

In terms of security, it has end-to-end encryption to reduce cyber-attack chances. 

Another of its advantages is restoring data in a noticeably short time compared to other providers. 

## Top Cloud Migration Challenges
![top.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/4/20/top_feaa25531f.png)

Moving to the cloud is a solution to a number of challenges. So, here are **the most prevalent cloud migration problems** and their solutions:
### Data Security and Compliance Risks

Data safety and compliance risks remain among organizations' top cloud migration security challenges. These risks can emanate from data breaches during the migration or weak access control over sensitive enterprise data. 

#### Solution

While cloud services are inherently secure, it will help if you pass your data through a safe path inside the firewall when migrating it. You can add an extra layer of assurance by encrypting the data and ensuring that your strategy follows industry compliance standards.

### Uncertain Cost of the Cloud Migration Process

Although a successful cloud migration can cut IT operating costs in the long haul, the biggest challenge arises when estimating the upfront investment. This cost can shoot up the roof when other indirect project expenses come into play. This includes costs for transforming the organization for cloud computing and the vacated data center capacity fees. 

#### Solution

You can prevail over this uncertainty by planning carefully with your service providers and factoring in the hidden migration costs in the budget. Overall, you are looking at the following cloud migration costs: 

**Pre-migration** 

- Consultations 
- On-premise data management 
- Database upgrade 

**Migration** 

- The project itself
- Refactoring 
- Application and code changes 

**Post-migration**

- A monthly or yearly license 
- System maintenance 

### Wrong Cloud Migration Strategy

You may encounter various cloud migration challenges if your team doesn'tdoesn't deliberate on a well-hatched plan. Many get it wrong—that planning is all about anticipating migration bottlenecks and creating remediation contingencies, forgetting to focus on understanding the current infrastructure and target cloud. 

#### Solution

With that in mind, you would want to devise a well-thought strategy that covers all intricate approaches to successful migration, such as app modernization and platform refactoring. A thorough assessment of the current infrastructure must be conducted to optimize cloud performance.

### No Internal Capacity to Perform the Cloud Migration–Skill Gap

Switching to a cloud computing environment means deploying new technologies, processes, or third-party integrations. In most cases, your current employees may lack the necessary skills and qualifications to fulfill IT roles under the new infrastructure and don'tdon't fail the process. 

#### Solution

You can overcome this barrier by hiring an experienced cloud migration company to assist with the process and upskill your team. The experts will determine the right strategy that complements a smooth transition process with everyone on board. Alternatively, you can hire fresh talents to fill the new IT positions.

### Migration Complexities

Your organization can experience a cloud migration challenge if you underestimate the project's complexity. For example, some organizations think they can port legacy software to the cloud as it is. This can lead to severe downtime and loss of critical functionalities, leading to unhappy customers and lost productivity.

#### Solution

To overcome this challenge, you need to assess your current infrastructure to identify any compatibility issues or dependencies that could impact your migration, create a roadmap outlining the migration process, and choose the right cloud provider to meet your business needs.

### Low Application Performance After Migration

One of the most overlooked post-cloud migration problems is low performance after migration. Legacy systems often feature several components hosted on multiple servers, which lowers their flexibility when migrated to the cloud. At the same time, on-demand computing solutions come with varying storage options and services – it'sit's elementary for legacy systems to face performance issues.  

#### Solution

Application performance challenges can be addressed through cloud capacity planning. This process analyzes and measures the performance of your applications against predictive demand. With this approach, your team can provide and allot the resources needed to meet that specific demand.

### Network Bandwidth

You can also experience database migration to cloud challenges if you don'tdon't specifically define the network bandwidth requirements of cloud-powered applications. Typically, these applications should match or exceed the performance of on-premise deployments. You need to describe the bandwidth requirements accurately so that the migrated applications will experience latency, resulting in poor user experience and unmet business requirements. 

#### Solution

You can solve this problem by factoring in network constraints before migration with the help of network technology modeling tools. This will help you evaluate current application performance to determine areas that need improvement before the migration process.

### Cloud Environment Adoption Resistance

Employees may feel that cloud adoption will reduce their control over data and processes, leading them to resist the change. Resistance toward change is common, and switching to a cloud computing environment means more change and disruption around processes, systems, or leadership. 

#### Solution

Train your employees on the new cloud environment and the tools and processes used. To ensure everyone is okay and ready for the new IT strategy, develop a change management plan and implement it before, during, and after the migration. Also, involve them in the cloud adoption process and address their concerns. This is supposed to smooth out difficulties.

## Cloud migration challenges: Final words

So, moving to the cloud is still gonna be super important for businesses in 2023. But it's not all smooth sailing - there are some big challenges to tackle if you wanna make a move successfully. First up, companies gotta take a good look at what they've already got in place and figure out which bits can make a move to the cloud. Once they know that, they need to make a solid plan for the migration, keeping security, performance, cost, and vendor lock-in on top of mind. Oh, and it's a good idea to bring in some cloud migration experts to help out too. With the right planning, execution, and ongoing management, businesses can enjoy all the sweet benefits of cloud computing while keeping the risks and challenges to a minimum.

🧐This article describes the most prevalent cloud migration challenges for businesses in 2023.

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Cloud Migration Challenges in 2023

It's no secret that IT outsourcing is on the rise!

By 2027, [Statista](https://www.statista.com/statistics/662991/worldwide-cio-survey-outsourced-it-functions/{externalnofollow}) predicts IT outsourcing revenues to reach 145.7 billion dollars! That's a lot of money, isn't it?

In recent years, outsourcing has become more sophisticated, driven by technological advancements, changing market dynamics, and the emergence of new service delivery models.

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted organizational functioning and has transformed organizations toward the digital world where cybersecurity is critical. Almost 87% are now transferring key processes and procedures to the cloud owing to the impact of remote work and focus on enabling faster and easier enterprise environments.

## So, what's the big deal with outsourcing?

Cost-effectiveness is one of the answers to this question! Even if start-ups lack technical expertise, outsourcing companies can help them hire experts. As a bonus, these outsourcing providers have developers waiting for new projects, which saves you even more time! 

IT outsourcing has become an essential strategy for many companies looking to reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies. In recent years, outsourcing has become more sophisticated, driven by technological advancements, changing market dynamics, and the emergence of new service delivery models.

Visit [our blog](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/benefits-of-outsourcing-software-development/) to read more about the benefits of outsourcing software developement.

And now, let's review the hottest outsourcing trends in 2023, including all the cutting-edge technologies!

## Top IT Outsourcing Trends to Watch in the coming years
![Frame.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/4/12/Frame_616e87b24b.png)

### Focus on Multi-Sourcing

Previously, companies often relied on a single outsourcing provider to manage all their IT needs. However, this approach is now being replaced by a multi-sourcing strategy that involves working with multiple providers to achieve better outcomes. Multi-sourcing allows companies to leverage the unique strengths of different providers and increase competition, driving innovation and improving quality.

### Adoption of Cloud-Based Solutions

Cloud computing has become a game-changer in outsourcing, offering more flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. As more companies look to adopt cloud-based solutions, outsourcing providers are also evolving their offerings to include cloud-based services, including infrastructure, platform, and software as a service (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS).

Cloud-based services include:

- **Software as a Service (SaaS):** An internet-based platform that hosts software rather than installing it and makes it accessible to end users.
- **Platform as a Service (PaaS):** This enables businesses to create, manage, and operate their own apps without developing and maintaining their infrastructure.
- **Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):** IT infrastructure outsourcing is another trend. The cloud-based service offers storage and virtualization services based on your needs and is a pay-as-you-go service. The user is responsible for their operating system, data, and programs.

The development and implementation of software applications are expensive from a cost and time perspective but can be challenging without a professional software engineer. Valued time devoted to the development of applications on the ground could be more effectively used for implementing revenue-generating business initiatives. Outsourced services through partnerships with [trusted professionals](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/hire-react-developers/{nofollow}) are a critical part of every company-transforming project.

### Cyber Security

Cyber attacks and data breaches increased by as much as 4 percent from 2017 onwards, and the overall cost was up 6% from 2017. The IT industry is at the highest level seen in nearly 17 years. Data protection is a central theme for the future. Gartner estimates the global IT security market to grow to 1.7 billion by 2020. Cyber attacks and data thievery pose incredibly high concerns for executives and companies looking for outsourcer solutions for their operations.

As cyber threats become more sophisticated, security has become a top priority for outsourcing providers and clients. In the coming years, outsourcing providers must invest in security measures to protect client data and infrastructure from cyber-attacks. Companies will also demand greater transparency and accountability from their outsourcing providers, including regular security audits and reports.

However many organizations do not have paid for a higher level of cyber risk for the challenging task at hand. Many of them however are especially interested in regional or local deliveries. The problem will only worsen with increased cyber security incidents and the increased complexity of business.

**Also, read** [Cyber Security: meaning, options, tools, and best practices](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/cyber-security-meaning-options-tools-best-practices/{nofollow})

### Growing Importance of Artificial Intelligence

AI is a top global IT outsourcing trend since it refers to machines or systems that mimic human intelligence and can accomplish tasks.

AI has the potential to transform outsourcing by automating repetitive tasks, enhancing decision-making, and improving productivity. Outsourcing providers are already using AI to automate routine tasks such as data entry and customer service. As AI becomes more sophisticated, outsourcing providers must adapt their services to incorporate AI solutions and help clients leverage these technologies.

### The emergence of "Outstaffing"

Outstaffing is a relatively new outsourcing model that involves hiring developers and other IT professionals directly from a talent pool rather than working with a provider that manages the entire outsourcing process. Outstaffing can offer significant cost savings, greater control over the hiring process, and improved communication and collaboration with the remote team.

### Focus on Sustainability

[Sustainability](https://www.bluecube.tech/blog/what-is-sustainable-it#:~:text=Sustainable%20IT%2C%20also%20known%20as,and%20other%20computer%20related%20products.{externalnofollow}) has become an increasingly important issue in IT outsourcing. As companies seek to reduce their carbon footprint, outsourcing providers respond by developing sustainable solutions, such as renewable energy data centers and eco-friendly supply chains.

### Continued Growth of Nearshoring

Nearshoring, the practice of outsourcing to companies located in nearby countries or regions, has become an increasingly popular outsourcing model. Nearshoring offers many benefits, including cultural and linguistic proximity, lower costs, and reduced travel time and expenses.

### Machine Learning Automation

It is the next top outsourcing trend. According to previous research, MLA is projected to [reach USD 8.81 Billion by 2023 from USD 1.03 Billion in 2016](https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/machine-learning-market-263397704.html{externalnofollow}). The goal of machine learning automation is to mimic how people learn and boost accuracy through data and algorithms.

As the demand for talent in this field grows, machine learning is becoming one of the hottest IT services outsourcing trends. Software development companies provide competent service at a fraction of the cost of hiring these experts in-house. 

### WEB 3.0: The Metaverse, Blockchain Services

Using blockchain technology, developers can create applications that securely store data across multiple decentralized computers. [Web 3.0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tZFQs7qBfQ&t=32s{externalnofollow}) uses blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to allow real-world human contact. [Metaverses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse) give users the opportunity to move through virtual environments that resemble the real world using technology like virtual reality (VR).

Since the idea of a decentralized web is appreciated by everyone, [blockchain services](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-blockchain{externalnofollow}) will be the most prominent IT outsourcing trend in the future. As more businesses switch to blockchains and the demand for competent software vendors increases, this digital transformation will become a critical asset in the business world. 

IT outsourcing continues to evolve, and companies that keep up with the latest trends will be better positioned to take advantage of new opportunities and remain competitive in the marketplace. By adopting multi-sourcing, embracing cloud-based solutions, prioritizing security, leveraging AI, exploring outstaffing, focusing on sustainability, and nearshoring, companies can stay ahead of the curve and achieve better outcomes.

## Crucial skills for developers in future

The future will require developers to master several key skills to stay competitive and relevant as technology evolves and shapes the world around us. The following are some of the top skills developers will need in the future:

**1. AI and ML:** As AI and machine learning advance, you can see fundamental changes in how you interact with technology. Engineers who can master these technologies will be in high demand in the future.

**2. Data Science:** With the explosion of big data, developers skilled in data science and analytics will be highly sought after. With the help of these developers, organizations can make sense of and act on the vast amounts of data they collect.

**3. Cyber Security:** Cybersecurity-skilled developers are essential. They will be responsible for building secure applications and systems that can withstand cyber attacks.

**4. Cloud Computing:** Skills in cloud technologies like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud will be highly valued.

**5. Mobile Development:** Developers with experience in mobile app development will be in high demand as mobile devices become more prevalent. These engineers will be responsible for building mobile apps that are user-friendly, responsive, and secure.

**6. DevOps:** This set of practices brings together software development and IT operations to provide faster and more reliable software deployments. By using DevOps, developers can streamline their development processes and deliver software faster.

The most successful developers will be those who stay current with the latest technologies and trends. Developers can ensure they remain competitive and valuable in the job market by continuing to learn and develop their skills.

**Also, read** [What you should know about hiring remote developers](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/what-you-should-know-about-hiring-remote-developers/{nofollow})

## Top IT Outsourcing trends to watch in the coming future: Final words

Studying these trends can guide you to develop successful business plans for the coming years. Learning about an outsourcing trend can also help you handle uncertainties in your business and manage internal stakeholders effectively. You can review the top outsourcing trends above to develop a strategic plan for successful outsourcing in the coming years.

As the IT outsourcing market evolves, IT outsourcing providers must stay current with these trends to ensure they remain competitive. Customers-centricity, transparency, and trust will appeal to leading partners.

Keeping up with the newest technologies and protecting customer data will soon become more important. Sharing risk can lead to great success and effective partnerships.

Market leaders in the next decade might gain a competitive edge by implementing these top IT outsourcing trends.

Here you can find the overview of the top OT outsourcing trends to watch in the coming years👀🌎

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The Top IT outsourcing trends to watch in the coming years

The demand for outsourced software development is increasing for various product development needs, including web development, mobile app development, and voice development. Nowadays, many companies prefer this approach to product development by outsourcing multiple services and solutions related to development and maintenance. Regarding web development outsourcing, businesses can transfer development activities to a self-managed company with the necessary controls over the project. Depending on the complexity of the software, security requirements, and other factors, a development plan is created to build and maintain a SaaS product for companies.

## What is software development outsourcing?
Software outsourcing refers to allocating third-party vendors for the required software development activities. The most common services outsourced are web design and development, mobile application development, and other related development and maintenance activities.
Considering modern business needs, the demand for outsourcing services is only growing. Companies of different sizes are constantly looking for a way to build new products and thus consider hiring dedicated remote resources to deliver value at a reduced cost.
After considering your development needs, a decision must be taken about outsourcing software development to a software developer. In-house development enables you to employ internal software developers to create software. In outsourcing, you will use a professional provider specializing in quickly developing your project.

## Why should your startup outsource software development?
![Why should your startup outsource software development.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/Why_should_your_startup_outsource_software_development_16e8ab2b0c.png)

Startups are outsourcing software development at an increasing rate. Unless you have professional knowledge of product development or in-depth technical expertise in the relevant fields, it is recommended to opt for professional services. But that's not it.
Let's dive into the main reasons why your startup should outsource software development.

## Benefits of Outsourcing

- **Application of the Agile methodology**

The conventional waterfall process is used in traditional software development. Teams should create a clear project strategy before launching it through a linear, step-by-step development process. They have stringent timelines with no room for error. If you need to modify something later, you won't be able to; if you do, it will be pretty expensive.
This is where Agile teams come in - rather than preparing the entire project ahead of time, Agile teams focus on planning continually throughout the project, giving you the flexibility to make changes as needed. And to make the best out of the Agile methodology, you need good experience in it. Software development outsourcing ensures your product is developed under the experts' supervision while utilizing the Agile method correctly.
- **Access to deep knowledge and experience**

There must be more than a well-defined plan to develop a competitive product. You must follow the proper development process, adopt the most influential tech stacks, and take the appropriate architectural approach while developing a product.
And that's why you need more theoretical knowledge to launch it successfully. Outsourcing software development from professionals with years-long experience ensures that your product is developed with the proper expertise. Such in-depth knowledge and experience during product development are only possible if you use third-party professional software development services.
- **Access to a superior-tech talent pool worldwide**

You need a tech background with expertise and experience in diverse technical domains to understand the technological areas during the development, the relevant technical trends, their applicants, and other tech-related factors. Basic knowledge of the technologies will be necessary for quality product development.
And that's where outsourcing software development works wonders. As per your requirements, budget, technical requirements, and product development requirements, you can have a lot of options to choose from, no matter where you are located.
- **Ability to assemble the best professional team for the project**

You must opt for professional developers and testers to develop your product. Because no matter which type of product you are developing, the market for that is expected to be quite competitive.
It is essential to have a professional approach during product development to launch a competitive product that fits the target audience's requirements properly. Opting for software development outsourcing opens the path to establishing a quality product that aligns with your startup's goals.
- **No need for micromanagement**

Through software development outsourcing, you get a fully-managed software development solution that doesn't require any micromanagement or even much management from your side. The professional team looks after everything, including the development workflow, process, milestones, and deadlines. As a result, you can focus on the more critical areas of your startup instead of micromanaging everything.
- **Optimal balance of skills and rates**

Having the proper skill sets is pivotal for any product development. But at the same time, it requires heavy investment to hire in-house experienced tech professionals.
Furthermore, you may not need the professionals' services once the app is developed. So, instead of going through such a costly and lengthy process, you can outsource software development to have your preferred skills onboard within your budget.
- **Easy scalability**

Scalability is a significant factor to consider while developing your product. How easily can you scale it up to cater to the growing demand of the end users? How well can your product adapt to the changes? How easily can you integrate it with different platforms, third-party systems, and solutions? Outsourcing software development ensures your product has all the qualities to aid in high scalability.
- **Effective communication within the team**

Communication is often the key to successful product development. Software development outsourcing ensures proper communication among the team members, as all are dedicated to your project and aim to make the best out of it. You can also take timely updates and effectively communicate with the team to have a transparent idea about the development process.

## Cons of Outsourcing

- **Limited motivation**

Little motivation implies that the outsourced team needs encouragement to give their best or finish the project on time. It is mainly common when startups hire freelancers without proper professional expertise or proven experience, or there is a communication gap that leads to a lack of understanding of your project, or if your budget needs to be higher to motivate them. You can avoid such a scenario only by working with a professional team, preferably a third-party product development company with various services and solutions.
- **Lack of clarity**

Lack of clarity can be an issue for outsourced software development if you don't plan it well or don't have a detailed contract with the outsourced team. However, it can be avoided by making a software requirements specification document and discussing every detail of your project before the development process starts.

## Software development outsourcing models

It's important to have a clear idea on various software development outsourcing models. Each outsourcing model has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it is important for companies to carefully evaluate their needs and choose the model that best fits their goals and budget. Let's delve into this.

## Models of contracts in IT outsourcing services
![Models of contracts in IT outsourcing services.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/Models_of_contracts_in_IT_outsourcing_services_a3d237edea.png)

### Fixed-price

#### Pros
- A predictable outcome
- An easy-to-manage process
- Transparency

#### Cons
- A lack of accountability
- Inflexibility

In the fixed price model, every project detail is well-defined and fixed, including the cost, scope, specifications, and others. Also, the pricing is set for each milestone completion. This can be a suitable model if you have a strict budget or a very well-defined project scope that doesn't need much modification.

### Time and Materials

#### Pros
- Dynamic work scope
- Ability to change
- Better timing

#### Cons
- Low budgeting control
- Deep involvement

The time and materials model is a famous software development outsourcing model. This model is based on the hours required from the developers and the relevant resources to be used. This model is easy to adopt and offers high flexibility to a startup to change or modify their requirements related to the project development, such as their features, solutions, scope, and others.

### Dedicated Development Team

A dedicated team model lets you hire a full team that includes developers, testers, QA engineers, designers, and others utterly devoted to your product development.
As this model doesn't require hiring an in-house team and enables you to launch a quality product without much hassle, it is often the first choice of startups.

### Should be used when:

- Projects require a team of a tester, developer, QA engineer, and others.
- Projects that require high expertise.
- When you need an in-house developer team.
- Complex projects for competitive markets.

## How to set up your outsourcing strategy?
Once you are ready with your preferred software development outsourcing model, you must set up your outsourcing strategy.
The following steps will let you nail it like a pro.
![How to set up your outsourcing strategy_.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/How_to_set_up_your_outsourcing_strategy_17c2dd93a7.png)

### Define your goals
A well-defined set of goals helps you throughout the software development process and ensures that your product is developed exactly as per your requirements. The following pointers will help you with this step.

- What is the primary goal of developing the product?
- What are the required features, solutions, and overall product quality?
- What is your target market and audience?
- What is your targeted market positioning for the product?
- What are your available resources and budget?
- What expertise do you have relevant to product development?
- Do you have an in-house coder, tester, or anyone with proper technical knowledge?
- Do you have enough exposure in the product category and the associated market?
- What are your preferred outsourcing location and upper cap of budget?
- What are your expectations from the team regarding product development approaches, process flow, and others?

A transparent idea of all these will help you develop a proper outsourcing strategy.

### Define tasks for delegation
Defining your tasks ensures that all your requirements are met, and there is no confusion during or after the development process. A well-defined study implies that all the project-related information, milestones, specifications, criteria to meet, quality to maintain, and others are detailed and conveyed to the team for smooth execution.

### Determine your technological profile
Undoubtedly technology plays a crucial role in software development. And it would be best if you determined your technological profile so that the relevant technological prowess can be classified as per a predefined system or scale. It will also help you strategize the technical aspects of the product development process. It will ensure that the technical expertise of the outsourced team is efficient in bringing out the best in your product.

### Create a positive work environment
Looking after what the outsourced team feels while working on your project is essential. You can only optimize its efficiency when the work environment is motivating.
This applies to more than just onsite work and even to remote work. To establish a good job climate, you must be transparent about the work policies, rules, and ethics while maintaining good communication, timely payout or rewards if needed, and a delicate and neutral working approach. These all together will help you strategize your software development outsourcing process.

## How is software development usually done?
Even if you opt for software development outsourcing, you should know the software development process to monitor and assess the progress for good product development. Let's take a look at the steps of a software development process.
![How is software development usually done_.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/How_is_software_development_usually_done_68533aff22.png)

### Ideation
In the software development process, ideation is the first step, meaning one needs a clear idea of what software product to develop. You need to have a clear concept from the product type and category to its key or competitive features.
Apart from defining your product's functional and non-functional requirements, you need to focus on the competitiveness of all its features and solutions. For instance, what can be the USP of the product or what's unique in its solutions, etc.?

### Planning
In this phase, one needs to plan everything about software development. What will be the starting point for the software development, which architectural method will be followed, what will be the project development approach, which tech stacks or programming languages will be used, and what will be the milestones and the respective deadlines - these all are planned in this stage.

### Design
Software design is the next step which is a more technical approach to define and represent the whole software architecture, design, and related specifications. In this phase, a professional mainly outlines and designs a software artifact to align with your product development goals.

### Coding
In this phase, the developers begin coding and building your product. The programming languages or tech stacks, and the coding approach are all determined in the previous phases. Based on the design, architectural method, and product development requirements, a developer opts for the coding best practices for fast, smooth, and quality product development.

### Testing
The product is tested for any possible bugs, issues, or loopholes in the testing stage. And they are fixed and tested again to ensure the final product is error-free and efficient.
Some of the most popular software testing methods are Unit testing, Environment testing, Regression testing, and Automated testing, to name a few. The professional tester chooses the most suitable testing method for your product.

### Deployment and maintenance
Once the above phases are completed, now is the time to deploy your product and maintain it thoroughly to keep it updated, efficient, and relevant. Apart from reviewing the technical aspects regularly, you must consider the current market trends, audience demand, and other competitive factors. You need to maintain, modify, and update your product accordingly to keep it relevant.

## How much does outsourcing cost, and where can you find it?
Now comes the most crucial question, where and how to outsource your software development to launch a high-quality product? You have a specific set of requirements in mind. You already know what you want to achieve. Budgets and timelines have been established. Finally, it's time to seek a software development firm capable of translating your specifications into high-quality software.
Also, knowing the cost efficiency is essential as it will help the business get the best developer at affordable prices. Moreover, the business house must know how and when to spend to maintain the balance of cost efficiency. To reduce costs, you should never compromise on product quality. It is not a healthy business practice and will take you nowhere in the long run.
Below is a table that will give you a bigger picture. This table explains how regional differences impact the hourly rate of software outsourcing companies.

![Where to outsource and how much does it cost_.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/Where_to_outsource_and_how_much_does_it_cost_1f16ebe675.png)

## Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development: Final words
Software development outsourcing isn't just a cost-effective technique anymore. It's a common practice among both established companies and startups that benefits business growth. 
It helps you develop, test, and launch the product faster. You cannot do software outsourcing with your eyes shut, but preparing for it reduces risks and ensures your expectations are met. 


This article describes the benefits of outsourcing software development and why you should consider it to grow your business. 😉📈📈

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Benefits of Outsourcing Software Development: Why Outsourcing it's a Smart Business Strategy

**DevOps** is an essential part of modern software development. The term DevOps refers to the integration of software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) with the goal of creating a more agile, efficient, and reliable software development process. DevOps engineers are critical to this process and play a vital role in ensuring that the DevOps pipeline is optimized for maximum efficiency.
In a Grand View Research, Inc. study, DevOps Engineers ranked No. 4 on [Glassdoor's list of the 50 Best Jobs in the USA](https://www.glassdoor.com/List/Best-Jobs-in-America-LST_KQ0,20.htm{externalnofollow}) in 2022. By 2025, the global DevOps market is expected to reach US$12.85 billion, growing at a compound annual rate of 18.60%. 

DevOps has seen a substantial increase in investment from companies in recent years. It is common for users to leverage tools like Chef, Docker, and Puppet. Due to this, there is an increasing need for qualified DevOps engineers.

## What does a DevOps engineer do?

DevOps engineers are involved in coding and scripting for various software development kit components, including APIs.

A DevOps engineer is responsible for bridging the gap between development and operations teams by automating the software development lifecycle and streamlining software delivery. They create a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement to help organizations achieve faster time-to-market, improved product quality, and more reliable software delivery.

Automation tools, containerization tools, cloud computing platforms, and monitoring and logging tools are among the tools and technologies that DevOps engineers typically use. The tools automate the software development process, integrate and deploy code changes, and monitor and troubleshoot applications.

Working effectively with cross-functional teams requires strong communication, collaboration, and technical skills. Building and maintaining solid relationships with developers, operations, and other stakeholders is their responsibility.

A DevOps engineer is critical to software development, ensuring that software is delivered quickly, reliably, and with high qualifications.

## 7 Must-have DevOps Engineer skills

Here are some essential DevOps engineer skills you should know:

### Understanding of the software development lifecycle

A DevOps engineer must have a solid understanding of the SDLC and be familiar with Agile methodologies. Additionally, they should be able to assist developers in writing code that is ready for testing and deployment.

### Knowledge of automation tools

Automation is a core part of DevOps, and DevOps engineers must be familiar with various automation tools. Tools that can automate infrastructure, such as Ansible or Puppet, as well as continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools like Jenkins and containerization tools like Docker, can be utilized to automate these tasks.

### Cloud computing skills

DevOps engineers need a good knowledge of cloud computing and databases. With the rise of cloud computing, DevOps engineers must have knowledge of cloud-based services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. They should also be familiar with cloud deployment models such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

### The ability to use source control systems

Source control systems are essential tools for facilitating collaboration between developers. As DevOps brings together individuals from various sectors, it is critical for DevOps engineers to have expertise in source control or version control systems. These systems enable tracking changes in an application and maintaining different versions of the application. Becoming proficient in version control systems requires effort, as each tool has advantages and disadvantages.

Understanding the importance of version control systems in the DevOps culture is crucial. For example, they prevent dependency issues in modern containerized applications, directly impact DevOps performance, and help build more reliable applications.

Therefore, every DevOps engineer should have experience working with at least one of the following tools: Git, CVS, SVN, or Mercurial. By mastering these tools, DevOps engineers can streamline collaboration and contribute to the successful delivery of high-quality software products.

### Networking and security principles

Almost everyone needs a strong knowledge of security, particularly DevelOps coding skills. DevOps skills include code analysis, change management, threat research, security courses, and vulnerability assessments.DevOps engineers need a strong understanding of networking and security principles, such as TCP/IP, DNS, firewalls, and VPNs. Furthermore, they should be knowledgeable about privacy and security regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS.

### Collaboration and communication skills

As DevOps engineers work closely with developers, operations teams, and other stakeholders, they must possess excellent communication and collaboration skills. Working in a team, communicating complex technical concepts, and bridging departmental gaps are all skills they should possess.

### Problem-solving skills

DevOps engineers must be capable of troubleshooting complex technical issues and developing solutions quickly. As well as being able to think critically and creatively when faced with challenges, they should also be able to come up with efficient and effective solutions.

## Essential DevOps Engineer Skills: Final words

Becoming a DevOps engineer requires a wide range of skills, including understanding the SDLC, knowledge of automation tools, cloud computing skills, networking and security, collaboration and communication skills, and problem-solving skills. Any organization looking to streamline operations and improve software development processes can benefit from these skills. By mastering these essential skills and continually developing new ones, DevOps engineers can ensure that their teams are working efficiently and effectively while delivering value to their customers. With the right skills and mindset, DevOps engineers can truly make a difference in today's rapidly evolving technology landscape.

DevOps always prioritizes the customer, recognizing that delivering a product that satisfies their needs is paramount. To achieve this, DevOps engineers must have a comprehensive understanding of the big picture and a clear understanding of the customer's requirements. However, DevOps engineers often lack this ability, many of whom come from a software development background without specific DevOps training. Consequently, there is a significant gap between software development and DevOps engineering. To successfully bridge this gap, it is crucial for DevOps engineers to appreciate the broader context and focus on satisfying the customer. At the same time, a software developer is primarily responsible for coding what has been requested. By understanding this distinction, a DevOps engineer can deliver high-quality products that meet customer expectations.

⚡️This article describes essential DevOps engineer skills for successful collaboration and delivery 🤝

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7 Must-Have DevOps Engineer Skills for Successful Collaboration and Delivery

As businesses continue to rely more and more on technology, the importance of having a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place is becoming increasingly critical. In the event of a disaster, whether a natural disaster or a cyberattack, a well-designed disaster recovery plan can help ensure that your business can quickly and effectively recover and resume normal operations.

Cloud disaster recovery services have emerged as a popular solution for businesses of all sizes, offering several key benefits over traditional disaster recovery solutions.

## What is Cloud disaster recovery?

Disaster recovery in the cloud (cloud DR) involves backing up data, applications, and other resources to a public cloud or a dedicated service provider. When a disaster occurs, the enterprise can restore the affected data, applications, and other resources to the local data center - or the cloud provider.

Cloud DR has the same goal as traditional DR: to safeguard valuable business resources and ensure they can be accessed and recovered to maintain business continuity. Any business continuity (BC) strategy must include disaster recovery (DR).

## In what ways does CDR work?

Traditional disaster recovery methods differ significantly from cloud disaster recovery methods.

There is no comparison between the system and dedicated servers with the same operating system (OS), software applications, and patches as the previous configuration. A cloud solution stores all software, data, patches, and the operating system. Virtual server images contain all of this information. 

Virtual server images can be quickly accessed in a secure virtual environment if a disaster occurs. All data within the organization is fully restored, allowing users to access resources and software as before the disaster. A few minutes are needed to accomplish this.

It is unnecessary to have hardware installed before using a virtual server image. As a result, all data assets can be transferred quickly from a data center to the cloud environment, much faster than using a traditional method. 

## Cloud Disaster Recovery: Who Needs It?

IT-related issues should not be the focus of disaster recovery plans, which should work alongside an overall business continuity plan. Planning and coordinated processes are also necessary to overcome disruptions caused by external factors.

To protect your data and business operations, disaster recovery has become even more crucial in light of the growing trend of cybercrime targeting companies of all sizes.  

To be sure that cloud disaster recovery is right for your organization, you must ask yourself these **five questions** below: 


1. **_Are you able to access your backup data easily?_**
2. **_If your hardware fails, can you quickly obtain and set it up?_**
3. **_After restoring the system, how easy will it be for your users to access software and data?_**
4. **_Will your plans be fully protected once they have been restored?_**
5. **_Does your IT department know what to do in case of a disaster?_**

If any of these questions are answered no, then a cloud DR solution may be the best option for avoiding unnecessary downtime and inefficiency caused by a standard key. 

Getting your business back online as soon as possible after a disruption is essential. A disaster recovery strategy can ensure operations can restart almost immediately during a disaster. 

## What is a Cloud Disaster Recovery Strategy?

A cloud-based disaster recovery strategy (CDR) allows organizations to quickly recover digital assets and restore systems, whether artificial or natural, following a disaster. A managed solution allows remote access to all systems within the organization, minimizing downtime or eliminating it. 

The traditional disaster recovery strategy relies on secondary data centers to back up assets and systems. It can be a time-consuming and expensive process. Recovery times are also much slower when compared to a cloud solution. 

With a cloud disaster recovery strategy, there is no need for any traditional infrastructure. The service can work seamlessly with your existing IT department to ensure rapid recovery at lower costs.

## Why is a cloud disaster recovery plan important?

A comprehensive disaster restoration plan ensures the rapid recovery of essential business data needed for the return of normal business activities. Traditional disaster recovery strategies can be difficult. Adding cloud infrastructure may make your calculations even longer. It makes establishing and maintaining a proper recovery process a critical component of a recovery process. The use of cloud technology for backups requires more significant expertise than traditional DR techniques. Cloud DR still is relatively new for many organizations, but your DR plan should include all critical elements for disaster recovery.

## What do Cloud disaster recovery services mean?

Cloud disaster recovery services are a type of cloud computing service that provides businesses with the ability to recover their data and IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster, such as a natural disaster, cyber attack, or other disruptive events.

These services typically involve replicating data and applications to a remote location in the cloud, which can be accessed and used in the event of a disaster. Cloud disaster recovery services can provide businesses with a number of benefits, including reduced downtime, improved data protection, and lower costs compared to traditional disaster recovery solutions.

Some **examples of cloud disaster recovery services** include Amazon Web Services (AWS) Disaster Recovery, Microsoft Azure Site Recovery, and Google Cloud Disaster Recovery. These services typically offer features such as automated failover, continuous data replication, and flexible recovery options to meet the specific needs of businesses.

**Amazon Web Services (AWS) Disaster Recovery:** This service provides an automated disaster recovery solution for your critical workloads running on AWS. It offers a fully managed, cloud-based disaster recovery service that replicates your applications and data to a secondary region.

**Microsoft Azure Site Recovery:** This service provides disaster recovery for applications and workloads running on-premises or in the cloud. It offers replication, failover, and failback capabilities, with support for multiple platforms and workloads.

**Google Cloud Disaster Recovery:** This service provides a fully managed, cloud-based disaster recovery solution for your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) workloads. It offers replication to a secondary region, automated failover, and continuous data protection.

**IBM Cloud Disaster Recovery:** This service provides a comprehensive disaster recovery solution for your mission-critical applications and data. It offers rapid failover and failback, with support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

**Zerto:** This service provides disaster recovery and business continuity solutions for virtualized and cloud environments. It offers continuous data protection, automated failover and failback, and multi-cloud support.

These are just a few examples of today's many cloud disaster recovery services. Each service has unique features and capabilities, so evaluating your specific needs and requirements is essential before choosing a solution.

In addition to public clouds, many dedicated disaster recovery vendors now offer Disaster recovery as service products that enable access to dedicated clouds.

**Top DR providers** include:

- Bluelock
- Expedient
- IBM DRaaS
- Iland
- Recovery Point Systems
- Sungard AS
- TierPoint

DR as a service is also being offered by **more traditional backup vendors**, such as:

-  Acronis
-  Arcserve UDP
-  Carbonite
-  Databarracks
-  Datto
-  Unitrends
-  Zerto

It is essential to regularly update and test DR platforms to ensure they are available and perform as expected.

## Benefits of Cloud disaster recovery services

The benefits of cloud disaster recovery services include the following:

- **Cost-effectiveness:** Cloud disaster recovery services can be significantly more cost effective than traditional disaster recovery solutions, as they eliminate the need for expensive hardware and software.
- **Scalability:** Cloud disaster recovery services can quickly scale to meet the changing needs of your business, whether you need to recover a few files or an entire data center.
- **Reliability:** Cloud disaster recovery services are designed to provide reliable and consistent performance, ensuring your data is always available when needed.
- **Security:** Cloud disaster recovery services often incorporate advanced security features, such as data encryption and multi-factor authentication, to help protect your data from unauthorized access.
- **Accessibility:** Cloud disaster recovery services allow you to access your data from anywhere with an internet connection, making it easy to recover your data even if your physical location is affected by a disaster.

## Final thoughts

Cloud disaster recovery can reduce downtime and data loss, reduce the risk of data loss or other damage and ensure compliance with regulations. If an earthquake, tornado or flood destroys your manufacturing system, downtime could ruin you and your business. With cloud disaster recovery, the company synchronizes your data and backup to an infrastructure located 150 miles from your production network. This geographically isolated location is crucial if you wish to minimize a possible loss of data on production systems or cloud recovery sites.

In 2023, the need for cloud disaster recovery services will likely continue to grow as businesses become more reliant on technology and as the threat landscape continues to evolve. By implementing a cloud disaster recovery plan, companies can help ensure that they are prepared for any disaster that may occur and can quickly and effectively recover their critical data and systems.

A cloud disaster recovery plan is a viable alternative to a traditional disaster recovery plan in practically every way. From simple deployment to lower costs, and faster recovery, it is a viable strategy for organizations of any size. 

A cloud solution also offers additional security as the backup server can be located anywhere worldwide, further protecting sensitive data. 

This article explores why cloud disaster recovery services are so essential for business continuity in 2023.

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Why Cloud Disaster Recovery Services are Essential for Business Continuity in 2023

**AngelList** is a cloud-based startup investment & job posting platform enabling startups to develop and manage their talent pipelines. Businesses can recruit candidates by broad search keywords such as profile, job type, location, etc.

[AngelList](https://www.angellist.com/{externalnofollow}) is used by many people, including entrepreneurs, investors, and job seekers. Entrepreneurs use the platform to find investors interested in their companies and raise funds for their startups. Investors use AngelList to find startups interested in investing in and connecting with other investors. Job seekers use the platform to find job opportunities at startups.

Nowadays, AngelList is a kind of constellation. Modern AngelList is comprised of six primary entities, which have shifted and split throughout its history:
![AngelList_ benefits and possibilities for startups.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/Group_3053_ee38e7bfdb.png)

- AngelList Venture
- AngelList Talent
- AngelList India
- CoinList
- Republic
- Product Hunt

## What are AngelList advantages?

AngelList is an excellent opportunity for startups, helping them connect to investors and employees.

_Defining "AngelList" is tricky._ AngelList isn't just one company. Technically, three entities leverage the brand: AngelList Venture, AngelList Talent, and AngelList India. That's without mentioning businesses that spun out from the company, including Republic and CoinList. Or, indeed, Product Hunt, which AngelList owned between 2016 and 2020. 

_AngelList Venture is an efficient unicorn._ According to an exclusive AngelList's Venture team shared, the company is now worth $4.1 billion, thanks to a recent $100 million funding round. Its targeted spending means it has achieved that outcome with relatively little capital.‍

_Spinning out aligns incentives._ Companies like Republic exemplify a crucial component of AngelList's playbook: some innovations are best served by going solo. AngelList founder Naval Ravikant believes it produces more effective teams, largely thanks to better alignment of incentives. 

_Hiring founders increase leverage._ AngelList employs an unusual number of former entrepreneurs, especially those with an engineering background. The company looks to build around individuals who understand how to leverage their labor and can take a product from zero to one.‍

_AngelList's most essential products are just getting started._ Ask Naval Ravikant what products he believes are most important to AngelList's future, and he'll point to Rolling Funds and the software suite Stack. Both have been around for less than two years. 

And now, let's explore the benefits and possibilities for **Startups**, **Investors**, and **Job seekers**.

## Benefits for Startups

AngelList offers several benefits for startups, including:

1. **Access to investors**: Startups can connect with investors interested in their industry and stage of development. AngelList offers a database of over 100,000 accredited investors who can invest in your startup.
2. **Fundraising tools**: Startups can create fundraising profiles with their pitch deck, financials, and team information. AngelList offers a suite of fundraising tools, including fundraising templates and investor CRM tools, that help startups streamline their fundraising process.
3. **Hiring tools**: Startups can post job listings, review resumes, and connect with job candidates. AngelList offers a database of over 2 million job seekers interested in working for startups.
4. **Community**: Startups can connect with other entrepreneurs and industry experts on AngelList. The platform offers a community forum where startups can ask questions and get advice from other members.
5. **Visibility**: Startups can get more exposure for their business on AngelList. The platform has over 1 million registered users, including investors, job seekers, and other startups.

## Possibilities for Startups

AngelList also offers several possibilities for startups, including:

1. **Funding opportunities**: Startups can apply to accelerators and incubators on AngelList, which can provide funding, mentorship, and other resources.
2. **M&A opportunities**: Startups can explore mergers and acquisitions on AngelList. The platform offers a database of over 43,000 startups, which can be searched by industry, location, and other criteria.
3. **Partnership opportunities**: Startups can connect with other startups and industry experts on AngelList, leading to partnerships and collaborations.

## Benefits for Investors

AngelList also offers several benefits for investors, including:

1. **Access to startups**: Investors can find startups that match their investment criteria. AngelList offers a database of over 43,000 startups, which can be searched by industry, location, and other criteria.
2. **Investment tools**: Investors can use AngelList's investment tools to evaluate startups, including pitch decks, financials, and team information.
3. **Syndication opportunities**: Investors can join [syndicates on AngelList](https://saasholic.com/most-popular-syndicates-on-angellist-you-should-be-following/{externalnofollow}), which allows them to invest alongside other investors.
4. **Community**: Investors can connect with other investors and industry experts on AngelList. The platform offers a community forum where investors can ask questions and get advice from other members.
5. **Visibility**: Investors can get more exposure for their investment portfolio on AngelList. The platform has over 1 million registered users, including startups, job seekers, and other investors.

## Possibilities for Investors

AngelList also offers several possibilities for investors, including:

1. **Early-stage investing**: Investors can invest in early-stage startups on AngelList, offering high potential returns.
2. **Diversification**: Investors can build a diversified portfolio of startups on AngelList, which can reduce risk.
3. **Social impact investing**: Investors can invest in startups that have a social impact on AngelList, which can align with their values.

## Benefits for Job Seekers

AngelList also offers several benefits for job seekers, including:

1. **Access to startups**: AngelList provides job seekers access to a wide range of startups actively hiring. This is particularly beneficial for those interested in working for early-stage companies.
2. **Transparent hiring process**: AngelList promotes a transparent hiring process by providing job seekers with detailed job descriptions, company profiles, and salary information. This allows job seekers to decide which companies to apply to.
3. **Networking opportunities**: AngelList enables job seekers to connect with startup founders and employees, which can be a valuable networking opportunity. This can lead to potential job opportunities in the future.
4. **User-friendly interface**: AngelList's user-friendly interface makes it easy for job seekers to navigate and apply for jobs. The platform also allows job seekers to create a profile that showcases their skills and experience, making it easier for them to stand out to potential employers.
5. **Customized job alerts**: Job seekers can set up customized job alerts that match their preferences, such as job type, location, and salary range. This saves time and effort by sending relevant job opportunities directly to their inbox.
6. **Job search assistance**: AngelList provides job seekers with additional resources such as job search tips and advice. This can be helpful for those who are new to the job search process or want to improve their chances of landing a job.

## Possibilities for job seekers

1. **Job Listings**: AngelList features job listings from thousands of startups in various industries, including technology, healthcare, finance, and more. Job seekers can search for job listings based on their skills, location, and preferences.
2. **Job Matches**: AngelList's algorithm matches job seekers with relevant job openings based on their skills and preferences. Job seekers can create a profile and indicate their job preferences, and the platform will provide them with job matches that meet their criteria.
3. **Networking**: AngelList provides job seekers with opportunities to network with other professionals in the startup ecosystem. Job seekers can connect with other professionals in their industry or attend networking events to expand their network and learn about new job opportunities.
4. **Investor Jobs**: AngelList also features job openings at venture capital firms and angel investment groups. Job seekers can explore these opportunities if they want to work in the investment industry.
5. **Remote Work**: Many startups on AngelList offer remote work opportunities, making it easier for job seekers to find a job that fits their lifestyle and work preferences.

AngelList provides job seekers with various resources and opportunities for startup job openings. Whether job seekers are interested in a particular industry or job function, AngelList can help them find relevant job listings, connect with other professionals, and expand their network in the startup ecosystem.

## What is an AngelList syndicate?

A syndicate is an investor group that invests in [SVP deals](https://learn.angellist.com/articles/spv{externalnofollow}). When you back a syndicate, you will have access to deal-by-deal deals. No commitments can be made in a transaction with a syndicate.

## AngelList: Final words

AngelList is a valuable platform for anyone interested in the startup ecosystem and who wants to connect with other like-minded individuals. Whether you are an entrepreneur, investor, or job seeker, AngelList can provide various opportunities and resources to help you achieve your goals.

AngelList has revolutionized the way startups and investors connect. It provides startups access to a wide range of investors, a streamlined process, and a supportive community. It also provides investors access to a wide range of startups, a simplified process, and a supportive community. The possibilities of AngelList, including Syndicates, Job Listings, and AngelList Venture, provide even more opportunities for startups and investors to connect and collaborate. If you are a startup or an investor, AngelList is a platform that you should consider.

😏😇The article provides an overview of the benefits and possibilities of AngelList for startups, investors, and job seekers.

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AngelList: benefits and possibilities for startups

📊SaaS business model description, 🤩 unique SaaS ideas, ways to validate the idea, and suggestions for building an MVP.

☕️Awesome SaaS ideas for a product in 2023

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Awesome AI-generated SaaS ideas for your new product

**DevOps** entails more than just bringing development and operations together. Tools and practices are just the beginning. Defining DevOps as a mindset, a cultural shift, involves adopting new ways of working.

By understanding user requirements and needs better, developers in a DevOps culture get closer to the user. As part of the development process, operations teams add maintenance requirements and customer needs. In contrast to traditional software development methods, DevOps teams follow the following fundamental principles that allow them to deliver services and applications at a faster rate and a high quality.

A company that employs separate development and operations teams may require a complete overhaul of the organization to implement DevOps. DevOps can only be implemented with the right people, culture, and tools.

## Benefits of DevOps

_By bringing development and operations together, teams can reduce lead time, deploy more frequently, and produce better-quality software_. 

DevOps benefits fall into **three categories**: technical, cultural, and business.

_Technical benefits_ include reducing complexity, accelerating delivery, and quickly eliminating problems. DevOps practitioners usually deploy higher-quality code faster than traditionally [siloed teams](https://nbold.co/working-in-silos/#:~:text=Working%20in%20silos%20describes%20a,their%20work%20separately%20without%20coordination.{externalnofollow}).

Customers are happier and more productive as a result of the _cultural benefits_.

_Business benefits_ include faster delivery times and more stable operating environments, resulting from greater collaboration and trust between team members.

## What Is DevOps Lifecycle?
![Mask group (2).png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/Mask_group_2_70fee41c74.png)

**DevOps lifecycle** describes software development processes that use DevOps best practices for planning, building, integration, deployment and monitoring. It is no specific software or specialized team.

The DevOps lifecycle combines **continuous development, integration, testing, deployment, monitoring, operation, and feedback**. DevOps lifecycle phases are continuous. So, influential DevOps engineers combine all seven steps in each agile development sprint in ways that make the most sense to them. For example, some teams implement testing before integration. The other one runs continuous feedback before deploying a build in production.

Let's look at each phase in detail.

## Continuous operation

As part of the continuous operations phase, customers are ensured maximum performance, security, compliance, and smooth service.

You'll maintain a competitive edge, high customer satisfaction/ratings, and service reliability when you consistently do this. By increasing your [monthly recurring revenue](https://www.zoho.com/subscriptions/guides/what-is-monthly-recurring-revenue.html#:~:text=Monthly%20Recurring%20Revenue%20(MRR)%20is,but%20excludes%20one%2Dtime%20fees.{externalnofollow}) (MRR), you can attract more subscribers, retain your customers longer, and increase your MRR.

## Continuous Development

Continuous development involves developing software. This way, development is split up into small cycles. DevOps teams are also able to a similar process to speed development processes. Developing and testing software development programs helps developers fully understand projects and expectations. The unit can then visualize its final destination. The development environment doesn't require a DevOps tool, but several software version control tools can be used. These processes of code maintenance can be referred to as source code maintenance.

Tools like [Git](https://git-scm.com/{externalnofollow}), [CVS](https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/Concurrent-Versions-System-CVS#:~:text=Concurrent%20Versions%20System%20(CVS)%20is,a%20common%20repository%20of%20files.{externalnofollow}), [Subversion](https://hackbrightacademy.com/blog/svn-vs-git/#:~:text=What%20are%20the%20advantages%20of%20SVN%3F,to%20create%20a%20new%20feature.{externalnofollow}), [Mercurial](https://www.trustradius.com/products/mercurial/reviews?qs=pros-and-cons#reviews{externalnofollow}), [Maven](https://www.devopsuniversity.org/maven-tutorials/{externalnofollow}), and [Garden](https://garden.io/{externalnofollow}) help organize, ease, and speed up the process.

## Continuous Integration

Continuous integration (CI) is an [agile software development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development{externalnofollow}) practice allowing a developer to regularly merge changes in one repository before automating the build or test. This phase aims to find and fix bugs faster, and increase product quality. In other words, it helps creating a useful product that is also secure and user-friendly.

Besides, the updated code must seamlessly integrate with the other systems you built it to work with. CI involves reworking the source code frequently, as a result.

## Continuous monitoring

Software products are monitored to evaluate overall production efficiency. It processes essential information regarding developed applications. Using continuously monitorable software, developers can identify patterns and gray areas that require more work. Continuous monitoring is an operational stage aiming to increase software applications' overall effectiveness. It also monitors app performance. The DevOps lifecycle is the defining point in the process.

## Continuous Delivery

The continuous delivery method relies on changing code developed and adapted automatically. This extension for Continuous integration enables the deployment of code updates in test and production environments. If continuous delivery has been effectively implemented, a developer always deploys artifacts that have passed a standard test process.

## Continuous testing

Testing is essential to the DevOps process because it involves checking for bugs, errors, configuration issues, UX/UI problems, and other issues. There are various types of software testing, including component testing, unit testing, and system integration testing.

Tests are conducted by QA teams to make sure that every software component works as intended by your DevOps team and end users. The best continuous testing tools include Selenium, Ranorex, [Test.ai](https://test.ai/about-us{externalnofollow}), TestSigma, [TestNG](https://testng.org/doc/{externalnofollow}), and [JUnit](https://junit.org/junit5/{externalnofollow}).

This phase is the final step before the software code can be deployed to the production environment. The programmer who iterated the code to fix the issue will be notified if it doesn't work through the continuous integration tool (regression automation).

## Continuous feedback

The continuous feedback phase of DevOps helps improve products by allowing all stakeholders to share their feedback. In contrast to traditional software development methodologies, DevOps involves many stakeholders, including the client, product team, development, cloud operations, finance, and management.

In this phase, data is collected from the software being run in real time and monitored by real users. All parties continuously improve the product through continuous feedback.

## Continuous deployment

After testing and validating the code/build, the next step in the DevOps lifecycle involves releasing it into production. Continuous deployment is the last step in the [CI/CD pipeline](https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/devops/what-cicd-pipeline{externalnofollow}) in which teams deploy validated code changes to real users.

Unlike continuous deployment, continuous delivery primarily prepares validated builds for human review before deploying. The difference is that continuous deployment releases validated build to live production automatically.

CD software and CI/CD tools like [UrbanCode Deploy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh5KsH-JByw{externalnofollow}), [DeployBot](https://deploybot.com/#:~:text=DeployBot%20lets%20you%20execute%20or,%2C%20after%2C%20or%20during%20deployment.{externalnofollow}), and [Juju](https://juju.is/{externalnofollow}) can automate both CD processes. Or, use all-in-one solutions like GitLab, CircleCI, and Travis CI. A hassle-free application performance can be achieved using tools like Puppet, Chef, and Ansible.

Your service delivery can be improved by implementing the complete DevOps lifecycle. Continuous improvement of your DevOps pipeline can also help you meet customer needs and business goals more quickly.

## DevOps Methods and Tools
![Frame 3828.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/1/24/Frame_3828_ac2f5f6638.png)

Measurement and analysis can determine how successful a company can become with DevOps practices. We provide automation solutions for development operations in all phases.

To speed up and improve product releases, organizations can use **DevOps methods**. They are embodied in software development methodologies and practices. Popular processes include Kanban, Agile, and Scrum:

##### Kanban
Originally developed on the Toyota factory floor, Kanban has gained much traction. The Kanban method prescribes tracking the state of work in progress (WIP) on a Kanban board.

##### Scrum
Using scrum, team members can work together more efficiently on development and quality assurance projects. As part of Scrum practices, there are specific workflows and terms (sprints, time boxes, daily scrums [meetings]), as well as designated roles (Scrum Master, product owner).

##### Agile
DevOps practices and tools continue to be heavily influenced by earlier agile software development methods. Agile programming is incorporated into many DevOps methods, including Scrum and Kanban. By performing daily standups, documenting requirements as user stories, and incorporating continuous customer feedback, some agile practices enhance responsiveness to changing needs and requirements. Agile prescribes shorter software development lifecycles as an alternative to lengthy, traditional "waterfall" development methodologies.

## Prioritize security practices

Data breaches are seen as an integral part of organizations' systems. Developing and managing automated processes is an essential aspect of security monitoring and ensuring the success of DevOps processes. No coding is needed for any application and only verified versions control methods will apply.

It is also essential to deliver multiple DevOps Managed Services, allowing for simplified Devops transformations. 
Providing comprehensive defenses from unauthorized access and a potential attack is a key component of this strategy.

Typically organizations with less than 80% securing compliance concerns have a person responsible for security. It can sometimes prove a problem because security is a last thought, and it'll become much harder to secure software after it has been designed and installed than when you design the software to keep it secure.

## What are DevOps services?

DevOps is a mix of cultural philosophies, practices and tools which improve the company's ability to develop and improve products at faster speeds compared to traditional software development and infrastructure management.

Effective tooling is essential to enabling teams to deploy and innovate quickly and reliably in the DevOps model. DevOps tools automate manual tasks, manage complex environments at scale, and keep engineers in control of the high velocity. AWS provides services designed for DevOps and built first for use with the AWS cloud. Using these services can assist you in implementing DevOps phases.

## What is a DevOps engineer?

DevOps engineers are generalists with broad experience in software design, infrastructure development and operations, including code management. Likewise, developers need to have interpersonal skills in their roles so that they can work with different departments in order to build more collaborative environments. DevOps developers must understand common systems architecture, provisioning, and administration, but they should be familiar with the typical toolset.

### Top 9 DevOps Engineer Skills

The skills needed by DevOps Engineers depend on team structure, technology, and tools used. However, good communicative skills are vital to the success of any organization. DevOps Engineers must understand all components of a delivery pipeline. 

The **essential skills** for great DevOps developers are Linux Fundamentals, Scripting, Automation, Coding, Security, and [Cloud skills](https://www.simplilearn.com/top-cloud-computing-skills-article{externalnofollow}), Testing skills, Configuration, Version Management, Learning Proactive monitoring, and [Soft skills](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/top-ten-essential-soft-skills-for-engineering-professionals/{nofollow}).

## The future of DevOps

Since DevOps entered the game, it has proved to be effective in many ways: From speeding up development processes to bringing more value and high-quality products.
DevOps isn't going anywhere, but it doesn't stand still. Here are three DevOps trends for the near future.

As more organizations migrate to the cloud, DevOps will be tightly connected with cloud-native security bringing changes in how software is built, deployed, and operated. With [SecDevOps](https://www.xenonstack.com/insights/secdevops#:~:text=in%20the%20SDLC.-,What%20is%20SecDevOps%3F,than%20being%20held%20by%20them.{externalnofollow}), companies can integrate security into the development and deployment workflows.

Some experts predict the broader adoption of [BizDevOps](https://www.techtarget.com/searchsoftwarequality/definition/BizDevOps-Business-Development-and-Operations{externalnofollow}), a new approach to software development that eliminates the boundaries between developers, operations teams, and business staff so companies can build user-oriented products more quickly.

⚡️This article describes DevOps benefits, principles, tools, and the DevOps engineer role. 

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DevOps: principles, tools, and DevOps engineer role

**Cybersecurity** plays an essential role in the operational processes as the system protects against the theft and destruction of personal data. With an effective cybersecurity policy, your company can defend itself against the threats of unauthorized access. 

Cyber security protects various devices, data, electronic systems, and networks from malware attacks. Also, it can be named information technology security. It is the kind of organization's strategic efforts to protect information resources. Cyber security threat monitoring describes revealing cyber threats and data breaches, which can cause significant damage and disruption.

## Types of CyberSecurity

Cyber security applies in various contexts - from business to mobile computing. It can be divided into such types:
![Types of CyberSecurity.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/Types_of_Cyber_Security_0e36e608cc.png)

##### Application security

This type of cyber security focuses on protecting software and devices free of threats. A hacked application could provide access to the data designed to protect. Successful security should be begun in the design stage before a program or device is deployed.

##### Information security

It guards the privacy of data, both in transit and storage.

##### Network security

It is the crucial practice of protecting a computer network from intruders if targeted attackers or malicious software.

##### Operational security

This type of security works with data assets. Permissions for accessing a network and procedures for storing or sharing data fall within the scope.

##### Encryption

It takes plain text, like a text message or email, and scrambles it into an unreadable format — called cipher text. The purpose of encryption is confidentiality—concealing the content of the message by translating it into a code.

##### Access control

This type of cyber security is an essential element that determines who can access specific data, apps, and resources—and in what circumstances. Access control aims to minimize the security risk of unauthorized access to material and logical systems.

##### End-user education

It addresses the most unpredictable cyber-security factor: people. Any person can accidentally bring a virus to an otherwise secure system by failing to follow good security practices. Teaching users to delete suspicious email attachments, not plug in unidentified USB drives, and other essential lessons are vital for any organization's security.

##### Disaster recovery and business continuity

This type learns the companies' response to cyber security incidents, which cause data loss or operations. Disaster recovery policies determine how the organization restores its information and functions to return to the operating capacity as before the damage. Business continuity is the organization's plan while trying to operate without specific assets.

## Cyber security management
![Cyber security management.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/Cyber_security_management_1e4abb5f1b.png)

In IT, cybersecurity management protects sensitive information from unwanted guests and cybercriminals. It can protect the company's computer networks and information systems from cyber attacks, threats, intrusions, malware, and data breaches. 

Cybercriminals always look for new ways to take advantage of computer systems' vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated. Individuals' computer infrastructure may also be affected by some of these viruses. Now, organizations and companies are reevaluating their strategies against these threats. Organizations and businesses are developing better ways to prevent more damage by hiring cybersecurity managers or professionals who understand the importance of keeping information secure. 

## What makes managing cyber risk so challenging today?
![Frame 3827 (1).png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/Frame_3827_1_2201421621.png)

Let's start with cloud services and third-party vendors interacting with sensitive information. Approximately 583 third parties share confidential information with companies, according to a Ponemon Institute study. IT security teams have their hands complete, managing complex infrastructures full of vendor risk.

Meanwhile, organizations face many laws and regulations governing how confidential data must be protected. Modern enterprises are held accountable for third-party data processing on their behalf. If handling your risk wasn't challenging enough, today's organizations must also manage vendor risk.

What is the responsibility for each part of the security risk? Everyone - is entirely responsible and shares ownership. The situation becomes complicated when four business functions have a stake in the outcome.

Functions often lack empathy for one another and understand each other's agenda. Rather than taking security and compliance seriously, it often views them as annoying roadblocks. The security industry knows about safety but must also be aware of evolving technology and regulations. Security audits are a top priority for the sales team as they want to keep their customers happy. It is common for compliance to operate without understanding security and follow strict regulations to stay out of trouble.

Cybersecurity risk management requires specific responsibilities and clear roles for all functions. It is no longer the case that siloed departments stumble along in disconnected confusion. We need a unified, coordinated, disciplined, and consistent approach to manage risk effectively today. Here are some key risk management components that all organizations should consider:

- Assessing vendor risk with robust policies and tools
- Identification of emerging threats, such as new regulations that affect the business
- Finding weaknesses in internal security, such as a lack of two-factor authentication
- Training programs or policies and controls can be used to mitigate IT risks
- An overall security assessment
- Provide documentation of vendor risk management and security to satisfy regulatory requirements or prospective customers

## What programming languages are used for Cybersecurity?
C and C++, Python, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL are a few of the preferred programming languages used for cybersecurity.

### C and C++

The C programming language has been used in the development of some of the most popular operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. C and C++ provide access to low-level IT infrastructure, such as RAM and system processes. Hackers can easily exploit these lower-level operations if they are not properly protected.

### Python

Python is one of the most popular programming languages for cybersecurity because of its ease and functionality. Python is used for developing both web-based and software-based applications. Cybersecurity professionals use Python to develop analysis tools and hacking scripts, as well as to design secure programs.

### JavaScript

This language is primarily used to design interactive web pages and apps. JavaScript is extensively used, and it can be manipulated by hackers to gather information. Learning JavaScript can help to identify vulnerabilities in web design and fend off malicious users.

### PHP

PHP is used on the server-side to develop websites. Because most websites are created using PHP, learning this language will be helpful for cybersecurity jobs that focus on protecting websites.

### SQL

Structured Query Language (SQL) is primarily used in the design and management of databases and is widely used to maintain and retrieve data. Learning SQL is particularly helpful to prevent SQL injections, a type of cyber-attack where the attacker manipulates SQL statements to steal or modify information.

## Best Practices in Cybersecurity Management

Here are the **tried-and-tested best practices** for cybersecurity management.

**#Understand Your IT Assets and Environment**

A comprehensive cybersecurity management strategy demands deep knowledge of your firm's IT environment, including all your organization's data and digital assets, BYOD devices, networks, systems, third-party services, technologies, and endpoints. 

It is crucial to be aware of all aspects of your IT landscape, as they can all be exploited to breach your network. Moreover, your IT environment should be continuously monitored and maintained.

**#Implement a risk management strategy**

Risk management without an effective cybersecurity risk management strategy is counterproductive. Organizations must maintain up-to-date systems and plans. 

You should determine your risk tolerance before planning. Incorporate employee roles and escalation strategies, as well as information on the roles of key stakeholders.

**#Integrate cybersecurity risk management into the company culture**

A well-crafted cybersecurity risk management policy and process are only helpful if implemented effectively throughout the organization. Communicate your ideas, plans, and procedures to all stakeholders. Establish cybersecurity risk management as part of the company's culture and values. Each party managing cyber threats must know, understand, and embrace its responsibilities.

**#Assess risks continuously, adaptable, and proactively**

Identifying and assessing risks are crucial components of risk management. Cybersecurity risks are constantly evolving. For example, changing company procedures or introducing new technologies can significantly change your chances. Therefore, the organization's general risk assessment needs to be adjusted. Your strategies should be continuously assessed for deficiencies to ensure sufficient security.

Risk assessments are critical because they provide the business with information about where vulnerabilities currently exist and which threats are on the horizon.

**#Implement Strict Security Protocols**

Effective risk mitigation requires a security system that is both comprehensive and user-friendly. Here are a few techniques:

1. Use a web application firewall (WAF) managed and situated at the network's edge to keep track of traffic, offer immediate and actionable information, and continuously protect against known and unknown threats.
2. Extend security to BYOD devices and all other hardware in your IT environment.
3. Implement stringent security procedures for remote employees.
4. When possible, use automatic patching to keep all security systems up-to-date.
5. Implement stringent access controls and authentication policies.
6. Consolidate systems and data whenever possible. Data that is segregated and dispersed is more challenging to manage and secure.
7. Set up a consistent, reliable backup system.

**#Enhance Visibility into Your Network**

Visibility into all areas of your network is critical to preventing and mitigating cybersecurity incidents. Factors like insider threats, third-party components with built-in vulnerabilities, and human error can endanger your environment. Real-time and trustworthy visibility into your organization's risk profile is essential.

## What is a cyber security audit?

A cyber security audit is a comprehensive review of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. Audits ensure that appropriate policies and procedures have been implemented and are working effectively.

The goal is to identify any vulnerabilities that could result in a data breach. This includes weaknesses that enable malicious actors to gain unauthorised access to sensitive information, as well as poor internal practices that might result in employees accidentally or negligently breaching sensitive information.

As part of their review, the auditor will assess the organisation’s compliance posture. Depending on the nature of the organisation, it could be subject to several information security and data privacy laws, creating a complex net of requirements.

The audit should be performed by a qualified third party. The results of their assessment act as a verification to management, vendors and other stakeholders that the organisation’s defences are adequate.

## Final words

Practicing cybersecurity can strengthen your security system and prevent data breaches. Employees must be loyal to your company and should not leak company data, confidential information, or other intellectual property details. Any suspicious activity on your network should be reported to your security department as part of your responsibility to ensure safe online behavior.

Preventative security technology can identify known signature-based threats, but cyber security threat monitoring can detect more sophisticated threats.


🧑‍💻🔐The article outlines cyber security's meaning, options, tools, and best practices.

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Cyber Security: meaning, options, tools, and best practices

Due to the digital age, businesses interact with customers in a completely different way today. It is not enough just to set up an online store or a website to go digital. You should integrate user experience, processes, funnels, services, and product deliveries.

Innovations like automation, digital platforms, and open-source software are changing the fundamental nature of work. Artificial intelligence, [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/{externalnofollow}), data analytics, and [the Internet of Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mBO2vqLv38{externalnofollow}) are among the technologies that influence these processes. Many companies seek large-scale change efforts to adapt to these technological developments or remain competitive. All these led to the necessity of digital product transformation, which gives the vision and destination of the product.

In this article, we will examine the core stages of the digital product development process, potential pitfalls, and best practices of DPD. But first, let's dive into the relevance of digital products.

## What is considered a digital product?
![What is a digital product_.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/What_is_a_digital_product_320f939152.png)

What is the most distinctive characteristic of digital products? Any digital product brings together the concept of products or services, providing value through the interactive point of view.

The term **digital product** refers to something that can be created, sold, and purchased online. The delivery of digital products is usually instantaneous after you buy them, instead of being shipped in a box with packing peanuts.

For creative entrepreneurs, digital products provide a fantastic **monetization option** since they can often be scalable indefinitely. You don't have to create new digital courses or ebooks each time you sell one. [Paywalls](https://rockcontent.com/blog/paywall/{externalnofollow}) allow users to access digital products. A creator has a huge advantage here.

However, their simplicity should be understood. There are many digital products on the market, but making a good one takes a lot of work and pitfalls. The digital product market needs to be more saturated, so slapping anything into a PDF and putting a price tag on it will likely attract few customers. The best digital products must be well-researched, well-executed, and constantly improved.

Also, the common types of digital products include mobile apps, [SaaS](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/awesome-saas-ideas-for-product/{nofollow}) (Software as a Service), software-augmented hardware solutions, and IT solutions.

## What is digital product development?
![What is digital product development_ (1).png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/What_is_digital_product_development_1_750c919f38.png)

Digital product development transforms an innovative [digital product concept](https://thestory.is/en/process/concept-validation/digital-product-concept/{externalnofollow}) into reality by leveraging the best technology to develop and deliver exceptional designs.

The goal of digital product development is to develop an authentically helpful application that serves your customers and provides the most value for your business. A digital product agency with engineers, designers, and project strategists working towards a common goal can help you carry out this work with purpose and confidence.

Investing in digital product development will allow you to provide your end users with the experience they want and need, regardless of whether you are launching a startup or running a successful business.

## The digital product strategy - the basis of your business

Creating valuable products and implementing digital transformation requires a digital product strategy. 

The ability to predict **the future lifecycle of a product**, its value proposition, and the product's target audience allow businesses to make better decisions that will benefit both shareholders and customers.

The path for developing a digital product can help businesses create unique, scalable products. 

On the other hand, vague digital product strategies can impede project development, contributing to the failure of [95% of 30,000 new products](https://incafrica.com/library/marc-emmer-95-percent-of-new-products-fail-here-are-6-steps-to-make-sure-yours-dont{externalnofollow}) launched each year. 

Digital product strategies today include numerous standard components that are considered **best practices**. The following are some critical aspects of this strategy:

- The product's ability to address the pain points of customers
- Launch details 
- The way it attracts and retains customers
- The method for the product to grow rapidly and sustainably

Anyway, a digital product development approach includes a wide variety and encompasses all the steps of a software product. So, let's take a look at the critical phases of DPDP.

## The core stages of the digital product development process
![The core stages of the digital product development process.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/The_core_stages_of_the_digital_product_development_process_76b7539d63.png)

### Stage 1: Discovery stage

At this phase of digital product development, the general ideas of the project, the scope of work, the project's terms, and the future product's competitiveness should be determined.

**Testing of ideas**

In this step, you must determine whether your business idea is viable. It is vital to gather marketing requirements, and analyze your needs and demands, as well as competitive solutions, to define your potential users, avoid possible risks, and make your product unique.

**Gather requirements**

You should prioritize features and functionality based on your essential needs. In this way, a project backlog and vision are defined.

**Defined priority backlog**

With accurate detail elaboration, it describes the stack of features and their implementation to meet the needs of end users.

**Project vision**

It describes the entire project idea. Detailed descriptions of features and essential characteristics will be provided, as well as benefits and strengths your product will offer, along with a short competitive analysis.

**Wireframing**

When you have the project requirements, you are ready to start creating the product visualization. In most cases, it represents the initial product concept, page structure, layout, information architecture, user flow, functionality, and intended behavior. Furthermore, you can view the minimum level of product styling, color, and graphics.

**Infrastructure Architecture**

Depending on your business needs, you can choose the best infrastructure architecture. Various modules and development environments enable the operation of a system, the ability to scale, or the capability to support mobile devices.

**Estimation of the project**

By analyzing your requirements, you can determine the project's cost, time, and resources. Identifying potential risks is crucial for optimizing the budget and minimizing its effects.

### Stage 2: Development stage

In this stage, a product is tailored to the client's needs based on the technology stack.

**Proof of concept**

The purpose of [a proof of concept](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04VMhY0lo1A{externalnofollow}) is to test whether the idea is feasible. A minimal working prototype lets you check if the future product's key features will work with the proposed technology.

**MVP development**

During this stage, you [develop a product](https://vilmate.com/blog/mvp-in-software-development/{externalnofollow}) with only the most essential features and scalable architecture. As a result, the product can be tested, users' feedback is gathered, bugs can be resolved, and the end-users suggestions are integrated into the final product.

### Stage 3: Delivery stage

The final stage is where the product is tested, deployed to the production environment, and provided support for the product.

**Testing process**

A comprehensive testing process is included to ensure bug removal and smooth system operation.

**Continual maintenance**

All necessary upgrades and improvements will be provided for your digital products. A modern and innovative strategy will meet the needs of a fast-changing business environment and a digital transformation.

## Digital Product Development Services
![Digital product development services.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/12/20/Digital_product_development_services_87d9668187.png)

Products develop a business perspective to increase a firm's market share to meet consumer demand. Customer-focused value can be gained by offering quality goods and services to customers.

Digital products help companies become technology companies by providing innovative product teams that deliver digital solutions that can be easily marketed and implemented. The experts [help businesses scale up their software business](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/what-you-should-know-about-hiring-remote-developers/{nofollow}) through various services.

The digital product development process includes conceptualizing, designing, prototyping, developing, and delivering new digital experiences to an organization's customers. To make these services effective, users must first understand existing needs, then use technology in new ways. 

Regarding innovation speed, **digital product development services** offer the most significant business benefits. Fast and agile innovation in sustained product engineering is crucial to engaging customers in a fast-paced and elegant environment. Prototypes for user testing can be developed quickly with effective digital product development services.

EcDev Studio takes your best ideas and makes them real using proven methodologies and research within the realm of design thought and UX/UI. Our engineers know the way users think. Our digital product development can be completed efficiently and effectively. The digital world is not limited to geographical terms. An excellent digital product development firm will increase your visibility and grow your brand globally.

Also, read **[How EcDev Studio prevents 6 most common problems in software outsourcing](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/how-ecdev-studio-prevents-six-most-common-problems-in-software-outsourcing/{nofollow})**

## Final thoughts

Digital product development is the architecture of successful products, and their successful execution depends on an aligned operation between managers, designers, engineers, and marketers. An effective digital product strategy must be meticulously and inclusively prepared. It must be premised on factors and variables from different stages of product development, including the team members involved.

While technical requirements are the most challenging, low-code plugin solutions are viable tools to circumvent complex product strategy and development processes, getting companies to plan, build and bring their product to market faster. 

Contact [EcDev Studio's development team](https://calendly.com/ecdev-studio/45min{nofollow}) if you want to create a scalable digital product with effective and easy-to-integrate low-code APIs.

📱📲This article describes the core phases of the digital product development process, strategies, pitfalls, and best practices to create or develop your brand.📈

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What you need to know about digital product development: strategies, pitfalls, and best practices

⭐️An article about the pros and cons of software development outsourcing destinations to the Philippines 🇵🇭 and Ukraine 🇺🇦

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Software development outsourcing destinations: Philippines vs Ukraine

It is often the case that engineers place a lot of attention on their technical skills and abilities, ignoring their soft skills primarily. Most roles and industries, however, require soft skills.

As our world becomes more globalized, teams operate across departments, and employees work closely with clients and partners, soft skills are in high demand. Let's take a look at the essential soft skills for engineering professionals.
![Communication.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/11/10/Communication_3016404ce3.png)
## Communication skills

Engineers need communication with others as they work, which is essential communication between them. Soft skills help improve the working environment and make engineers perform more efficiently. The importance of good communication skills is increasing, especially when dealing with clients.

As an engineer, you tend to focus on the technical details when clients are more interested in finding solutions to their problems and understanding the benefits. Clients are interested in something other than abstract theories or high-level science, particularly at the management level. It would help if you practiced communicating highly technical information while keeping the client's perspective in mind.

A third point to remember when discussing communication skills is that they are a category rather than a single skill. Enhancing your communication skills will also involve improving other soft skills. The following soft communication skills may not be necessary for everyone, but they are nonetheless important:

- Ability to listen actively
- A good writing ability 
- Developing presentation skills
- Non-verbal communication skills
- Empathy
- Patience

## Teamwork

There will always be times when you have to work with others. Whether it's a team of developers, designers, or a project team, developers need to work well with others to be successful. Working well with others makes what you're working on more fun and makes people more likely to help you in the future.

In addition, you may only sometimes agree with the people on your team, but having different viewpoints helps build more successful companies.

## Problem-solving

In your career, there will be times when you face a challenge. It could happen regularly or be rare, but it's inevitable. How you handle problems will significantly impact your career and the company you work for.

Problem-solving is a critical skill that employers look for in prospective employees, so the more examples you have of problem-solving, the better. Whenever you encounter a new problem, always view it objectively, even if you accidentally created one. Once you know the problem, what caused it? Finding a solution is easy once you know the cause.

It's also important to remember that whether you cause the problem or not, you don't have to fix it alone. Working with people in and outside your team helps you solve a problem faster than doing it alone.

## Time management

Knowing how to manage your time is crucial when you have a lot to do. How much time do you spend planning? Coding? Working with your team on new ideas?

Managing your time allows you to focus on what's most essential and get tasks done more efficiently.

Techniques like [the Pomodoro technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique{externalnofollow}), where you work for a set period on one task, take a break, then go back to it, or [Kanban](https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban{externalnofollow}), where you visualize your tasks, are great ways to build a routine or learn how to focus your attention if you're prone to multitasking.

While sometimes the need arises for multitasking, and you may feel like you get loads done when you do it, studies have shown that it's bad for productivity. Not giving something your full attention means that tasks take longer, and you're more likely to make errors.

If you often multitask, prioritize your to-do list, then use one of the techniques mentioned above to help you focus. You'll be surprised how quickly you get things done when they have your full attention!

## Leadership

Soft skills are vital for a leader, as they are essential to productivity. Soft skills help you be an excellent employee. It includes work ethics, organizational communication, cooperation, and leadership. A complex skill is a skill acquired at school or on the job. They have everything from C++ programming to advertising campaigns to financial forecasting.

Soft leadership skills are crucial to productivity and performance. Successful leadership typically involves a good set of soft skills to help a team motivate themselves and inspire others. In turn, leaders' abilities are usually affected by their ability to strategize, listen to feedback and integrate ideas. Empathizing with your team allows you to fully understand their problems and find a way to make your project work for everyone.

Suggesting new ideas is much easier when there is an understanding between team members that there won't be any negative feedback or mockery, no matter how someone feels about an idea. Empathy allows us to predict how others will react to what we say, meaning we can tailor how we speak to our audience.

If you don't like someone's idea, ask yourself why. Then, when you give feedback, start by saying something positive about their suggestion, then what you don't like, and finish off with another positive. This 'sandwich' approach means that the person you're giving feedback will not dwell on the negatives but will understand the pros and cons of their idea.

Empathizing with your user allows you to see things from their point of view. They're the ones that will be using your product, so you must always try to see things from their point of view before your own. Just because you like how something looks/works don't mean your users will. Decision-making should be about more than personal preference.

## Strong interpersonal skills

Sometimes you'll be a part of a team or meeting that consists of more than just developers. That means you will have to explain the reasons behind your decisions and do so in a non-technical way. Some people will get everything straight away, while others will need more time. Teams must be patient with each other in these situations to work well together.

Only some understand how complex programming is or how long code takes to write. They may ask you to do something without realizing the scope of what they're asking. This can lead to frustration. Take your time to explain why it's not as simple as they think, and answer any questions they have. Once you've taken the time to do this, future sessions will become much easier!

## Adaptability

At some point, someone's going to want to ask you something. It could be about your tasks for the day, an issue or a bug, or just about your plans for the weekend. Being approachable is key.

If people don't feel they can approach you and ask you something, they're less likely to ask you for help when something goes wrong. That could mean that a little problem soon evolves into a big one. Not being approachable or helpful also means that others are less likely to help you should you need it. If you can establish a rapport with people, they're more likely to work with you and not against you.

You can tell people when you don't have time to communicate by putting headphones in when you're busy and setting yourself offline on the company chat. If someone still approaches you, set a time to meet to discuss things.

## Critical skills (self-awareness)

When your mind is open, you're more willing to accept new ideas, whether yours or someone else's. Even the worst pictures can inspire something great if you're ready to consider them before dismissing them. Having more ideas means you can work on more projects. While not every idea you have will turn into something, you only know what will once you've thought about it in-depth.

Keep your mind open to new ideas from your team, the rest of the company, and even clients. Clients are the ones who use your product, so they're the best people to tell you what works and what they need.

## Creativity

The best ideas and solutions often come to us when we approach things from a different, less obvious angle. This separates the most creative people — from programmers to entrepreneurs to authors — from everyone else.

Reading fiction, writing, art, crafts, and even cooking are ways of exploring creativity. The more forms of invention you explore, the easier it is to find different ways to approach the same problem.

## Striving for perfection

You should always ask for feedback. An impartial opinion from a colleague or mentor can be beneficial in assessing your level of soft skills. Consider asking someone who works with you to evaluate your performance at work. Coworkers can provide constructive criticism on how you can improve and suggestions on how to become a better software developer.

## How do you highlight soft skills in your CV?
![soft skills.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/11/10/soft_skills_d0e236f228.png)
Software developer soft skills may be helpful to list on your resume to help the managers determine whether you are qualified for the job. Reviewing the job description, you can ensure your resume includes the skills the employer seeks in candidates. For example, it is a good idea to list soft skills such as public speaking and collaboration in your resume if the posting asks candidates to work well with others and to lead monthly assembly meetings.

In a cover letter, you can also describe the soft skills that make you a good fit for the position you're applying for. Your letter should highlight your skills and provide examples of how you have used them. In addition to empathizing with your teammates, you can write about how you supported their professional growth.

In the interview, you'll have the chance to show off your [soft skills assessment](https://www.bizlibrary.com/soft-skills-assessment/{externalnofollow}) and give examples of how you've applied them. Communicate your contributions in specific terms to the interviewer so they fully understand the situation. As well as describing your ability to improve your skills over time, you can also show the employer you're open to feedback.

An article about the top essential soft skills for developers

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Top 10 essential soft skills for engineering professionals

**Software** drives our world. Nowadays, most businesses, phones, and cars depend on coding. As a result, software plays a significant role in modern society. As a result, software development quality is crucial. But what exactly software development quality means? Let's look at the meaning and principles of quality-driven software development.

**Quality-Driven Software Development** is a process, a set of best practices, and a framework. A high-performing team delivers exceptional results using methods and approaches refined over decades of successful projects.

Software products are characterized based on their functionality and quality. The quality goods will accomplish what users are searching for. Fulfilling the SRS documentation's requirements can explain the fitness. Although the "fitness-of-purpose" definition is a satisfactory description of quality in most devices like cars, tables, and grinding machines' fit of purpose' is hardly a whole lot acceptable in the case of software products. Consider software products that work correctly and functionally. So the program performs all functions described within SRS. The interface is almost impossible to understand.

## What are the five core principles of software quality-driven software development?

For quality-driven development, it is essential to start from the beginning, maintain a systematic approach to quality, take ownership of quality, and remember to be creative.
Developing quality software is something that only happens in stages. There is much more to it than tools, methods, and bug counts. 
Quality is crucial to digital transformation, so you should involve your entire organization. 
In practice, there are five cornerstones of quality-driven software development. So, let's analyze each one.
![Frame 2987 (1).png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/11/10/Frame_2987_1_1a53564f20.png)
### 1) Specification

The agreement between stakeholders and the developers is a significant factor in software development. 
There can be a lot of challenges associated with writing a good software specification. It takes an understanding of business or process, technology capabilities, limitations, and good communication skills to register a quality specification that is understandable to both - project members and non-technical decision makers.
To verify that the specifications are met, a third party reviews them to ensure such factors as: 

- comprehensible
- project-specific
- achievable
- testable
- based on priorities

### 2) Design

In software design, requirements become blueprints. It takes creativity, experience, technical expertise, and a commitment to quality to create a good concept. During this step, it is crucial to maintain quality to achieve a successful outcome.

Software design is an essential factor in enhancing quality and productivity. Embedded quality control ensures the website or app is practical. Before coding begins, quality control provides a primary understanding interface. Investing time and resources in the design review is more cost-effective than reworking during the coding phase.

### 3) Coding

Clean, quality code does not just happen by accident. Developing quality-driven projects requires developers to commit and be passionate about them. Code can be written in several ways, but one should always strive to meet high-quality standards.

- Simplicity is a key 
- You should not overdo and reinvent the wheel
- Continual unit testing against the requirements

These principles are a great place to start. In addition to these core principles, there are many others, such as robustness, maintainability, usability, and efficiency.

### 4) Testing
![Frame 2988 (1).png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/11/10/Frame_2988_1_9292d616ae.png)
And the last cornerstone for quality-driven software development is testing. It is the most misunderstood and underrated part of software development. Defects are the result of poor testing. Since the first three foundations failed, testing is the last defense against poor quality reaching customers and end users.

It is necessary to integrate testing into the software development process and to push it out of the end of the cycle.

Finding defects is not the definition of successful testing. Finding the problems and resolving them is the goal. As a result, you must create test plans, develop a comprehensive test strategy, prepare the environments and data, and ensure that all procedures and results are documented.

### 5) Security

As part of the development process, quality-driven software assurance helps identify errors and flaws in the software code and design, so that money and time are not wasted. This way, the end product is secure, competitive, and performs as expected. Software quality assurance practice can enhance the reputation of a business and ensure user and client satisfaction.

## Why are software quality metrics used for quality-driven software development?

A quality measure is a way to evaluate your products, services, and processes. Quality metrics are a tool to determine customer satisfaction levels within a company.

Software Quality Metrics (SQMS) are an essential management tool; they represent numbers representing information about software or its development processes. Specific metrics measure code quality based on its complexity or ability to pass testing tests. Other process-related indicators describe software workflow and productivity. Software quality measures are standard practice in software development firms as they give them a better idea of how a software product works.

Quantitative quality metrics measure how large a software product can be, how many lines it contains, and how many bug occurrences per thousand lines. Qualitative coding quality measures include maintainability, readability, clarity, efficiency, and documentation quality.

Although many can be done to improve the quality of the product during such phases, the following are fixes that take place so the defect can be resolved as quickly as possible at a high-quality level.

## Final thoughts

Building quality-driven software applications do not happen by accident. The process of software quality assurance requires a collaborative effort from the very beginning.

Quality is not a universal property of software. It depends on the stakeholders` context and goals.

No matter how well you do it the first time, you can always expect it to become invalid over time. Hence, continuous quality control is the only way to solve the problem. It is essential to continuously evaluate quality control measures based on a product's properties and the organization's quality goals.

As a result, software professionals would only have to spend less time fixing defects and maintaining existing applications. Using this time more productively, we can innovate solutions to make the process more efficient. Furthermore, this would reduce the organization's costs and enhance its reputation.

An article about quality-driven software development, metrics, opportunities and tools

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Quality-driven software development: meaning, possibilities, and tools

Microservices architecture is something that is often mentioned as the architecture to follow, specially in cloud based solutions. But why is it so, and is it really the best option all the time? In this article, I'll guide you through some of the good and the bad, show some real life use cases of it in action, along with best practices to follow if it is indeed the right choice for you.

## Brief history

Software was done traditionally as monoliths. A product consisted of a multitude of features that lived inside the same codebase, were maintained and operated as a huge, concise block. Eventually, due to problems such as single points of failures, scaling issues and coupling, came the need to split up the software into smaller, more manageable pieces. Along this path, came SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), that relied on the web to interface between smaller services.
![Architecture evolution from monolith to Microservices](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/Frame_2984_419bedabaf.png)
As SOA became finer grained and service sizes became smaller, also the ecosystem around it changed. With the introduction of PaaS (Platform as a Service) and the cloud, it became easier to create very small, focused services. Thus microservices started gaining traction.

## Advantages of microservices advantages over Monolithic architecture

So what do microservices bring to the table that make them such an exciting alternative to monoliths? Let's take a look at some sections where there's clear advantages.

### Ownership

When the an application is split into smaller parts, you can have teams or individuals focused on specific parts of the application. This increases the ownership sense: As an individual contributor, you own that microservice, it's yours. It's never "someone else's problem" when it comes to your microservice. This can bring a sense of pride when your microservice works flawlessly, as well as focusing expertise on certain domain areas.

### Scalability

Easier horizontal scaling as opposed to vertical scaling. When the service to scale is smaller, you can fine-tune scaling better, achieving better service availability and cost reduction. Containers (think Docker), offer a lot to better scalability, as scaling up or down means adding or removing copies of containers that needs scaling, with potentially no need to add more servers.

### Blast radius reduction

Having the application split into tiny pieces makes it easier to repair or replace certain parts. If a bug caused a microservice to crash, only a localised part of the whole service will be impacted. Recovery or mitigation become simpler, thus reducing MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery).

### API-first design

The way microservices interact with each other is through APIs. It's essentially a contract where you tell other services what you can do, and what you need to do it. In microservices, APIs must be 'first class citizens'. Forcing services to always have an API, from first design, educates the design to follow from the start. The service must fulfil the API needs, not the other way around.

### Technological freedom

Since communication is done through APIs, the technology used inside each microservice can be tailored to the needs of the functionality. Need a highly performant daemon service? Maybe C is the right language. Need a data analysis service? Perhaps Python is more adequate for that, with its specialised data analysis tools.

## Disadvantages of microservices architecture

The advantages sound great! So why shouldn't microservices be used everywhere?

### Added operational effort

Having a microservices architecture means that each service will have dedicated infrastructure, be it cloud resources or physical servers. Each service will have an independent resource stack, and each stack will have an independent release cycle. In case you follow a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery for release, this means a specific release pipeline for each microservice. The added operational effort is not only during setup stages, but it follows through the lifespan of the service. Development teams need to manage specific code bases and repos, code changes, approval workflows, automated tests, alarms, deployment and rollback procedures. At scale it is common to have development teams own 1 or a couple of microservices, and this complexity is already accounted for in a standard 6-8 people development team, but in smaller teams and companies there is an added DevOps effort.

### Increased communication complexity

This concern is twofold: first, there's a cost to managing communication between microservices. Distributed systems are inherently more complex to set up. They require an increased development time to define APIs, operations and clear access permissions between resources. Additionally, communication changes are more cumbersome to perform. They require new operations, methods or API versions to be released while keeping support for existing clients and offering clear deprecation paths and procedures.
![Graph of microservice dependencies at Amazon in 2008. From twitter.com/werner/status/741673514567143424?lang=en](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/image_148_ec443c66cc.png)
The second part of this topic is organisational communication. Once you have teams owning specific microservices, any project or feature request involving multiple microservices requires inter-team communication. In big projects or milestones these efforts might even need roadmap alignment. Although these orchestration constraints can also happen in monolithic systems, there's a less strict separation of concerns there, meaning the politics of who-owns-what are more flexible and potentially less impactful.

### Service discoverability

With many services online there is another component that is vital in architecture, a Service Registry that manages service availability, health status and connections. For instance based microservices, this can take the form of a load balancer, whereas with containers, container orchestration tools like Docker Swarm or Kubernetes have this functionality built in.

### Testing

This can be both an advantage and disadvantage and it is important that you follow microservices architecture best practices to avoid some of the testing pitfalls. On the one hand it is simpler to test a clear domain with a smaller test suite. However, to perform end-to-end testing or user acceptance testing (UATs) you need to either mock other services or deploy the full system. At scale, UATs are hard to perform for individual teams. They are usually done in environments that already contain the full system, for example a Beta stage where all teams deploy their individual services but already have service wiring in terms of communications and interoperability.

### Changes in application design

When approaching an application, thinking in terms of microservices architecture changes how to design and develop components. It might give added flexibility and modularity but it also introduces additional constraints and challenges.

Sometimes application size doesn't translate to complexity and not all architectures are suited to follow a microservice approach. It's not a silver bullet! As anything in software development, there's a balance to strike between development effort and maintainability, a give and take.

## Use cases

### Dropbox
![1057500b-bf4d-4bd8-acdc-dbe94e49d201.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/dropbox_43fabc9835.png)
Dropbox is a cloud storage service that allows saving files in shared folders sync them to multiple devices.

Dropbox started with a monolithic backend service, called Metaserver. Over the years, as the Dropbox development team increased in size, the pains of working in a monolith increased.

There were many efforts to destructure this monolith into smaller pieces, not all of them successful. An initial effort failed due to reliability issues with the new solution.

After some reassessment, Dropbox decided to use a Hybrid approach. Instead of moving everything to microservices, and suffer the downsides of having microservices, they decided to structure all simple services inside a service called Atlas, while big components would stay as they were, owned by large teams. The reasoning for creating Atlas is, most of the small services are not critical enough to warrant caring about supporting services for each of the microservices independently. Atlas would manage scaling, alarming and other concerns of these services altogether.

Atlas works as a managed service, similar to AWS Fargate, where developers should only care about the code. The target of Atlas is to "provide the majority of benefits of SOA, while minimising the operational costs associated with running a service."

### Uber
![71572a5e-638b-4c4f-98c0-f87e9f573c49.jpeg](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/Frame_2985_32b541affc.png)
Uber is a transportation company with an app that allows passengers to use a taxi-like service while also allowing users to register as drivers to charge fares and get paid.

Uber started off as [2 monolithic services](https://www.uber.com/en-PT/blog/microservice-architecture/{externalnofollow}). As the company grew from dozens to hundreds of engineers, the pains of having a codebase started to appear, with coupling and availability risks as some of the cited. Uber claims that they could not reach the level of scale and quality offered today without the microservices architecture.

The interesting part about with this use case comes when going from hundreds to thousands of engineers. In that part of their growth, system complexity started to arise as a critical problem. A simple feature can touch multiple services, meaning additional communication with multiple teams, design and code reviews.

To tackle the increased complexity, Uber took steps to reduce granularity with DOMA (Domain Oriented Microservices Architecture). How does DOMA work in a nutshell?

- Organize microservices in collections of services, named domains.
- Organize domains in collections, called layers. Domains inside layers have dependencies in common
- Create gateways that serve as single points of interface with domains.
- Domains should be agnostic from other domains. To share context, Uber uses an extension architecture to create extension points between domains.

With the adoption of DOMA, Uber claims to have been "able to reduce onboarding time by 25-50%".

## Best practices

### Single responsibility principle

Each service should handle a single logical domain and you should establish clear boundaries between services.

### Guarantee decoupling between services

Is your service API exposing internal concepts? Does the client need to know any inner property to make calls on handle responses? If you cannot replace one service internal logic, without impacting clients, that is a red flag that your architecture in coupled. It is one thing to deploy different services and another to have them decoupled.

### Don't persist communication artefacts

It might be tempting to persist objects directly from the API controller, but if you persist communication objects, you cannot change persistence layer without impacting clients.

### Eventually consistent persistence layer

It is a common pattern for micro-services to communicate via Publish/Subscribe pattern and handle notifications asynchronously. In many scenarios, it is simpler and more accurate to follow an eventually consistent approach, where an event notifies the service, but event details are ignored, and query the publisher as the source of truth. This way the end result of processing a notification stream will be the same regardless of message order.

### Extend the microservice to the data storage

Microservices expect separation of concerns even at the data storage level. If this doesn't happen, the coupling persists. If there's ever an issue with the database, all microservices depending on that database are impacted.

When possible, split the data persistence layer for each microservice. As with the code itself, this grants flexibility to choose a specific solution that works best for the target data, instead of having to work for all use cases in the monolith.

### Use smart endpoints, dumb pipes

The idea with this statement is to reinforce the idea that the microservices should own all business logic. When it comes to communication, knowing how to communicate should live inside the microservice (the endpoints), not in the communication protocol (the pipe). This is why microservices tend to use "simple" communication protocols, such as REST and message queues, as opposed to [BPEL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Execution_Language{externalnofollow}) or [Enterprise Service Bus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus{externalnofollow}).

When microservices own all the business logic, there's no need for another external entity that needs to change when your microservices does, so less moving parts to worry about.

### Monitoring is a must

A side effect of having a monolith is that, when something breaks, it's very likely you will notice it, given the blast radius. With microservices, not so much. To guarantee the best availability to your end users, a thorough monitoring and alarming process, based on SLAs, must be adopted. Key monitoring targets include latency, number of errors, resource usage (CPU, Memory, Disk Space). Having the right level of monitoring for each service will allow the service to react to unusual situations (i.e. fatal bugs that require rollbacks, or traffic spikes that require scaling or rate-limiting) in a timely manner and leave your customers happy.

### Use an API Gateway

There are several benefits that arise when putting an API Gateway in front of a microservice architecture.

One is the reverse proxy nature of an API Gateway. It hides internal microservice endpoints under a single public endpoint. This allows flexibility when changing the underlying services. Consider migrations, where you're splitting the monolith up into smaller services, or you are building a brand new service to replace another one. The flip from old to new can be hidden behind an API Gateway, where the public endpoint for the service doesn't change, but the underlying service does.

Another benefit is centralising some of the cross-cutting concerns that API Gateway manages well. API Gateways already handle functionality such as authentication, authorization, response caching and throttling, so extracting this from each microservice into an API Gateway seems logical to keep microservices focused. Consider the API Gateway as its own microservice, responsible for tasks related to requests.

### Logical architecture and physical architecture may differ

Microservices are a logical concept. The implementation of such a concept doesn't have to be a 1-to-1 copy of the design. Due to size or logical boundaries, you may have multiple services enclosed in the same microservice. To exemplify this, let's conceptualise an example of 1 microservice composed of 2 services. If we have a User Search service and a User Details service, that have isolated codebases, but interact with the same database. It may make sense to logically call this the User Data microservice, while keeping the two service separate. This keeps them together within the same business logic boundary, but allow them to scale independently.

## How do I start?

So you figured out the a microservices architecture is the right call for your project. You've designed the architecture, and are ready to implement. I would suggest not reinventing the wheel here. Microservices have been around for a while, and there's tools and services you can use to make the experience better. A lot of these have the best practices proposed in mind, so less stressing about that. So let's take a look at some tools to get you started.

### Docker

Docker is an open source platform used to build and run distributed applications, in the form of containers. Although containers are not synonymous with microservices, their usage shares a lot of the advantages of using microservices: isolation and scalability being two of them. Most of the tools below expect applications to be containerised, making Docker or other containers a must-use.

### Amazon ECS

Amazon ECS is Amazon's managed container orchestration offering. It's works a layer above Amazon EC2, where you don't deal with instances directly, but you need to manage instances, which includes scaling, monitoring, patching. Because of this, ECS is free, and you pay only for the EC2 instances you use.

### Amazon Fargate

Fargate differs from ECS on how the containers run. With Fargate, task execution is serverless, so no need to worry about EC2 instances, that's transparent to the user. This means, there's far less operational effort with this solution, although you also have less flexibility. In terms of pricing, you pay per task execution time instead of per instance, which may seem like an increase in cost at first glance, but it's possible to have a badly implemented ECS solution cost more than Fargate.

### Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration framework. Originated from Google Borg, it's considered the standard in container orchestration. Many of the features offered by Kubernetes out-of-the-box offer a lot of the requirements for microservices, such as service discovery and load balancing.

You can think of Kubernetes in a lower layer of abstraction compared to Amazon ECS, nothing in Kubernetes is managed for you, you will need to setup all the details. An advantage of this is that Kubernetes is vendor agnostic, so you can integrate with any cloud vendor, or even use it on-premises with your company infrastructure.

If this level of fine grained configuration is not what you need, but you still want to use Kubernetes, a managed Kubernetes service like Amazon EKS may be the right choice.

### Amazon EKS

Amazon EKS is a managed Kubernetes service. Instead of using Amazon's proprietary orchestration like ECS, it uses a Kubernetes management layer for the same purpose. This makes it the more seamless transition if you're already using Kubernetes, but can be more difficult to configure if not. Choose EKS if you plan to go multicloud in the future (since Kubernetes is vendor agnostic), and expect to scale to a large degree.

### AWS Lambda

The one exception on the list to using containers. AWS Lambda is a Function as a Service offering. They offer arguably the easiest path to start using microservices, in terms of ease of development and setup. AWS Lambda is particularly useful for handling short running tasks, such as APIs, or very simple tasks. In those cases, the complexity of containers plus manages orchestration services may not be worth the effort.

## Conclusion

It's important to not pick microservices architecture because it's the new shiny thing on the industry, but to understand the benefits and drawbacks and choose accordingly. In this article we analysed the good and the bad about microservices, and offered some advice on how to begin and do it right from start.

An article about Microservices, their benefits, challenges, real-life examples, and best practices

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Quick dive into Microservices: benefits, challenges, real-life examples, and best practices

**Web design** is the long route of creating content for a brand. Modern website design is the combo of how things look and how things work. Moreover, it is not limited to websites but includes other uses such as web apps, mobile apps, etc.

The website design is not just a nice picture. It's the crucial solution for the business image, making the brand recognizable and valuable in the market. So, it is not enough to have a product. You have to make an effective, efficient, and visually pleasing display. 

UX and UI design services allow companies to verify business ideas, ultimately saving money on development. Business owners can test every function before launching it with digital prototyping and iterative outlines. In this way, companies can avoid unnecessary expenses while still getting an accurate and realistic evaluation of their app or website.

By using an application or website prototype, the company can determine which functions are useless or need to be improved. With UX design services, the development process can be flexible, and money can be saved in the long run. Correctly implemented prototypes and validated features can help companies avoid change requests and ensure no requirements are missed.

Nowadays, many successful companies choose between in-house and outsourced web design. Let's try to understand the difference between these two types of hiring web designers and find the best for your company. 

## In-house web design

If you hire someone to create your website design in-house, they will only work on your projects. A complete focus will speed up the process.

### Pros of in-house web designers:

1. **Priority**
Your company is always in the first place for an in-house web designer. Having someone work on your site in-house means only working on that website. With an entire focus, in-house web designers can deliver faster.

2. **In-depth understanding of your business**
In-house web designers work with you for a long time, which gives them a deeper understanding of the company's needs and values. With an in-house team member, you're saving the time it takes to explain all project details to an outsider.

3. **Communication**
Face-to-face conversations and tracking of work allow you to monitor and control in-house designers. As a result of an in-house team, you can see the work results and interact with them. With an in-house web development team, you have complete control over all aspects of your project. Each development step will be explained in detail, including progress and setbacks. You will be able to track the progress of your web development project more efficiently.
Moreover, you understand and build a particular system of values, norms, rules, traditions, and principles driven by which your team works and your business grows. Often, corporate culture performs a motivational function by inspiring the team to achieve specific goals.

4. **Data security**
It is easier to secure your business when you work with reliable workers you know well. It is the question of intellectual property, and it has to be a priority.

### Cons of in-house web designers

When we speak about in-house workers, that means additional expenses. An in-house web development team would be more expensive and would require you to hire more experts. It is essential to consider both the monthly salary and the mandated benefits such as paid leave and health insurance. In addition, you will need to consider HR services, equipment, personnel management, software, office space, and facilities.

Hiring in-house means incurring all costs without knowing whether your product will succeed. It can be hard to find skilled designers, especially in small cities. Many of the best talents have already been employed.

The next drawback of an in-house design team is a slow start. It is acсeptable for big projects but devastating for small ones. As a result, in-house web design resources become ineffective for short-term projects.

## Outsourced web design
![Frame 2982.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/Frame_2982_656ce684fc.png)
It's worth mentioning that outsourcing businesses are prevalent in today's IT industry. Moreover, the number of new outsourcing companies is growing each day. It has pros and cons, but it is needless to say that outsourced web design brings excellent results into the global market. So, let's analyze this in detail.

### Benefits of outsourced web design

1. **Reduced cost**
One of the most incredible things about web design outsourcing is the opportunity to save money. You pay for the result without other expenses when you hire an outsourced web designer or company. It saves you a vast amount of time and cost of building a perfect in-house team. Hiring a fully staffed outsourcing company to execute your project is much more cost-effective than hiring and training your team.

2. **Save time using specific skills for specific projects**
Among the benefits of outsourcing is access to a large talent pool. You can choose people with excellent qualifications for the job, which means the projects usually get done faster. You can outsource web design work in various ways depending on the type of cooperation you choose and the country your outsourced vendor is from.

3. **New perspectives**
New workers can infuse a fresh look at the project, cutting-edge technology, tools, and solutions. It will help achieve the best result in a short time. Working with a third-party company will allow you to produce new ideas for your project and bring fresh perspectives. Web designers are incredibly creative people with the ability to find extraordinary solutions to tricky tasks.

4. **Global access**
Finding a web design outsourcing agency that delivers quality work within your budget is possible regardless of location. Digitalization provides endless opportunities around the world. And for the current unstable world situation, this benefit is quite crucial.

5. **Shift the focus**
When outsourcing website design, you have more time to focus on other essential business tasks. It is a great time to expand your business, get more clients, and do marketing. With a good outsourcing web development agency, you will always be able to stay involved in the process via email, project management tools, and Skype conversations. It would be possible for you to communicate with your team throughout the project's lifecycle.

### Drawbacks of outsourcing

Outsourcing web design has its cons as any other model. You can collide with a need for more transparency and control over the development process. Also, there is a risk of disclosing confidential information. Nevertheless, outsourced web design gives you a fresh look at things and better results. It's a cost-effective way to get the desired web design.

## Final thoughts

Outsourcing the design of your website adds new creative flair and gives a unique perspective on business strategy. Outsourcers can help you solve significant tasks.

The outsourcing team will complete the task much faster and more effectively. So, it is vital to choose an outsourced website design firm that can handle complex tasks, and it also determines the budget you can spend on the project. The use of outsourcing has historically been viewed as a way to reduce costs and optimize operations. Experienced professionals can quickly meet deadlines with the best possible results. In 2025 IT outsourcing will generate a value of $3976 million based on the following trends.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is better - choosing an in-house web design agency or an outsourcing web design company for startups?

Generally speaking, both options will be suitable for startups. Everything depends on the situation. Before making a final solution, you should answer two questions:

1. How much time do you have?

2. How much money do you have?

If you have time and money, you can choose an in-house agency. If you are limited in time, your best option is an outsourcing company.

However, your choice should be entirely based on your criteria: your business specifics, budget, and plans. Weigh in all the factors and make the choice that works best for you.

### How do you know when to outsource web design?

Using the services of an external web designer is an excellent opportunity if you want to build or boost your website design. The benefits of outsourcing design projects include time and cost savings. If you work with an agency or freelancer, you won't need to purchase software, create a workspace, or provide a computer to a new employee.

### How to find a reliable outsourced web design agency?

Before you choose a reliable outsourcing web design agency, you should check their reputation. You'd better research to find the best. You can look through such platforms as Upwork, Behance, Dribbble, Clutch, and GoodFirms. Your next step is to review agencies` portfolios and build solid communication. The collaboration will be more effective if both parties work towards mutual understanding.

### How much can web design and development outsourcing cost?

If you plan to outsource web design and development, it can be challenging to determine the total cost of your web design project due to multiple factors. For example, the final price can differ depending on the location of the site. The stereotype that IT professionals from the USA mainly came from the United States is slowly dying out. You can hire experienced web designers from various parts of the world. For example, the average cost of a skilled web designer in Ukraine ranges from $40 to $70 per hour. Depending on the exact specialization, the cost may differ. The lower rates are relevant to most juniors; they can be a part of an experienced team in a startup, but not its skeleton. Consider [hiring an outsourcing team in Ukraine](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/{nofollow}) if you plan to transform your ideas into a viable project using emerging technologies within a reasonable budget.

### What are the steps of web design and development outsourcing?

Here is the guide which can help you organize the initial efforts to outsource web design:

1. Establish a budget and timeframe for the project

2. Choose a web design agency that meets your requirements

3. Find a trustworthy partner

4. Define your primary business goals

5. Sign a contract and an NDA agreement

6. Agree upon the ways of communication.

An article compares in-house and outsourced web design 👩‍💻👨‍💻

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In-house vs outsourced web design

In a previous [article](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/quick-dive-into-microservices-benefits-challenges-real-life-examples-best-practices/{nofollow}), an introduction microservices architecture was given and pros and cons over other architectures were provided. Focusing on how to organize microservices around development teams, you can see some of the company structure mirrored in it. As [Conway's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law{externalnofollow}) states:

>Any organisation that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organisation's communication structure.

The quote conveys that there's a link between system design and organisational structure. In this article, I'll show how microservices architecture work together with a team oriented concept.

## Exploring the team structure

With a microservices architecture, a team may own one or more microservices. With that in mind, what's the right team structure, both in terms of size and composition?

### Team size concerns

In regards to size, Amazon suggests a [two-pizza team](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/introduction-devops-aws/two-pizza-teams.html{externalnofollow}), striking a balance between collaboration (the smaller the team, the more tight knit it is), communication delays (communication inside team is quick, while inter-team is slow) and domain knowledge.

What if the company only has one development team of four people? At this size, it's hard to justify the maintenance overhead that comes with a microservices architecture. Remember that microservices expect isolation, isolated continuous deployment and continuous integration, APIs and so on. Consider keeping a monolith instead, and enforce strong decoupling design patterns in the code, so that, if the need arises to migrate to microservices, that migration is smoother.

### How to compose a team?

When it comes to team composition, following the two-pizza team approach while considering the microservices architecture, a team needs to be well rounded. Since teams are expected to have single ownership of services, there needs to be skill and expertise from beginning to end of the process. In essence, this means a team must be cross-functional, having knowledge in customer communication (customers here include other internal teams), software development, infrastructure, system administration, operations, QA. With this paradigm shift certain job titles that used to be a lot less common with the monolith architecture started to appear: Full Stack Developers, DevOps Engineers, to name a few. A potential side effect is that team members that enjoy certain development areas, such as UI/UX, may need to work on other parts of the microservices, which may alienate them, making them feel less useful or productive.
![Change in team composition from monolith to microservices architecture](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/Frame_2980_13dde0607a.png)
## Team interaction with microservices architecture

When different teams own microservices that interact, eventually there will be features that force the actual teams to also interact. This can be a small request, such as needing a new endpoint to get more data from a service, or a much larger project that spans changes in multiple microservices, where teams need to organize their work and milestones as a joint effort.

### Communication as signal to the right architecture

The amount of times inter-team interaction happens may inform how well your microservices architecture is designed. If anytime a microservice changes, the team needs to request changes to another team, that means those microservices are tightly coupled. In those situations, a few outcomes are possible:

Reorganise teams, so that those changes happen within one team in the future. This may require shuffling employees around, which is not ideal.

Refactor microservices, if possible extracting the service or part of service that provokes this unwanted interaction. This creates the least amount of churn, but is not always possible.

Leave it as is, and live with the communication effort and time overhead. If the interactions have low frequency, this can be the best choice.

## Team oriented leadership

Having teams working as independent units, as owner of their destiny, can be a hard pill to swallow for company leadership. Being able to accept that you'll have a looser management style is as much part of the microservices architecture success as choosing the right tools. Trust that team members want the best for their services, and in turn, the full product.

## Conclusion

Working as a team focused on a specific domain, independent, with minimal external influence is a surefire way of keeping a development team happy and increase talent retention. Microservices help with this culture by making sure the domains are isolated and owned by expert teams on their own.

An article describing how microservices architecture works with a team-oriented concept

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Microservices as a team-centered concept

In a lot of real life scenarios, services need to store information in databases tables. The tables contain critical information, where changes need to be tracked for security, accountability and regulatory requirements. Typically, this sort of action is not time critical, so adding an audit trail with the same availability and access times as the rest of your application is not advised, especially if you don't want your costs to increase unexpectedly.

In this blog post I will detail an example of how to extract changes made to an Amazon DynamoDB table and store the audit trail of those changes in an Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) bucket, making use of AWS Kinesis Data Stream and AWS Kinesis Firehose.

## Architecture

![afe2af11-e264-48ab-825c-4b24ac957eb1.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/afe2af11_e264_48ab_825c_4b24ac957eb1_ec971b9cc2.png)

### Change data streaming

On the initial step of our design, an AWS Kinesis Data Stream is attached to the Amazon DynamoDB table. What this means is, every time a new change happens in the table, that change is captured and kept in a data stream.

The format of the data sent includes: a timestamp of the captured change, the primary key (will be the partitionKey + sortKey), and a before and after image of the changed item. With the before and after, it's possible to understand what particular values have changed.

After this, a consumer, in this case, AWS Kinesis Firehose, must retrieve data from this stream. Its only purpose on the architecture is to retrieve data from the AWS Kinesis Data Stream and into an Amazon S3 bucket.

### Audit trail storage

When data reaches the Amazon S3 bucket, we could leave it as is and be done with this example, but in order to reduce costs of such a solution, we're going to use Amazon S3 lifecycle rules.

Lifecycle rules allow us to move older data to cheaper storage classes progressively and in an automated fashion. The reasoning behind this is, most recent auditing data is the most likely to be accessed, and older data should still be accessible, but we can live with it taking longer to get. This should be tweaked according to your use case.

## Building the infrastructure

### Using AWS CDK to deploy infrastructure

This post assumes you have AWS CDK Toolkit. You should have an AWS account created.

Amazon offers an Infrastructure-As-Code solution, called AWS Cloud Development Kit, or CDK for short. It uses AWS Cloudformation internally to define infrastructure in a reviewable, deployable manner. CDK is offered in multiple languages, we'll use Typescript in this example.

#### AWS CDK setup

Assuming you already have CDK Toolkit installed, create a folder for the CDK code and initialise the project:


```
mkdir audit-trail-cdk
cd audit-trail-cdk && cdk init app --language typescript  
```

cdk init app builds the initial scaffolding for the project. It creates a Stack, which will contain the pieces of infrastructure required. To finish up the setup, go to the generated code for the stack under bin/audit-trail-cdk.ts and uncomment the env: line and replace with your AWS account info:


```
// env: { account: '123456789012', region: 'us-east-1' }, 
```

Let's add the necessary pieces for building our infrastructure stack on lib/audit-trail-cdk-stack.ts:


```
import * as cdk from "aws-cdk-lib";
import { Duration } from "aws-cdk-lib";
import * as dynamodb from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-dynamodb";
import * as iam from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-iam";
import * as kinesis from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-kinesis";
import * as kinesisfirehose from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-kinesisfirehose";
import * as s3 from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-s3";
import { Construct } from "constructs";

export class SimpleAwsAuditTrailStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    const auditTrailStream = new kinesis.Stream(this, "Stream");

    new dynamodb.Table(this, "TableToAudit", {
      tableName: `TableToAudit`,
      partitionKey: {
        name: "partitionKey",
        type: dynamodb.AttributeType.STRING,
      },
      sortKey: {
        name: "sortKey",
        type: dynamodb.AttributeType.STRING,
      },
      kinesisStream: auditTrailStream,
    });

    const auditTrailBucket = new s3.Bucket(this, "AuditTrailDestination", {
      lifecycleRules: [
        {
          transitions: [
            {
              storageClass: s3.StorageClass.INFREQUENT_ACCESS,
              transitionAfter: Duration.days(30),
            },
            {
              storageClass: s3.StorageClass.INTELLIGENT_TIERING,
              transitionAfter: Duration.days(60),
            },
            {
              storageClass: s3.StorageClass.GLACIER,
              transitionAfter: Duration.days(90),
            },
            {
              storageClass: s3.StorageClass.DEEP_ARCHIVE,
              transitionAfter: Duration.days(180),
            },
          ],
        },
      ],
    });

    const deliveryRole = new iam.Role(this, "deliveryRole", {
      assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal("firehose.amazonaws.com"),
      inlinePolicies: {
        s3: new iam.PolicyDocument({
          statements: [
            new iam.PolicyStatement({
              resources: [
                `arn:aws:s3:::${auditTrailBucket.bucketName}`,
                `arn:aws:s3:::${auditTrailBucket.bucketName}/*`,
              ],
              actions: [
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:GetBucketLocation",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads",
                "s3:PutObject",
              ],
            }),
          ],
        }),
        kinesis: new iam.PolicyDocument({
          statements: [
            new iam.PolicyStatement({
              resources: [auditTrailStream.streamArn],
              actions: [
                "kinesis:DescribeStream",
                "kinesis:GetShardIterator",
                "kinesis:GetRecords",
                "kinesis:ListShards",
              ],
            }),
          ],
        }),
        logs: new iam.PolicyDocument({
          statements: [
            new iam.PolicyStatement({
              resources: ["*"],
              actions: ["logs:PutLogEvents"],
            }),
          ],
        }),
      },
    });

    new kinesisfirehose.CfnDeliveryStream(this, "DeliveryStream", {
      deliveryStreamType: "KinesisStreamAsSource",
      kinesisStreamSourceConfiguration: {
        roleArn: deliveryRole.roleArn,
        kinesisStreamArn: auditTrailStream.streamArn,
      },
      s3DestinationConfiguration: {
        bucketArn: auditTrailBucket.bucketArn,
        roleArn: deliveryRole.roleArn,
      },
    });
  }
}
```

### Understanding the infrastructure code

The code tries to emulate the architecture diagram as much as possible, but let's go through it in more detail:
1. Create an AWS Kinesis Data Stream.
2. Create an Amazon DynamoDB table and add the AWS Kinesis Data Stream created in the previous step.
3. Create the Amazon S3 bucket, and define on it the lifecycle rules.
4. Create the AWS IAM role to be used by AWS Kinesis Firehose. The role needs to have permissions to retrieve data from the AWS Kinesis Data Stream, and to store data in the AWS S3 bucket.
5. Create the AWS Kinesis Firehose resource, with reference to the data stream and the S3 bucket.

## Testing the solution

Let's create a record in the Amazon DynamoDB and make a change, to see what the data in the AWS S3 bucket looks like.

```
aws dynamodb put-item  \
--table-name TableToAudit \
--item '{"partitionKey": {"S": "1"}, "sortKey": {"S": "State"}, "Data": {"S": "Initial state"}}'

aws dynamodb put-item  \
--table-name TableToAudit \
--item '{"partitionKey": {"S": "1"}, "sortKey": {"S": "State"}, "Data": {"S": "Changed state"}}'
```

At this point, the Amazon DynamoDB table should look like this:

![0481cd29-9829-4173-9dcf-744e568839ba.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/0481cd29_9829_4173_9dcf_744e568839ba_f89ce2951f.png)

Let's see what the data looks like on the Amazon S3 bucket, inside a file.

![fa79e3ec-9c1b-4008-b1a4-d7ce17bba922.png](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/9/10/fa79e3ec_9c1b_4008_b1a4_d7ce17bba922_9aac2f6b93.png)


```
{
  "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
  "eventID": "65eed7c0-4c74-4e71-b443-3b68b28f9455",
  "eventName": "INSERT",
  "userIdentity": null,
  "recordFormat": "application/json",
  "tableName": "TableToAudit",
  "dynamodb": {
    "ApproximateCreationDateTime": 1662992934392,
    "Keys": { "sortKey": { "S": "State" }, "partitionKey": { "S": "1" } },
    "NewImage": {
      "sortKey": { "S": "State" },
      "Data": { "S": "Initial state" },
      "partitionKey": { "S": "1" }
    },
    "SizeBytes": 67
  },
  "eventSource": "aws:dynamodb"
}
{
  "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
  "eventID": "55c911a3-d0a6-4d23-99ab-c1fd3e4d01b5",
  "eventName": "MODIFY",
  "userIdentity": null,
  "recordFormat": "application/json",
  "tableName": "TableToAudit",
  "dynamodb": {
    "ApproximateCreationDateTime": 1662992947714,
    "Keys": { "sortKey": { "S": "State" }, "partitionKey": { "S": "1" } },
    "NewImage": {
      "sortKey": { "S": "State" },
      "Data": { "S": "Changed state" },
      "partitionKey": { "S": "1" }
    },
    "OldImage": {
      "sortKey": { "S": "State" },
      "Data": { "S": "Initial state" },
      "partitionKey": { "S": "1" }
    },
    "SizeBytes": 109
  },
  "eventSource": "aws:dynamodb"
}
```

As you can see, there's data about each change in a [JSON Lines](https://jsonlines.org/{externalnofollow}) format, first the "INSERT", then the "MODIFY", where the modification has the "OldImage" and "NewImage". Data on changes is partitioned by default inside the bucket, with the smallest partition being on the hour of the day.

### How to query the data

In the past, one of the negative sides of storing this kind of data in Amazon S3 would be losing some flexibility: typically, you would have to get (download) the files that were relevant, and then do some data analytics on it. That is no longer the case. There's a nice feature in Amazon S3 where you can query the data in files directly, using a SQL-like language. For example, to get all audit records with partitionKey equal to "1":

```
aws s3api select-object-content \
--bucket BUCKET_NAME \
--key BUCKET_KEY \
--expression "select * from s3object as s where s.dynamodb.Keys.partitionKey.S = '1'" \
--expression-type 'SQL' \
--input-serialization '{"JSON": {"Type": "LINES"}}' \
--output-serialization '{"JSON": {}}' "output.json"
```

## Conclusion

In this blog post, a simple architecture to store audit trail from an Amazon DynamoDB table was presented. The data pipeline to export this data through AWS Kinesis was detailed, and information on how to query the final data was provided. Future improvements on this pattern include data preprocessing and scaling.

All code referenced in this blog post is available in [this repository](https://github.com/luiscrs14/simple-aws-audit-trail{externalnofollow}).

An article about audit trail solution with AWS Kinesis and S3 with a focus on simplicity and affordability

thumbnail_AWS_Kinesis_S3.png

AWS_Kinesis_S3.png

Simple and affordable audit trail solution with AWS Kinesis and S3

In this blog post, I propose an architecture using 2 AWS services, namely AWS Lambda and Amazon SQS, to achieve a notification pipeline using a webhook.

Before we dive into the solution, let's review the concepts we'll be using.

## What are Webhooks?

Webhooks offer a way to send real time notifications to clients. Opposite to traditional APIs, where a client requests data from a server, Webhooks allow a client as a consumer to subscribe to server events. After the initial registration, no more interaction is needed.

## What is Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service)

[Amazon SQS](https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/{externalnofollow}) is message queuing service commonly used to decouple services: instead of having two or more services communicating synchronously, queues can be used to defer this communication asynchronously, allowing simpler scaling.

## What is AWS Lambda?

[AWS Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/{externalnofollow}) is a serverless compute platform. This means it uses AWS compute infrastructure, but all the instance setup is managed by AWS: the customer is only responsible for the business logic. AWS Lambda uses Lambda functions, which are applications that are triggered by events.

## Proposed architecture

Here's a diagram describing the main components of the architecture. They will be discussed in more detail later.

![aws_sqs.svg](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/7/27/aws_sqs_b5e200e356.svg)

## Setting up the listener

This post assumes you have [Node.js](https://docs.npmjs.com/downloading-and-installing-node-js-and-npm{externalnofollow}) installed, as well as [AWS CDK Toolkit](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/v2/guide/cli.html{externalnofollow}). You should have an AWS account created.

Let's start by creating the customer webhook endpoint. This will serve as a target to the notifications.

Create a new file app.js with the following code:

```
const http = require('http');

const port = 3000;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
 let body = '';
 req.on('data', chunk => {
 body += chunk.toString();
 });
 req.on('end', () => {
 console.log(body);
 res.end('ok');
 });
});

server.listen(port, () => {
 console.log(`Server running on ${port}/`);
});
```

This is a simple listener that will wait for a request with a body, and will print the body contents to the console. We will use this to make sure we are getting our notifications, meaning the webhook is effectively working.

To start the listener, run:

```
node app.js
```

By default, the server will be running on localhost:3000. Since we need to communicate with our listener from AWS Lambda, we need to make this endpoint public. A really useful tool for this I often use is [ngrok](https://ngrok.com/{externalnofollow}), you can use it to create a public proxy to your local port (you’re free to use any other method you’re familiar with). After exposing the endpoint publicly, you should have a URL that is reachable from the Internet.

## Infrastructure

So we have a client endpoint waiting for notifications. Now we need the infrastructure to send the notifications.

Let's detail how each architecture component fits together.

### Components

#### Amazon SQS

In this particular use case, Amazon SQS is used as a source of events for the notifications. The server business logic is abstracted here, for simplicity purposes; in a real life scenario, a service would send events, which eventually reach an Amazon SQS queue. Here, we'll push messages directly to the queue to model this behaviour.

#### AWS Lambda

For this particular use case, the Lambda function will be invoked to consume messages from the SQS queue and, for each message, will send a notification to the customer webhook endpoint.

### Building the infrastructure

#### Using AWS CDK to deploy infrastructure

Amazon offers an _Infrastructure-As-Code_ solution, called [AWS Cloud Development Kit](https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/{externalnofollow}), or CDK for short. It uses [AWS Cloudformation](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/{externalnofollow}) internally to define infrastructure in a reviewable, deployable manner. CDK is offered in multiple languages, we'll use Typescript in this example.

#### AWS CDK setup

Assuming you already have CDK Toolkit installed, create a folder for the CDK code and initialise the project:


```
mkdir notification-cdk
cd notification-cdk && cdk init app --language typescript
```

cdk init app builds some initial scaffolding for the project. It creates a Stack, which will contain the pieces of infrastructure required.

A final step for the setup is to go the generated code for the stack under bin/my-app-cdk.ts and uncomment the env: line and replace with your AWS account info:


```
// env: { account: '123456789012', region: 'us-east-1' },
```

Let's add the necessary pieces for building our infrastructure stack on 'lib/cdk-stack.ts'

```
import * as path from "path";
import * as cdk from "aws-cdk-lib";
import { Construct } from "constructs";
import * as sqs from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-sqs";
import * as lambda from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-lambda";
import { SqsEventSource } from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-lambda-event-sources";

export class EcdevWebhookInfrastructureCdkStack extends cdk.Stack {
 constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
 super(scope, id, props);

 const queue = new sqs.Queue(this, "EventsQueue", {
 queueName: "EventsQueue",
 });

 const lambdaFunction = new lambda.Function(this, "EventHandler", {
 runtime: lambda.Runtime.NODEJS_16_X,
 handler: "index.handler",
 code: lambda.Code.fromAsset(path.join(__dirname, "lambda-handler")),
 });

 lambdaFunction.addEventSource(new SqsEventSource(queue));
 }
}
```

#### Code walkthrough

Let's go through the code to make sure everything is clear.

1. Create an Amazon SQS queue.
2. Create an AWS Lambda function, using a local folder as source.
3. Set Amazon SQS queue as an event source for the function.

#### Edit code for AWS Lambda function

We'll use the CDK stack to include the Lambda function code, since it's a simple example.

In the root of the cdk project, run:

```
mkdir lambda-handler
touch lambda-handler/index.js
```

This creates a new folder and file where the AWS Lambda function code will live. Edit the file with the following code, replacing <LISTENER_URL>:

```
var http = require('https');

exports.handler = function (event, context) {
 event.Records.forEach(record => {
 const params = {
 host: "<LISTENER_URL>",
 body: record.body,
 method: "POST"
 }
 var post_req = http.request(params);

 post_req.write(record.body);
 post_req.end()
 })
}
```

What the lambda handler's code does is, for each event record (which will match an individual queue message), create a HTTP POST request and send it to the Listener endpoint that was setup earlier. Please note that the host mustn't include the protocol (http:// or https://).

#### Deploy the infrastructure

Now that we have the infrastructure ready to be deployed, let's execute the following command to do it:


```
cdk deploy
```

### Sending the message to Amazon SQS


```
aws sqs get-queue-url --queue-name EventsQueue

aws sqs send-message --queue-url 'QUEUE_URL' --message-body 'This is an important and time-critical message'
```

### Checking the notification is received

After sending the message to the Amazon SQS queue, if all went well, you should see the message in the client application console:

```
Server running on 3000/
Received notification: This is an important and time-critical message
```

### Cleanup

To clear the infrastructure resources just created, you can use CDK Toolkit to destroy the stack. Simply run:

```
cdk destroy
```

## Conclusion

In this blog post, a simple architecture to use a webhook to send notifications to clients was presented. This shows the essential working blocks the solution. In real life scenarios, there are other concerns, such as security, reliability, cost, that are out of scope for this use case, but definitely crucial to a production service.

All code referenced in this blog post is available in the [listener](https://github.com/luiscrs14/ecdev-webhook-listener{externalnofollow}) and [cdk](https://github.com/luiscrs14/ecdev-webhook-infrastructure-cdk{externalnofollow}) repositories.

An article about using Amazon SQS and Lambda for Webhooks processing

thumbnail_blog_9.png

blog_9.png

Reliable Webhooks processing with AWS Lambda and Amazon SQS

Amount of businesses that failed due to poor web hosting is tremendous. You can make a stunning design, build a quality product, build your brand, and build a sales funnel, but if you take hosting lightly, it can ruin everything you did. Surprisingly, how many web hosting propositions are available across the web, and they all look so promising that you might think nothing could be better.

Web hosting is like a truck, which needs to be fast enough, reliable, and strong enough to carry heavy loads.

In this article, I will examine the following topics:
- What is the high availability on a website
- What are 3 types of web hosting commonly used for [WordPress](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/hire-wordpress-developers/)
- How to install AWS hosting for WordPress with preinstalled cPanel

## What is the high availability on a website

People usually say that website hosting availability is when the server is able to respond 99.9% of the time. I'd include a load resistance here too, otherwise it makes no sense if the server that is up 99.9% of the time goes down because of too many connections.

Below is a list of **key facilities (services) that help in better availability of the site:**
- Correct web hosting. More information about that I will write below.
- CDN service.
- Proper caching mechanism.
- Load balancer (rarely used for WordPress).

Of course, the WordPress website should be technically correct itself, otherwise no one hosting will help.

## What are 3 types of web hosting commonly used for WordPress

### Type 1. Shared hosting

In this type of web hosting, your website resides on a single server instance along with others, and all resources are shared among all sites hosted on that server.

Advantages of shared hosting:
- Low cost.
- Simplicity in use.

Disadvantages of shared hosting:
- You are restricted in traffic and bandwidth.
- Shared resources are not isolated. In the case of a traffic surge on one website, all others may go down for some period.
- A large number of websites are usually hosted on one server instance, about one hundred.
- You are limited in the number of websites you can host.

### Type 2. Managed WordPress hosting

This type of web hosting offers isolated system resources and a ready-to-use WordPress environment.

Advantages of managed WordPress hosting:
- Simplicity in use.
- Very quick site setup.
- Backup and staging options in a few clicks.

Disadvantages of managed WordPress hosting:
- You are restricted in traffic and bandwidth.
- You are restricted in the amount of hosted websites.
- You don't know the exact hardware resources you pay for. We think users significantly overpay for the allocated resources they have.
- Most of the managed WordPress hosting platforms have their global server-side cache to speed up hosted websites. It cannot be disabled, it cannot work together with other caching mechanisms, and in some cases, it can cause problems when developing user flows of higher complexity. In EcDev Studio we can make a custom caching configuration that provides a pretty higher speed increase than such a global cache. This is a primary reason why we don't recommend managed WordPress web hosting to any of our clients.

### Type 3. Cloud server

Before talking about cloud servers I want to mention such hosting types as **VPS (Virtual Private Server) and Dedicated Server**. They are advanced hosting types and they offer isolated resource allocation. When you purchase hosting, the initial configuration and launch of the server instance are handled by hosting company staff, and the hardware configuration is fixed. VPS and classic dedicated servers we consider outdated hosting types and I will not describe them in detail in this article.

The cloud is a network of connected hardware with the ability to quickly set up server instances, change their configuration on the fly, or destroy them. Unlike VPS and dedicated servers, with **cloud server instances** all the operations are performed without human staff involvement. For example, it is possible to change RAM, CPU, and SSD storage with just a few clicks without contacting customer support.

The cloud server is an advanced and recommended approach to hosting websites. There are such popular cloud server providers as AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Heroku, and Digital Ocean. In EcDev Studio our preferred provider is AWS so in this article I will provide an in-detail guide on how to host a WordPress site on AWS without previous knowledge of cloud administration.

Advantages of cloud servers:
- Infrastructure is backed by a large company.
- Easy and fast setup in a few clicks.
- Relatively high overall performance and stability of the cloud server instance.
- You are able to choose the exact hardware resources you pay for.
- You can pay $30-$80 per month for the average resources and host an unlimited amount of websites. Of course, you should care if the allocated server resources are enough for your needs.

Disadvantages of cloud servers:
- Together with total freedom, it usually requires higher skills in order to administrate the server instances. Administration tasks can be simplified in case of using options with a preinstalled web panel like cPanel.
- You need to have basic Linux skills in order to connect to the server and check the disk usage, as well as RAM/CPU usage.

## How to install AWS hosting for WordPress with preinstalled cPanel

In this guide, we will launch the **AWS EC2** instance of class **t3.small**. AWS EC2 is an on-demand computing service based on the AWS cloud platform, that allows you to create server instances quickly and scale them as needed. The total approximate price in the **us-west-2** region (Oregon) is **$30.96 per month**. I say approximate because billing is calculated on an hourly basis. Later, you will be able to scale your server to a higher plan according to your needs based on the expected number of hosted websites, traffic, etc.

Here is what's inside the **t3.small** package:
- 2 X CPU Intel Xeon 3.1 GHz.
- 2 GB memory.
- 20 GB SSD disk space.

In this guide, I will show how to create a server with cPanel, however, in the real case, you will be able to use a free [CentOS Web Panel](https://centos-webpanel.com/{externalnofollow}) instead of a poplar cPanel, but in that case you'll need to manually install it on the server via SSH.
Below is a step-by-step instruction for setting up an AWS EC2 instance with preinstalled cPanel.

### Part 1. Creating EC2 instance

**Step 1.** Log in AWS console, and switch to the right region.

**Step 2.** Enter EC2 in the search, and click on the corresponding service.

![EC2 search](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/2_bfbce33d0f.png)

**Step 3.** Click on “Launch instance” and choose “Launch instance”

![Launch instance](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/3_7d5a7b0b7d.png)

**Step 4.** Set the server instance name, for example, "WordPress Web Server"

![server instance name](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/4_9fe85a0d7f.png)

**Step 5.** In the search enter “cPanel&WHM for Linux” and press Enter

![search cPanel&WHM for Linux](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/5_5fe33766d6.png)

**Step 6.** In the tab “AWS Marketplace AMIs” select “cPanel&WHM for Linux” By cPanel

![select cPanel&WHM for Linux](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/6_3e8f28727e.png)

**Step 7.** Click “Continue”

![Continue](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/7_5b3f47f5c3.png)

**Step 8.** Click “Confirm Changes”

![Confirm Changes](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/8_875f051892.png)

**Step 9.** Leave “t3.smal” in the Instance type field

![Leave t3.smal](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/9_b7c82c049b.png)

**Step 10.** Click on “Create new key pair” to create a new SSH key.

![Create new key pair](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/10_f69d291fda.png)

**Step 11.** Enter a key name and click ”Create key pair”. You should download the key pair and save it on a local computer. You need it to access the server instance via SSH.

![download the key pair](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/11_67a27ac4bf.png)

**Step 12.** Leave the default Network settings.

![Leave the default Network settings](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/12_bc2b58b976.png)

**Step 13.** For the storage, you can either leave the default 20Gb or make it higher.

![storage](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/13_5945a68fd5.png)

**Step 14.** Click “Launch instance”.

![Launch instance](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/14_956dec7938.png)

**Step 15.** Click “View all instances”.

![View all instances](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/15_98d4ca9bb7.png)

**Step 16.** Select the newly created server.

![Select the newly created server](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/16_284e78ccb8.png)

**Step 17.** Open the Security tab and click on the security group that is created by default. You will see the security group settings at the bottom.

![Security tab](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/17_41e1da3c0d.png)

**Step 18.** Add the following rules:
- 22 - for SSH access.
- 2083 - for cPanel access.
- 2087 - for WHM access.


It should be the same as in the screenshot below.

![rules](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/18_a0d2c8db5c.png)

**Step 19.** Click “Save rules”.

**Step 20.** Go to the Elastic IPs section.

![Elastic IPs section](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/20_47825dd666.png)

**Step 21.** Click “Allocate Elastic IP address”

![Allocate Elastic IP address](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/21_fff41c3779.png)

**Step 22.** Click “Add new tag”, add tag “Name”, and click “Allocate”

![Add new tag](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/22_9dac8484fe.png)

**Step 23.** Select the newly created IP address, copy the “Allocated IPv4 address” value, and save it locally (you will need it for further server access via SSH). Then click Actions >> Associate Elastic IP address.

![copy the Allocated IPv4 address](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/23_752a36f310.png)

**Step 24.** On the next screen choose the server and click “Associate”

![choose the server](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/24_007a944104.png)

We completed steps 20-24 to set the static IP address for the server. Otherwise, the IP address would change with every restart of a server instance.

### Part 2. Configuring cPanel

**Step 25.** Launch SSH terminal. If you use Windows OS it can be a Putty application.

**Step 26.** If you use a Linux-based OS you should grant the right permissions for the key. Use this command:\
chmod 600 {path_to_private_key}

The key pair you have downloaded at step 11.

**Step 27.** Connect to the server via SSH in order to get the URL for accessing WHM (Web Host Manager). Use this command if you use a Linux-based OS:\
ssh centos@{server_ip_address} -i {path_to_private_key}

**Step 28.** When you get the question “Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?“ you should type “yes” and press Enter.

![Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/fingerprint)](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/28_2089d17ebf.png)

**Step 29.** Connect to WHM using the URL that you get in a terminal.

![Connect to WHM](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/29_59b7089302.png)

**Step 30.** The browser will show the SSL error “Your connection is not private”. You should click “Advanced” and then “Proceed”.

![ click Advanced and then Proceed](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/30_dcd14e13a7.png)

To get rid of a warning, the SSL certificate should be installed for your cPanel instance, there is a lot of available information about that in public access.

**Step 31.** Accept the terms of usage for access to WHM and cPanel.

![Accept the terms of usage](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/31_4fbd65c2f5.png)

**Step 32.** Click “Log in”

![Log in](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/32_9b310246c1.png)

**Step 33.** Create a new cPanel account or log in to your existing account.

![Create or log in](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/33_74157f7da5.png)

**Step 34.** Enter the email address for receiving service notifications and click “Finish”.

![Enter the email address](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/34_f8b05573d7.png)

**Step 35.** Set the root password. Click WHM >> Home >> Server Configuration >> Change Root Password

**Step 36.** Click WHM >> Home >> Networking Setup >> Change Hostname in order to change hostname. You can choose one from the list displayed on the right side.

![change hostname](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/36_5964b137ae.png)

### Part 3. Adding the domain

**Step 37.** Create WHM account. Click WHM >> Home >> Account Functions >> Create a New Account

![Create WHM account](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/37_06489da53c.png)

**Step 38.** Copy Name Servers from your WHM account and set them for your domain.

![Name Servers](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/38_b1505ec14e.png)

**Step 39.** Log in to cPanel. To do this you should go to WHM >> Home >> Account Information >> List Accounts, and click on the сPanel icon.

![Log in to cPanel](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/39_3ab93032a1.png)

**Step 40.** On the new page, you should choose WordPress.

![choose WordPress](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/40_9c9b76e439.png)

**Step 41.** Wait until WP installation finishes, and click on “Add content”.

![Wait until WP installation finishes](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/29/41_f13eb51bf4.png)

**Step 42.** You will be able to fully control WordPress on the opened page, log in as a WP-admin, etc.

![fully control](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/7/27/42_min_4af1669e5f.png)

## Сhoosing and configuring high availability WordPress hosting: Final Thoughts

There is a large room for improvement of the WordPress site and web hosting in order to achieve higher speed and availability. It is possible to use Docker container, setup automated deployment, move a database to the cloud and decouple it from the server instance, add CDN, make the headless architecture for WordPress, set up autoscaling, and make other improvements. Here in this article, I have covered just the basics, so users without much technical knowledge can start using the high-availability AWS cloud to host their WordPress websites.

In addition, consider [hiring WordPress developers](/hire-wordpress-developers/) if you need assistance with the development, optimization, maintenance, or infrastructure changes to your WordPress website.

Different types of web hostings listed, and a guide to configuring high availability WordPress hosting on AWS

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A guide to choosing and configuring high availability WordPress hosting

This article is not an attempt to describe project management theory from books. It rather enlists my key project management techniques and principles based on years of practice, pitfalls and pearls.

#### 1. The more risks identified at the planning stage the better

Apart from affecting budget resources and reputation, risks can even lead to project death. A carefully-selected project management technique will help you detect all the major risks at the early stages when you only start building a project model.

Imagine you are responsible for developing a high-load system that supports 5,000 users, but you don't have the right team member who can handle such complex projects. For sure, it is a risk as you might fail to find the right fit in time or a newcomer will fail you in the long run.

Or, let's say, you need to enable data synchronization between your data storage and a few other 3-rd party platforms. So what exactly needs to be done within this project scope? First of all, writing code that will do the necessary synchronization. But what about data integrity, big data support, automatic scaling, automatic process retrieval after the downtime, and finally finding the right tools and ways of testing all the above-mentioned project activities? Does this mean extra time estimates and the risks to be taken into account? For sure, yes. Will all the project managers consider it at the project initiation stage? From my experience, no. Yet, risk management is definitely one of those winning project management techniques that will help you create more accurate estimates as well as prevent unplanned scenarios and frustration. It's better to spend more time on program evaluation and review than later discover significant deviations from the agreed budget and timelines.

All the risk types can be checked here in this reliable [article](https://www.simplilearn.com/common-project-risks-article/{externalnofollow}), so I will not copy them. But please take them into account when estimating the scope of your next project and creating a project plan.

#### 2. Predict and prevent problems during development

When the development process is on and running, a few problems might evolve: a lack of understanding of how to implement an appropriate technical solution, repository mess, server configuration instability, no data backups, certain team-specific issues, such as low performance of one or multiple developers. That's especially true for more complex projects.

In such cases, the owner might fail to (or be unwilling to) discover these issues on the project. Or may know about them, but do nothing. Yet, it's for sure one of the best project management techniques to react to them in a timely manner. This will save dozens of hours and tons of effort in the long run.

Any working environment will only get healthier if you keep things organized. Everything that could possibly go wrong, will go wrong. So what's the point in ignoring the problems if they show up later anyway?

Lastly, even if you understand the customer requirements well despite hazy specifications, you cannot expect your project team to be on the same page as you are. To achieve the project goal, all the specifications must be well-detailed at the program evaluation and review stage during the team meetings so that any misunderstandings are resolved before they occur.

#### 3. Visualize progress to see the whole picture, use appropriate project management tools

On multiple projects, progress visual representation is an important project management technique that allows you to immediately see project progress, spot any dependent tasks and plan other important tasks. In a project management methodology, the most popular ways of visual representation are Kanban Board and Gantt chart. Some key details are provided below:

##### Kanban board

Kanban itself is a project management methodology with its own rules. It is well described in this [article](https://kanbanize.com/kanban-resources/getting-started/what-is-kanban/{externalnofollow}). I will talk about its visual aspect only, from the perspective of understanding the project workflow. In Kanban Boards, you have different statuses (columns) and a set of tasks in each column, which are moved from left to right systematically, upon changing statuses.

##### The key things you can see in Kanban Boards:
- It helps to create a detailed plan, make predictions, and conduct risk management by means of setting specific statuses for certain project tasks (e.g. Code review).
- Easier workflow health tracking. Another helpful project management technique lies in making sure one specific to-do column is not overloaded with tasks, while other columns contain fewer. Ensuring a balanced amount of tasks in each column leads to good workflow health and better work breakdown structure.
- Almost in every project management software, you will find user icons next to the tasks in a project board. They show people's involvement in a more visual way and thus project managers can spot task dependencies more efficiently (see picture below).

![ecdev kanban board.jpg](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/3/kanban_5688eb4374.jpg)

The huge benefit of Kanban Boards is that a project manager does not need to spend time on maintaining them throughout the entire project life cycle, unlike the Gantt Chart that I am describing below.

##### Gantt chart

In project management, you always need a reliable way of calculating the valid completion dates of specific manageable tasks within one project. A Gantt chart is an ideal solution. It is one of the oldest project management techniques that was originally used in the Waterfall technique, but now it can be easily used in Agile, let's say for visualizing sprints and project progress tracking.

![ecdev gantt chart](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/3/gant_88fc06d9f6.jpg)

For you as a project manager, the smartest advantage of Gantt charts is seeing the exact project timeline for any task. It might be really useful in identifying task dependencies and seeing how the project progresses. However, it requires spending additional resources on chart maintenance, as you have to constantly reestimate each task separately.

#### 4. Always be aware of priorities, approaches and current problems

Throughout the project life cycle, reconsider task priorities occasionally, discuss approaches with the team (regarding delivery strategy, server infrastructure, technologies, task dependencies, etc), assist the team in resolving current project problems, or make necessary allocations for any new project activities. This project management technique will help you avoid a bunch of common pitfalls that usually occur on a project.

#### 5. Split the responsibilities correctly to avoid demotivation among the team

If project managers assign more complex projects to a developer than his skills level allows him to accomplish at the moment, it is normal as it will contribute to his growth. But if all the tasks related to e.g. administration, automation or infrastructure are assigned to a web developer, then you should expect his demotivation about the job he is doing.

In project management, to ensure a balanced work breakdown structure, the above-listed types of tasks should be assigned to other team members, such as an IT administrator, DevOps expert and an infrastructure expert. In addition, it is always better to assign new employees (who you trust) to those smaller tasks than exploit your current team member. If there are no trusted people available, then the problem lies more in recruiting than project management. My recommendation is to start cultivating friendly relationships with experts in different fields. It is highly useful to always be able to have specific/untypical tasks done within a project schedule just because you have the right people at hand and can assign those smaller tasks to them. Even in extreme project management, it is always recommended to have someone qualified for non-typical tasks.

#### 6. React immediately in critical situations

Project managers should never hope for luck. If the problem occurred, it cannot be ignored or postponed for later. Technical problems can be resolved by lead developers or tech leads. However, everything related to organization problems, resources planning, task dependencies, decision making, etc., should be a subject of prompt intervention by the management staff who should be able to apply suitable project management techniques depending on the situation.

#### 7. Work with the budget carefully

When working on any project tasks, whether big or small, respect your client's budget and inform in advance if you feel that one task requires more resources than you estimated initially or if there are certain unplanned task dependencies. It is always a winning project management technique to agree on all the time estimates upfront with your client than "surprise" them later. Dividing the project into distinct phases and work packages is the most reliable evaluation and review technique that will help you plan resources more carefully.

To work with project budgets more accurately, a critical path method (CPM) can be used. It is useful for analysing and planning mid-to-high complexity projects. It allows you to determine which tasks are the most critical and how to schedule them in a way you can meet the deadline at minimum cost. These tasks are called critical because if they take longer, the entire project will take longer to complete. This is the reason why the critical path method is very helpful for project managers. With its help they can estimate project duration more accurately, spot any task dependencies, identify risks, create more realistic project schedules and thus budgets. Program evaluation and review is made easier, smoother and more accurate.

#### 8. Be a superhero project manager - grow your soft skills

To manage the project successfully and achieve smooth project completion, the importance of soft skills cannot be underestimated. I mean communication, empathy, stress-resistance, leadership, and others.

Let's say you have difficulty getting some precise details from the client. This is because he is either a non-technician at all, or just explaining some real case scenarios in a specific domain like fintech. However, you don't understand them, no matter how much research you put into that. Or your whole team overworks to demonstrate the best delivery they can, but the client complains that your work is slow anyway.

Skilled project managers should be able to resolve these and many other unique challenges in an elegant way, so that both parties are left happy with the result. By implementing tried and tested project management techniques that are proven to work, you will contribute to not just your current project's success, but will also get more confidence when working on each next project.

## An ideal project management technique - can one size fit all?

Being a good project manager is not just about following specific project management principles and rules. Very often, certain situations require immediate actions when you need to find a solution to some problems on the project. No matter which party caused this problem, the customer or the development team, it needs to be addressed. All the project managers at EcDevStudio are trained to serve as problem-solvers for the customer, not just an intermediary. Out of many project management techniques described above and even more, we never try to find a one-size-fits-all scenario. Each project is unique, so the project management principles and other approaches need to be selected accordingly.

In our team, even the choice of the most suitable project manager is made based on some project specifics: technologies to be used, UX focus, etc. Let's say, if the project needs to start with the design stage and the customer deeply relies on excellent UX, we will definitely assign it to a project manager who is a former [UI/UX designer](/hire-ui-ux-designers/). If you are looking for a team you would find comfortable to work with, contact us for free a consultation.

There are many ways to organize project management, but to increase the efficiency there are specific principles and techniques for that.

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8 ultimate project management techniques and principles

When you run a startup, you definitely can't risk wasting your time or budget. Your specs have to be followed, and things need to go as planned. There is no room for pitfalls or failures. So it's only obvious that the choice of a software development company needs to be made with the utmost caution.

Fortunately, Ukraine is a reliable outsourcing destination for hiring software developers for startups. This article will give you an in-depth look into:

- Why you should hire Ukrainian developers
- How to hire software developers in Ukraine

#### Why is Ukraine a good fit for software development outsourcing?

![good fit for software development](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/7/27/Frame_69_2_f84f3fb6f3.svg)

There are countless reasons that make Ukraine one of the best places in the world to outsource your software development. Before I dig deeper into the details, here’s a short list of the top reasons for hiring Ukrainian developers:
- **More dollar-for-dollar value** - A Ukrainian software development agency can provide the same quality services you can expect from an EU- or US-based firm at a much lower rate.
- **Intellectual property protection** - Ukraine respects intellectual property rights across the globe. This means you won’t need to worry about your software development partner lifting proprietary code.
- **Dedicated teams** - Ukrainian developers are known for burning the midnight oil to meet strict deadlines. If you have a problem, rest assured that they will quickly solve it.
- **Top-tier talent** - Ukrainian software development and IT industry are exploding right now, and the market is packed with highly educated Ukrainian programmers ready to help you with the web and mobile development.
- **Staggered time schedules (for US clients)** - Ukrainian working hours take place while you’re fast asleep. So if you make a request past sunset, your development company could have it delivered by morning.

These are just a handful of reasons why you might want to outsource software development to a Ukrainian company. There are many more that I will address.

#### Engineering and Mentality in Ukraine
What is undeniably true about Ukrainian developers is their positive mindset and determination.

In fact, Ukrainians have earned a strong reputation as hard workers. It’s their tenacity that makes them well-suitable for custom software development positions. This is a role that requires them to constantly invent innovative digital solutions to stay one step ahead of their competition and become top software developers in Ukraine.

#### Resourcefulness
Ukrainians are also known for their passion and resourcefulness: two essential qualities you want to get when outsourcing software development. Meeting strict deadlines often takes a level of ingenuity that only comes from a truly dedicated service provider.

#### Responsible Teams
Another core trait associated with Ukrainians is their strong sense of responsibility. Software developers in Ukraine will treat your project as if it’s their own. They want to do their job right and will take any steps necessary to build world class software products that will make your project successful.

#### Communication and English proficiency
A major benefit of outsourcing software development to technology companies in Ukraine is that about 70% of Ukrainian developers have an intermediate to upper-intermediate level of English proficiency.

Strong communication is a key in project management, so it’s important to have a dedicated team with a firm grasp of English in your corner.
![Software development team in Ukraine](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/5/6/Frame_56_f0269e1919.jpg)
With such a high level of English proficiency, you won’t need to worry about miscommunications when dealing with software developers in Ukraine. 

#### Ukraine is a hub for software development companies
From 2015 to 2017, the number of Ukrainian software developers grew from 74k to 166k. In 2020, it reached as many as 166k. Yearly, this number grows on average by 30k of new specialists, who are usually the graduates from Ukrainian tech universities.

With the largest number of C++ and Unity 3D developers and the second-largest number of JavaScript developers, it's no wonder why Ukraine is listed among "Top 10 Countries with the Best Software Developers in the World" (source: HackerRank). Yet, the variety of programming languages in this talent pool is much bigger.

Giants and global corporations like Microsoft, Samsung, and Oracle have already discovered the tech talent of Ukrainian developers and thus keep hiring them on an ongoing basis. In fact, companies of different sizes often feel lucky to have found a great development team for a long-term partnership at a fair cost.

#### IT market and development costs in Ukraine
The average rate of skilled software developers in Ukraine of middle-to-senior levels varies from $40 to $50 per hour, depending on the technology stack and technical expertise. Lower rates (e.g. $30 per hour) are relevant to mostly junior developers, they can be a part of an experienced software development team in a startup, but not to be its skeleton.

#### Potential risks when hiring a software development company for a startup
Below are some specific risks that startups might face when hiring software developers. These insights are based on real-life stories that the clients have shared with my team.

- Inappropriate or faulty tech decisions made by software developers, insufficient technical skills, low-quality of deliveries and quality assurance.
- Product performance issues. Delivered website or web application is either slow or unstable upon high traffic load.
- Security issues. The delivered product (or any of its components) comes with vulnerabilities like XSS or Insecure Deserialization.
- The delivered software is poorly usable and imbalanced/outdated in terms of UI/UX.
- The delivered software fails to meet expectations. Developers demonstrate a poor understanding of business goals, no respect for the mission, and are not committed to the idea of building a successful startup.
- Software developer doesn't meet the timeline or budget constraints.

The above-listed issues can be relevant to any country, and they are mostly caused by ineffective check-up of soft and hard skills.

The ways how EcDev Studio prevents the above problems can be read in my separate [article](https://www.ecdevstudio.com/blog/how-ecdev-studio-prevents-six-most-common-problems-in-software-outsourcing/).

#### How to hire a Ukrainian software developer for your startup? 

![How to hire a Ukrainian software developer for your startup](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/7/27/How_to_hire_a_Ukrainian_software_developer_for_your_startup_45ef5b32aa.svg)

As said above, Ukrainian software developers have earned an excellent reputation for providing quality and affordably priced services for their partners all over the world. 

Yet, it does not necessarily mean that the hiring process is a 1-day job. Once you’re ready to hire Ukrainian software developers, these are the steps you should take when building relationships with the outsourcing companies and looking for the reliable candidate:
1. Evaluate the local IT industry market.
2. Analyze your potential vendor's portfolio.
3. Check the reviews and compliances.
4. Set up a call with the vendor and evaluate their soft skills.
5. Evaluate the hard skills.
6. Get involved in the engagement process.
7. Agree on the estimation, delivery plan, and payments.
8. Sign the contract and get your software development process started.

#### How Can EcDev Studio Help with Your Software Development?
We will provide you with a one-on-one consultation regarding your startup so we can understand what tech approach is the most suitable for your software projects. This will also be a decisive factor in planning your budget and time constraints. Our goal is to provide premium-quality custom software development services, and in-depth analysis is the first step in this process.

After we understand the scope of the project and all the planning processes are done, we assemble a team of dedicated developers who are perfectly qualified to build your product based on your software concepts and specifications. Rest assured that our engineers are highly vetted and deliver reliable, well-tested solutions.

#### Hiring a Ukrainian software developer: Final Thoughts
The choice of the right software development company is a crucial step toward bringing your software idea to life. You want your future product to thrive and bring value to your clients — not die on the vine. That's what we focus on when building our company values.

Software development is like rowing a boat with a team. Either everyone works together, or you’ll spin in circles and never reach your destination.

For your startup, you’ll need to pick capable performers who can deliver complex custom software development solutions so you can surpass your competitors. Working with software developers in Ukraine is a winning strategy, and that's what millions of success stories can prove.

If you’re looking for a software development firm you can trust, contact us for a free consultation.

Tips and guideline of hiring Ukrainian developers, potential risks described.

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How to hire a developer for startups in Ukraine

In the following list are 6 common problems and the well-tested solutions offered by EcDev Studio for each of them.


#### Conclusion
These are only common problems but not the entire list of problems that can happen. Some cases are easier to prevent, some not. My point is that we understand the IT outsourcing market, its common problems and work hard to prevent most of them for our clients.

There are common problems in software outsourcing. You have more chances to prevent them if you know about those problems.

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How EcDev Studio prevents 6 most common problems in software outsourcing

In my view, people that pay for quality services should get quality results, and any commercial services should be upscale. That’s why with the business that I run, I take every step possible to ensure that our clients receive a high-end service. That's especially relevant to hiring remote developers in order to succeed with software projects.

I've seen people try to save pennies on services only to realize that, in the end, they wasted their time and money by receiving an uninspiring product. On the other hand, I've also seen people pay top dollar for a service or product that provided no tangible value to the buyer. There are many examples when companies hire remote software developers but the main goal of those developers is to just check enough boxes to get paid.

That’s why I want to offer my insights on how to help you find a quality service. You'll also get a better understanding of when to cut a service provider if they fail to deliver.

The success of an entire business can depend on the relationship with your software development team. If you have a truly good business plan and strategy, your goals are still at risk if, for example, your in-house or remote team is not involved enough or lacks analytical or communication skills.

Below, I will describe 5 common issues business managers encounter when hiring remote or in-house developers, and then tips on how to avoid such issues. If you see something similar throughout your collaboration, you need to take action to prevent further risks.

## Potential issues when hiring remote developers

#### 1. Insufficient skills
The remote developer or team can have poor technical skills, limited understanding of development processes, and make faulty decisions which harm the development process and lead to the overall low quality of the delivery. Usually, this situation creates a need for a customer to spend significant time testing and reporting obvious bugs. Meanwhile, the development process is better organized when a customer only suggests improvements (such as UI tweaks, new use cases, etc.) but does not perform QA testing work which is what a remote development team is responsible for. In order to hire developers, the candidates should not only pass the technical interview but also complete a coding challenge of decent difficulty.

#### 2. Bad communication

Ideally, when a team of software developers works on a particular project there is a productive environment, high motivation, professional communication.  But exceptions happen, and here are the precise examples:

- Lack of interest. Reluctance to productively discuss an actual problem during remote working. Instead, the developer is doing some lower-prioritized tasks and postponing the problem discussion for later.
- Logically incorrect sentences, language, and communication barriers of remote employees. It causes difficulties when trying to understand the pressing issues or explain them.
- Aptitude to criticize teammates/customers instead of resolving mistakes. It is rather a personal characteristic, not a communication problem. Btw, the experienced hiring manager would spot this in the screening process.
- Delayed responses. It belongs to the issues with culture fit and dependability. During the hiring process, this can be determined with specific questions in the interview process.

There also exist etiquette problems, such as interruptions during voice calls, personal criticism, lack of respect, raising the voice while communicating. Etiquette problems of both in-house and remote teams are the most critical and should be avoided at the very beginning when hiring remote workers. Ensure there are no such issues before you hire remote developers. I'll tell you more about that below.

#### 3. Insufficient understanding of the requirements
Small interest in understanding the requirements, reluctance to think and analyze out of the boundaries, reluctance to think like a customer or see particular cases from the end-user perspective.

Apart from motivation problems mentioned above, software engineers can also lack soft skills or technical expertise which makes it difficult to understand project requirements in detail.

#### 4. Attempts to make poor deliveries
It is a common and well-known issue when a developer either knowingly or mistakenly delivers an unfinished or wrongly done job and hopes it to be enough to get approved. If you are going to hire developers consider giving them a complex test, and see if they will try to deliver a poor result instead of researching a task deeper.

#### 5. No respect for customer's business
It happens when remote developers work on particular tasks but have very little interest in what the final plan or business objectives are. It is fine if your developers deliver tasks based on your precise specifications. But your engineers should be team players who care about common success, for maximum efficiency.

## How to avoid the above listed problems when hiring remote software developers

Hiring remote developers, or in-house teams is a highly responsible activity because you either move forward growing your startup or keep struggling with the technical or other issues. I will describe how we at EcDev Studio hire engineers and build talented teams.

The first thing we do when we hire software developers is review their resumes, where we check how responsible the candidate is when searching for a job (resume accuracy, informativeness of the details, overall openness, etc), and also check actual skills with the experience in the resume.

The next step is soft skills and language proficiency check. During the first interview round, we check the developer candidate for the culture fit, dependability, emotional intelligence, communication skills, problem-solving attitude, perseverance, leadership qualities, English language. Many companies either skip this step or do it unprofessionally, but to hire remote developers and do well, a soft skills assessment is necessary. The short but great guide to checking soft skills is by this authoritative [article](https://sprockets.ai/interview-questions-to-evaluate-soft-skills/{external}).

![soft skill ecdev](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/6/6/small_skill_8c711133a1.svg)

Next comes the hard skills check, which is a pretty straightforward step in hiring remote developers.

![hard skills](https://ecdev-cms-dev-ecdev-cms-ecdev-cms-bucket.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/7/27/banner_471d784c81.svg)

Finally, a 2-month evaluation period starts where the newcomer gets a deep dive into work ethics, and the company-established rules and gets a chance to prove themself as a credible team player. The goal is to give a higher complexity task in this period to either identify the talented developer with high technical skills or drop the underperforming developer in the early stage. A probationary period is a good and proven practice in software development, especially when hiring remote talents.

Tech companies usually spend some time in order to hire remote developers successfully, sometimes it can take weeks to close particular positions. If to do things right it's definitely possible to hire a developer or team and avoid the problems listed in this article.

## The biggest trap in hiring remote developers

What do you think is the biggest trap? To hire a low-performing developer with poor hard skills? Or maybe to hire a developer who communicates badly? But what if you hired somebody who delivers and communicates, and you even see the results constantly (e.g. new web flows delivered), but you feel something is still wrong you don't know what. You see new flows getting developed but their page speed is average, the developer is telling you there are no technical capabilities to make it higher, you trust them and say "Okay, I understand". Read further.

Later after 6 months of a relationship, you decided to give him a more complex task e.g. 5 out of 10 complexity, while in the past he did only easy tasks (e.g. 3/10 complexity). You see developer fails and you fire him away. Let's say later you were lucky to hire somebody truly proficient.

Upon seeing how a skilled developer got your complex tasks done, optimized speed to the utmost, you became amazed at how it could be done. Finally, the new developer makes a code review of your previous engineer and concludes there is a ton of poor code that needs refactoring.

So what is the biggest trap? That's when you hire remote developers guessing you evaluated them well but in fact, the developer is burnt out, they have a junior level with low growing capabilities and poor motivation. Finally, it results in wasted months of time and corresponding expenses, which were possible to prevent in the beginning.

What is the difference between professional hiring managers and amateurish ones? It is the ability to professionally evaluate soft and hard skills, and give the complex (10 out of 10) test at the beginning to properly identify the real capabilities of the developer candidate.

Here in the EcDev Studio team are only such talented developers who passed the evaluation, and we proudly call them vetted experts.

There is a specific set of rules to follow when hiring remote developers, to avoid a lot of known issues.

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What you should know about hiring remote developers

You should carefully consider the relevance of a particular technology for your business goals, development costs, and the risks associated with further support when choosing a technology stack. If you want to create a custom e-commerce store for retail, you can choose between WooCommerce and Magento platforms. Magento comes with more built-in features, however development is more expensive. Moreover, due to market peculiarities, there is a risk of failing to find good Magento developers when required (it could become an issue during further maintenance).

If you are thinking of using CMS such as [WordPress](/hire-wordpress-developers/), Drupal or Magento, I recommend you to avoid using ready themes and page builders. Use only custom themes and clean markup without auto-generated excessive code. Otherwise, you may experience significant performance and maintainability issues. Websites that we delivered on WordPress ([https://picupmedia.com/](https://picupmedia.com/{externalnofollow}), [ https://www.ratesandmoney.com/](https://www.ratesandmoney.com/{externalnofollow})) have excellent load speed mostly because they are custom-made (without the use of ready themes and page builders).

If you consider using back-end frameworks, the most popular are Django, [Express](/hire-node-developers/), [NestJS](/hire-node-developers/), Laravel and Spring. The most popular front-end frameworks are Angular, Vue.js, and [React library](/hire-react-developers/).

As mentioned above, instant site speed is essential. A significant performance indicator is TTFB value (time to the first byte). In CMS-based sites, the only way to avoid delays is the proper use of server-side caching, which caches the entire back-end, including database queries and page response. A proper mechanism for updating the cache should also be implemented based on both schedule and content updates by the admin. With framework-based websites, it is easier to achieve the good TTFB. It is often enough to follow standard coding practices and have NGinx or Apache configured correctly.

Avoid using shared web hosting services (like GoDaddy or Hostgator). Use only reliable cloud servers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Digital Ocean. Of course, you will need the qualified staff to set things up on a clean Linux server, but for sure, you can't let such a detail as web hosting prevent you from fulfilling your business goals. In my other article [a guide to choosing and configuring high availability WordPress hosting](/blog/guide-to-choosing-and-configuring-high-availability-wordpress-hosting/) I've described how people without deep technical skills can set up a reliable WordPress hosting on AWS.

Whenever possible, use cloud infrastructure. For example, if your website is equipped with a search feature with autocomplete functionality, you can integrate AWS Elasticsearch and achieve immediate search results or auto-suggestions on your website. Instead of utilizing your servers' space to store large files, use AWS S3.

Use CDNs (content-delivery networks) such as Cloudflare and Amazon Cloudfront. This method allows your heavy content (e.g. images, videos) to be distributed across multiple servers in different countries, reducing distance latency and allowing your visitors to access this heavy content almost immediately. A Cloudflare Pro plan can also store HTML output in multiple locations, not just heavy content like images and videos.


Recommendations regarding technology choice to organize web development correctly.

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The importance of right technology choice in web development

A couple of years ago, we started working with an Australian company, a supplier of B2B services for the jewelry industry. Their idea was simple: provide retouching services for jewelry product photos so they look professional.

The company initially came to us with a small website and small client flow. Today, the company is widely successful and scaled up to provide its services worldwide.

I’m going to tell you some mistakes that were made early on, but could have positioned this business for its current success much sooner, if solved earlier.

Read on to find out if you’re following the best practices.
#### Problem 1: The website was incredibly slow and defective
It's great that our client decided to change their website developer, but why do companies like this wait for so long? In most cases, a client doesn’t have benchmarks set which can inform them if their website is functioning properly or not. Instead, they hope for the best outcome.

If you have a buggy site that runs at a snail's pace and your developer can’t resolve this after multiple attempts, they most probably lack the technical skills needed to complete this task. This is usually a strong indicator that you should terminate the contract with the developer and start looking for a new one.

Don’t fall into the trap of hoping that problems will get resolved on their own. You need to be proactive and intervene. To learn how to avoid such situations, check out my other article: [what you should know about hiring remote developers](/blog/what-you-should-know-about-hiring-remote-developers/).
#### Problem 2: The website was poorly designed and complicated to use
Too often, [UI/UX design](/hire-ui-ux-designers/) is an afterthought. In the case of my client, the company’s website was too difficult to navigate and use. That's because the website was not created with the user experience in mind.

The result? A lot of lost visitors who could have been potential buyers left the site without giving it a second thought.

First impressions are important so you should take your time finding a designer who can deliver a website that drives engagement and motivates visitors to take action. Carefully vet your talent to ensure they can craft a site that provides the best user experience possible.
#### Problem 3: Having an ineffective sales funnel was a problem for the company
This is a problem for tens of thousands of businesses across the globe — not just our client. Business owners expect visitors to buy products or services from their website, but visitors lack the motivation to even scroll down and continue reading.

An effective sales funnel builds a chain of user actions to smoothly warm up interests instead of expecting clients to buy on the first visit.

Our client implemented a sales funnel that incorporates warming leads, and their sales saw an immediate jump. Yes, it’s more complicated, but the rewards are much greater.
#### Problem 4. The company picked the wrong web hosting service
I’m going to write an extended post on this area later. For now, I’ll just say that choosing shared web hosting (the cheapest one) is one of the most common mistakes that businesses make. Unfortunately, selecting the wrong host can hamper a business ability to execute their planned goals.

Many business owners use websites built with [WordPress](/hire-wordpress-developers/), and use WP-managed web hosting (e.g., WPEngine, SiteGround, etc). This hosting type is faster but it’s too expensive to host several websites under the same account. The ideal hosting is to use cloud server instances (e.g., AWS EC2 or Digital Ocean) with a custom configuration.

Setting up cloud server instances requires a one-time expense for a DevOps expert to configure everything properly. But after setting it up, it only costs about $40 per month to have strong hardware, host unlimited amounts of websites, and maintain higher speed than with other hosting types I mentioned earlier.

I have more content in the pipeline that I’ll continue to release in the near future. Follow this blog to receive upcoming insights on how to cut down on waste.


The story about Australian business that struggled for 2 years before blowing up.