Your point of contact for quick, actionable insights into technology and business.
4.8.2021
7
min read
According to statistics, 39% of developers used Flutter and 42% of developers used React Native in 2020. Both are very powerful open-source platforms. They support the concept of a single codebase across Android, iOS, and the web. The frameworks provide fairly fast programming and bug fixing for developers. Let’s discuss Flutter vs React Native in detail.
RN is quite mature, which means that most, if not all, popular developers support it. When it comes to packages, RN is on top because it has more packages than Flutter, although quantity doesn't always mean quality. It also supports hot reloading, which greatly improves the development process.
However, Flutter is gaining traction pretty quickly and many important packages are already available for public use. The official Dart website offers over 1,450 Flutter packages.
Both frameworks can boast:
Let's find out pros and cons related to both frameworks.
What about Flutter pros and cons?
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
And now you may ask: “what are the pros and cons of React Native?”
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
Flutter scored 121 thousand stars on Github and in 2020 entered the top three most popular frameworks.
Flutter top 5 companies:
RN has an active developers community. It has almost 96k stars on Github.
Top 5 companies using React Native:
Flutter and React Native are the best candidates for multiple platform app development initiatives. However, Flutter is more modern than React Native, but Flutter can provide you with high-performance applications that are compatible with multiple platforms.
Are you looking for a Flutter mobile app development company? Or, maybe React Native app development company? Then Axisbits is a perfect choice for you. If you need to create a reliable, scalable app, contact us. Our team will do their best to implement your business idea in the shortest possible time and at a reasonable price.
Flutter vs React Native. Which framework to choose when you want to develop an app fast and cheap
16.7.2021
7
min read
The modern business landscape is highly competitive. New companies that are eager to declare themselves loudly enter the market daily. New commercial concepts arise at a similar rate. Everyone strives to be the first and not to miss the opportunity to realize their ideas. But, unfortunately, not many people think about optimizing the company's business processes and begin to incur significant losses, sometimes without even noticing it.
One of the established cornerstones to success in such an environment is understanding the benefits of ERP system (enterprise resource planning system) and principles of its efficient implementation. Though the concept itself is nothing new and was developed continuously since 1960th, the last decade saw its rise to prominence. Successful managers of the world's leading companies constantly monitor future trends in ERP systems and implement them with appropriate flexibility. Let us figure out how ERP can improve business efficiency.
The current revision of the enterprise resource planning methodology results in integrated software that can aid in managing all types of processes related to manufacturing and resource distribution inside and outside the company. The main tasks of ERP systems are the coordination of the main functions of financial management, human resources, supply chain management, production, sales, and accounting.
The range of coverage for today's ERP systems is enormous. Moreover, they can be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM), professional services automation (PSA), and other software products employed in the company to create a unified ecosystem.
Below we list the core benefits of using ERP systems.
Expanding the accountability of business:
Improvement of customer service:
Increasing the inventory cost:
Increasing the speed of cash flows:
Saving costs:
Enhancing the security:
Improving the business processes:
Improving supply chain management:
One of the main pillars for improving ERP systems is the best trends from the world of IT technologies. Today, these systems already employ voice recognition, natural language processing, machine self-learning, etc. However, IT's subsequent development promises even more incredible and very effective implementations and improvements in such systems.
Keep in mind that depending on the scale and reach of your business processes, both developing the system from scratch and adapting one of the numerous existing ones, ERP cost can be quite exorbitant.
Organizing and maintaining a local infrastructure capable of hosting any capacitive software as complex as an ERP would require additional sizable funding. Not to mention that such hardware systems cannot be easily down- or upscaled. Another difficulty lies in organizing the remote access to facilities, most important in times of epidemic.
The solution to this problem has been found in recent years and develops steadily and surely. This is cloud hosting. Modern platforms such as Google Cloud Computing, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Cloud Services are developed to support such a scenario. Moreover, container virtualization and elastic computing allow increasing or decreasing the provided computing resources in real-time depending on the load, reducing the costs to a minimum.
We are pretty far away from developing the AI capable of individual thinking. Nevertheless, even the current implementations of the artificial intelligence concept can analyze vast amounts of data, discover viable trends, and make robust, based predictions. In addition, self-learning routines can automate many routine tasks and at the same time reduce or eliminate the number of mistakes attributed to the human factor.
The main focus of connecting an artificial intelligence engine to an ERP system is to simulate human cognitive functions such as problem-solving and learning. This dramatically speeds up decision-making. For example, as one of the key ERP functions, accounts payable can be automated, leading to increased productivity.
The integration of IoT-capable sensors and other devices to ERP assists in the collection and assessment of vast amounts of performance and manufacturing data in real-time. This allows eliminating the need for manual data entry and automating complex business processes based on intelligent data processing methods. Leading companies today are targeting ERP systems that can very well interact with the network and make the most of the IoT.
Manufacturing ERP software and systems are already being widely introduced to plan, manage and operate manufacturing business processes at modern factories. Innovative manufacturing ERP systems are highly flexible, support integration with third-party software, and allow creating complete and solid business management platforms.
Current ERP systems help manage production, increase organizational efficiency through balanced resource allocation, and optimize consumption without compromising product quality and productivity. Such software is indispensable for any enterprise striving for the top in the volatile and highly competitive market.
In a volatile modern market, the benefits of ERP systems cannot be underestimated. In this article, we are discussing the benefits of introducing such software.
7.7.2021
7
min read
Similar to a living creature, any software product has its lifecycle. The software lifecycle is a set of stages that a product has to pass through over the entire lifespan. It begins with a business idea to be implemented in code and ends up with post-deployment maintenance of a finished software solution.
There is quite a standard list of the lifecycle stages widely accepted among software developers. The very technology of computer coding determines the list. But both the sequence of stages and the methodology of project management may vary case by case. Moreover, software product development methodologies keep evolving. And like in any evolution, different development methodologies have to compete struggling to be adopted by software developers.
Every product development methodology has its particular pros and cons. And this is a pretty delicate point since certain benefits and potential shortcomings can unlikely be determined once and forever. What an advantage for one project is a disadvantage for another one can easily be. Nonetheless, the pros and cons of the most popular software development methodologies are worth reviewing to grasp which method may fit your development process best.
Despite a lot of general information about the major software development methodologies is available on the internet, we would go into some peculiar aspects of them since the devil is in the details.
The following lifecycle stages of a software product are considered common across the whole software development industry. They may differ slightly project by project, but the difference is in terms, not in meanings. They usually reflect what developers have to do to let the product see the light.
The lifecycle shows what happens with a new software product over its development. But it does not explain how it happens. Various product development methodologies come into play to answer the “how” question. This is about project management paradigms making every particular development process to be unlike others oftentimes.
In general, there are two basic paradigms: a linear one represented by the Waterfall methodology and an agile paradigm composed of some specific product development methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and the like. The linear paradigm is simple to understand since a straightforward step-by-step development process lies in its core. But the agile paradigm is less graspable on the go since the complexities of all composing software development methodologies differ in many critical aspects.
Let’s take a look at the two popular agile methodologies of product development Kanban and Scrum to grasp how the agile paradigm brings benefits to both developers and their customers.
The Kanban word means a “sign” or a “note” in Japan. The Kanban system is rooted in Toyota car factories. Japan managers implemented boards with notes to visualize a special approach aimed at improving their enterprise inventory system. The main goal was to reduce both waste and downtimes. Over time, the successful approach has found numerous implementations in various sectors.
In the software industry, Kanban is accepted as a method of improving development processes. It is one of the elements of the Agile philosophy having the so-called Manifesto For Agile Software Development in the background. Values indicated in the Manifesto are applicable to almost all agile software development methodologies including Kanban, of course.
However trivial it may sound, the only final goal of Kanban is to release a high-quality finished product in time. Kanban begins with a board with notes to make all processes visually graspable for the whole team. Both a real (material) board and its virtual analogs (such as Trello, for example) might fit. Each teammate gets access to the board to see the current status of one or another task at any moment.
Every project has its own work plan consisting of particular stages. The stages should be specified in columns on the board. The number of the stages can vary from project to project as well as their names can be arbitrarily selected. The most crucial is to keep the sequence of stages unchanged. Such a sequence is named the Flow in Kanban. The flow of a typical IT project might include the following sequence:
“pending - assigned - under prototyping - in development - under testing - finished - under maintenance”.
The Kanban notes containing certain tasks should move over the flow through stages. The Kanban board enables developers to run several projects simultaneously. Notes of different colors can reflect different projects. However, a board with notes alone is not enough to make Kanban work. The teammates should know how to play the game.
Kanban implies all teammates working as a single mechanism. If someone does not keep pace the entire project suffers. Since the complete workflow is visualized on the board, all teammates can assess their own contribution to the project’s value. The agile philosophy inherent in Kanban has no hard rules but instead, there are some basic Kanban principles to be reckoned with.
Achieving great results with the Kanban methodology is possible if the team’s workload is properly maintained. It is important to quantify the tasks your team can actually handle within a fixed time frame. The Kanban visualization is here to help. It represents a holistic picture of the project that allows realizing how to improve its individual elements.
Some experts rightfully consider Kanban as a transitional methodology in moving from the linear Waterfall to a very distinct agile method such as Scrum. Even though both Kanban and Scrum belong to agile software development methodologies, Kanban is a little bit softer in many aspects: no meetings are held, cross-functional teams are never compulsory, there is no division into roles in a team, no fundamental transformations in workflows are needed, etc.
When developers work under the traditional Waterfall methodology, a lot of time spent on documentation can be wasted after some error is detected at the very last moment. Assume the team realizes that it’s time to move to Agile. Why not Scrum if it is so popular today? But at the same time, certain fears are natural: what if such a radical transformation fails?
This is exactly when Kanban would be a good fit. If a team can successfully proceed with Kanban, further transition to Scrum is worth trying. But in many cases, the progress achieved with Kanban appears sufficient. Thus, Kanban benefits include a smooth transition to agile software product development inter alia.
An agile methodology of software development is meant when we talk about Scrum. But this is not completely correct. To be precise, an agile software development methodology can be built upon Scrum practices. That's why my Scrum may appear very different from your Scrum. Hence, Scrum is kind of an agile methodology squared: it offers an agile approach to the very agile paradigm. But first things first.
In contrast to Kanban, Scrum begins with specific roles to be assigned to some responsible teammates. They have to play the roles in a very unequivocal manner. The scope of responsibilities of the roles is probably the only hard rule in Scrum. What happens next belongs to the flexibility and creativity of your teammates. The basic Scrum roles imply the following:
Scrum goes with special development periods called Sprints (2 - 4 weeks each, usually). Every Sprint has its specific purpose. Ideally, each Sprint ends up with a new version of the developed product.
Before a Sprint starts, a collective Sprint Planning happens to consider which task from the Product Backlog can fit a particular Sprint Backlog. The goal of every Sprint acts as a motivator. The scheme is simple: fulfilling Sprint tasks indicated in Sprint Backlogs result in achieving Sprint goals.
Every day, the entire team holds a special meeting called Daily Scrum at which all teammates share their plans, achievements, and hurdles they face. The meetings are aimed at figuring out both the status and progress of each Sprint.
When a Sprint is over, two more meetings are held: Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. They help teammates assess their efficiency in the completed Sprint as well as forecast the desirable efficiency in the future Sprints.
Scrum is customer-centric. Customers can amend their requirements at any moment. Even though Scrum does not guarantee the fulfillment of the requirements, the very opportunity to make changes along the way is very attractive for many customers.
Scrum allows saving time through the exclusion of non-critical activities. This software development methodology offers a potentially viable product at the end of each Sprint.
Scrum is focused on self-sufficient teams capable of accomplishing their tasks with no excessive coordination. This is especially appealing to small companies and startups since no special management staff needs to be hired.
Sometimes, the very customer-centric emphasis of Scrum counteracts the Scrum principles. Customers do not and should not care about the internal rules of the team. Especially when the rules limit the customers’ desires somehow. Scrum belongs to the agile philosophy which implies neither communication plans nor risk response strategies. Thus, no formal resistance to violations of Scrum rules is possible.
Another drawback of Scrum lies in the multifunctional structure of teams. The reduced coordination costs cannot offset more complicated and expensive staff recruitment oftentimes. In addition, some extra resources for training and motivation of the team may be essential. In certain circumstances on the labor market, a fully-fledged Scrum team appears to be impossible to employ.
Whatever is done in software development is done for better efficiency. Software product development methodologies are no exception. The traditional linear methodology (Waterfall) still remains appropriate for large projects having unlimited time frames. But the beauty of agile methods is occupying more and more small and middle-sized software teams.
Both Kanban and Scrum described above reflect the agile philosophy in terms of innovative and efficient workflows that contribute to software product development. Kanban is easier to adopt while Scrum is more revolutionary. Kanban is less radical to provide the transition from a linear paradigm to an agile one. Scrum offers an utmost customer-centric vision of the development process in which quite compact development teams move from Sprint to Sprint.
Both above-mentioned software product development methodologies have their specific pros and cons but the very agile philosophy staying in their background enables software development companies and their clients to benefit a lot from the improved workflows. This is essential for custom software product development services provided by contemporary software vendors.
Contact us today to make your project meet the best agile practices of nowadays. Our professional project managers can establish your development process through the individually selected agile methodology that best corresponds to your project.
Enhanced efficiency of software product development is what agile methodologies are created for. Study pros and cons of the two popular ones Kanban and Scrum together with Axisbits
28.7.2021
7
min read
The world of the early third millennium is essentially a digitalized one. Moving within the mainstream of Industry 4.0, human civilization is increasingly introducing novel IT advancements into an ever-broadening number of domains – from shopping and entertainment to education and healthcare. The financial sector is no exception, employing a whole range of fintech solutions that shape the contours of digital transformation in financial services.
The contemporary financial industry is undergoing robust digitalization. This vibrant transformation drive has been conditioned by the rapidly evolving business landscape in the realm. The breakneck pace of modern life urges people to exploit all opportunities high-tech achievements provide to streamline and facilitate handling their finances. We quickly got used to 24/7 access to mobile payments and digital banking, budgeting and wealth management, insurance and small-ticket loans, money transfers and crowdfunding, and many other services available just in a few clicks on our smartphones or desktops.
The demand for e-services in banking and finance was considerably boosted by the vicious onslaught of the global pandemic. Being marooned in their lodgings intermittently for close on a year, 57% of people have switched over to the remote modus operandi in getting banking services – a tendency that reigns supreme practically in all spheres of our life.
Consequently, brick-and-mortar financial institutions had no other choice than to take the next normal in its stride in order not only to stay precariously afloat but to thrive, outperforming their rivals in the oversaturated and highly competitive niche. So, it is no wonder that fintech product development is on a steep rise which is only going to intensify for years to come.
What do financial organizations get by going digital?
Financial organizations have ever been under the high threat of cyber attacks. Why? Because they primarily deal with PII – Personally Identifiable Information related to clients’ account data and credit card numbers.
Knowing this, cybercriminals use a whole gamut of techniques and tools to access this information exploiting security breaches, using malware and ransomware, practicing phishing and domain infringement. Hackers’ methods are becoming ever more sophisticated, with malicious mobile apps, fake social media posts, and brand abuse gaining significant traction lately.
In the post-COVID world, security risks have been exacerbated by the extensive reliance of financial institutions on the remote working pattern, with personnel doing their job from home. As an AT&T research claims, this practice compromises security immensely since over a third of employees use the same device for work and personal matters, a quarter of them store sensitive data on unauthorized cloud apps, and a fifth of them share a device they work on with their family members.
What should be done to mitigate security challenges threatening financial organizations?
Cybersecurity is oftentimes threatened because of the human factor. So, banks must take steps to teach their staff the basics of security policy. Employees must be kept in the know about the current fraud and phishing schemes and be instructed on how to avoid them. They also should be taught to use only sanctioned devices, networks, and apps, not to open dubious email attachments, and report all suspicious messages and experiences to the company’s security team.
When you act reactively to stop security breaches, you are doomed to defeat sooner or later. Instead, organizations should forestall issues by embedding security into all their new services and onboarded software from the outset. And it should be done at the development and/or installation stage when all safety measures can be easily aligned with the organization's goals and workflow.
The starting point of this concept is that any access point to the network is regarded as dubious by default. Users, devices, endpoints – everything should undergo a verification procedure before granting them access to the system. Zero-Trust protocols condition entry for people trying to connect to the network from certain locations and using specific gadgets. In case the algorithms fail to identify the security status of an endpoint applying for access, the connection is automatically denied.
Harnessing IT advancements in the Internet-reliant world of the 21st century is imperative for modern financial institutions. Alongside promising weighty benefits, across-the-board digitalization poses a number of challenges, the most serious of which are related to cybersecurity. Such risks can be countered by introducing a vigilant security policy implemented by seasoned IT companies that provide digital transformation services. Axisbits is one of such vendors whose contribution to the digitalization of your activities is sure to bring value to your business by immensely enhancing customer satisfaction and streamlining your workflow.
Digital transformation in financial services must be implemented with an eye to robust security measures that can prevent sensitive and critical data leakages.
14.7.2021
7
min read
Software developers are never bloodthirsty, but oftentimes they consider killing two birds with one stone. The hunting spirit awakes in them especially when a need to build apps for different platforms arises. The present competition on the app market makes them think about how to gain more with less. Cross-platform frameworks come to the rescue. Why not try Flutter?
Flutter seems to be another toolkit that facilitates entering the cross-platform paradigm in mobile app development. The main objective of all rival frameworks such as React Native and Xamarin, for instance, is reducing time-to-market without compromising the UX in both worlds (Android and iOS). Mobile app development can cost different money: paying once is more feasible than paying twice. Business owners should have an understanding of both the idea of cross-platform development and the tools that can cope with it. Is Flutter really good at the issue? What silver bullets does this relatively fresh framework save for your pockets?
This post addresses the unique capabilities of Flutter to explain how your business can benefit from this advanced mobile app development tool.
Google released Flutter in 2017 enabling developers to create native mobile apps with one codebase only. This is an open-source mobile UI framework that allows using one programming language to build apps for different platforms. In fact, Flutter is more than just a widget-based UI library. The hybrid nature of Flutter includes an SDK as a toolkit that allows compiling your code into a machine code for both Android and iOS.
Flutter is created as a solution for the main problem of cross-platform development - a single common UI. Despite possible arguments for other available tools capable of representing a common user interface for different platforms (Xamarin, React Native, etc), they rather camouflage the real issue than solve it. In contrast, Flutter meets the famous motto of cross-platform development: write once, run everywhere. The motto is hardly applicable to all sorts of software, but it goes perfectly with UI. The issue had no straightforward solutions before Flutter for various reasons. And the reasons are worth diving deeper into the details because they can determine your business decision: is development with Flutter worth being invested in?
Native mobile developers can not afford to do what web developers can. Web developers can use HTML and CSS to create a website that afterward will be displayed equally well in both Safari and Chrome. Some may argue that there are mobile developers who have been writing a high-performance UI with a common codebase for a long while. They are game devs. Entrepreneurs start hearing bells here: mobile games are lucrative things. A relevant game-dev experience can give you potential clues on how to save money.
Angry Birds is made with Cocos2d-x, Fortnite is created with Unreal Engine. Why not use those engines to solve the issue? If they can display mind-blowing action scenes on a smartphone, they can definitely provide buttons and lists with smooth animation. The answer is trivial: the engines are designed for a different purpose.
When we play a mobile game, it does not matter how native UI looks. When playing games we almost never interact with geolocation, cameras, and push notifications. A game resides in its separate small world, and this is why game engines have quite a poor integration with operating systems. Keeping Flutter in mind, we should, therefore, ask the question:
The following capabilities seem to be compulsory:
The last feature is present for a reason. The thing is that a universal cross-platform framework that meets almost all our requirements exists apart from Flutter. This is Qt. But Qt runs with C++. Of course, C++ is a swiss-army knife on steroids, you can write literally anything in C++. But mobile front-end developers do not need such omnipotence in our context. They need a simple language interacting with the UI.
A potential business customer might ask us: what do all those great features do for my project? I pay for a finished application with no reference to programming languages, APIs, and other possible development nuances. That’s true, but we can ask the customer in response: how much are you ready to overpay if little to no cross-platform approaches are applied to your product? A decent cross-platform framework matters if redundant expenses are beyond your budget planning.
Now, we can come closer to Flutter as such to see how this framework solves the issues of cross-platform mobile development. And yes, we will give you relevant tips on how your business can benefit from all those things.
The cross-platform objectives of frontend developers are simple: creating interfaces indistinguishable from native UI while providing natively fast performance. Flutter meets the objectives completely. Anticipating possible complaints that the topic is not relevant to business aspects, we can tell you one thing: a native looking UI is what makes your future customers get immersed in your app. This relates to your future profits directly once it helps improve the retention rate.
The creators of Flutter have spent enough resources to make UI elements look native in the very framework. All Flutter widgets are grouped into the following three categories: Cupertino widgets, Material Design ones, and all the rest.
Widgets from the Cupertino section look absolutely identical to the native iOS ones. For example, you can use CupertinoDate Picker to feel the same smooth scrolling on your iPhone as if it is a native element of a native application that provides you with the same feedback from the Taptic/Haptic engine.
Flutter allows not just using native-looking elements for both platforms but creating your own ones. This is how the “everything is widget” paradigm works. You can create very complicated UI elements in short order. Since everything works with the same graphic engine that directly renders all the stuff for both platforms, you can rest assured that all UI elements will be displayed exactly how you expect them to be.
Customization is a modern mantra for any business, isn’t it? You can impress your future customers with custom widgets that look and feel like the ones created by guys from Cupertino. However small your business might be, you could stay on an equal footing with Apple in design! We’d say that can count for something.
From the perspective of rendering, Flutter does not care what API is available for a particular platform. It means you can create UI elements from the latest Android version for a 5-year-old smartphone. Of course, the performance issue of old hardware arises in such a case, but this is another topic.
Millions and millions of users throughout the world still own gadgets older than the latest Samsung and iPhone. And they should not be disregarded. Flutter can help your app cover the widest possible audience without jeopardizing the app’s functionality. Do not ignore the “every little bit helps” principle - this is about your income.
Also remember that the first impression matters. Especially when it comes to apps. Impress your customers with beautiful widgets and make them feel good with a native-looking UI. People’s appreciation will monetize your project at the end of the day.
Skia Graphic Library is the only engine to render UI for both platforms in Flutter. Google purchased Skia as a product in 2005 to turn it into an open-source project. Hence, the engine is mature enough. Even though official comparative tests on performance are not available, some private research shows Skia going faster by 50% versus similar libraries (Cairo and the like).
Performance matters for any software product. Saying that the majority of users will leave your app if it works slowly is not an exaggeration, it is the grim reality. It never hurts to know by which means Flatter can provide your app with outstanding performance.
That’s why we are talking about Skia that can interact with various GPU backends: Metal for iOS, Vulkan and OpenGL for Android. Significant productivity gains become possible for your app at different hardware platforms, therefore.
There are some interesting facts that implicitly demonstrate the right approach of Flutter betting on Skia in the quest for native performance: many C# programmers use the SkiaSharp wrapper for Mono/.Net x. Besides, the library is very popular among developers from the Xamarin community who use Skia for making custom UI elements.
Another feature that makes Flutter developers happily smile is Hot Reload. It provides instant changes in code without interrupting the process. This is about the development speed and your cost-savings after all: the ability to see the real-time impact resulting from changing of code eliminates redundant recompilation and boosts the process.
What is in it for your business? Flutter cares about your app’s performance, and a better performance means a better retention rate. Holding your audience’s attention always brings profit. Another aspect is the time you spend on developing your app: to put in simply, the shorter, the cheaper. Flutter allows you to reduce the time-to-market and, therefore, to leave your competitors behind.
It would be too presumptuous to call Dart the best programming language ever. No rigorous system of types, no functional “cakes” such as Pattern Matching, no immutability. You cannot create an operating system with Dart. It is not optimized for processing big data. The use of Dart is quite specific. It is like a fishing rod: nobody is catching whales with a fishing rod, right?
But Dart is a very easy-to-learn language instead. From the syntax perspective, this is something in between Java and JS. Like JS, Dart forgives a lot to developers. Both Dart and a relevant VM were originally designed as a replacement for Java. That’s why Flutter’s language is frontend-centric by default.
The language issue is directly linked to your project’s time-to-market, no matter how odd it might sound. The easier the language, the simpler it is to find appropriate developers. Another time-related aspect (and time is money, as we know) is the additional compilation procedure that developers have to practice unless the applied language allows otherwise.
Code in Dart can be compiled directly to machine code. That’s why its performance is comparable with the ones inherent in Swift, Kotlin, and Objective-C. Another advantage of Dart is the ease with which software development companies can find appropriate programmers. Developers familiar with Java and JS can grasp Dart in a matter of days. Besides, the Flutter community keeps growing over the world, and the trend does not seem to go down. Moreover, due to its infancy, the community is one of the most welcoming developer societies on the market.
How can it be applied to your business? Business for profit is usually far from exotic approaches. The easier the search for developers is, the less constraints your project faces. Both Flutter and Dart are no longer exotic for cross-platform development. They are simple, viable, and promising: exactly what your business needs to be successful in app creation.
Certain problems and shortcomings of a platform (or technology) induce risks resulting in financial loss suffered by your company. What aspects do we mean here in terms of cross-platform mobile development? The stability and performance of a platform, available labor resources (devs and admins), further upgrade & development perspectives for your product, etc. In this context, Flutter helps mitigate the risks through the following:
These and many other aspects make Flutter a decent solution for any business that wants to adopt new technologies and integrate the tool into your system. In comparison with the available cross-platform alternatives, Flutter bears minimum possible risks to your business.
The following properties of Flutter seem to be convincing enough to stop hesitating whether the framework is worth trying for cross-platform mobile development:
To put it briefly, Flutter represents the fastest possible way to create a well-working cross-platform mobile application that, in addition, feels and looks like a native one.
Obviously, it’s just a matter of time before Flutter becomes the conventional and even prevalent solution for cross-platform UI development. A modern business has no time to get sentimental - competition in the app market remains fierce. Only the toolkit that is capable of meeting the zeitgeist in cross-platform app development deserves to satisfy the needs of today’s digital entrepreneurship.
Contact our Flutter experts to boost your business with the most promising cross-platform framework on the modern market. We are taking care of your cost-savings: killing two birds with one stone is possible.
Is there a cross-platform framework capable of making mobile apps look and feel like native ones? Meet Flutter with numerous silver bullets in its mag
9.6.2021
7
min read
In the highly digitalized and largely cloud-powered world of the 21st century, the question “migrate or not to migrate” isn’t relevant any longer, since enterprises and individuals realize the perks of leveraging cloud facilities and hydrate the cloud by the dozen.
Today, average computer users and virtual machine (VM) owners are more interested in some applied aspects of migration and ask how to migrate WordPress to AWS or other similar questions.
Being a seasoned player in the sphere of cloud migration services, Axisbits considers it vital to make the most of migration by developing an efficient cloud migration acceleration program. But before embarking on the process, you should choose the type of migration you are going to undertake.
Migration types are distinguished depending on whether the VM is running when the procedure occurs.
Being a complicated and multi-faceted process, cloud migration is subject to a number of challenges.
While developing a comprehensive cloud migration program, you should pay special attention to the following bottlenecks.
What factors are crucial to help you out in selection throes? The three basic criteria to go by are the parameters of the cloud facilities, the scope of offered services, and available pricing plans. On balance, Amazon Web Services offers the best correlation of these aspects, so it is no wonder AWS takes the top position among all public cloud providers.
Although working with cloud facilities is always cheaper than keeping in-house equipment, infrastructure, and personnel, you should make sure even the lean budget is worth its price. It means utilizing to the full extent the rented environment and services and minimizing expenditures on the hardware and software that remain in standby mode. To do that, you should opt for the most beneficial pricing model and see which suits you better – paying for the infrastructure capacity or the period of usage.
Cloud migration is a serious endeavor involving the transfer of huge amounts of data that takes quite a longish time to prepare and implement. This process disrupts the routine workflow and poses the threat of continuous downtime. Consequently, you should shape your migration strategy in a way that keeps turmoils and hiatuses to a minimum.
Such a complicated procedure as cloud migration requires a skillful and experienced team to see it through. Approach the selection of a cloud migration provider wisely, taking into account their portfolio, expertise, and pricing policies.
Among all risks in cloud migration, this one is one of the most feared. Why? Because customers actually lose control of their cybersecurity and delegate it to the third party. However, measures taken by the provider are quite adequate to dispel all apprehensions. What should be stressed instead is security efforts during the migration process, when software and data are especially vulnerable to breaches and leakages.
Keeping these challenges in mind, you should develop your migration strategy.
Offering services both in cloud migration consulting and implementation, the experts of Axisbits recommend following a foolproof algorithm to successfully accomplish your migration project.
At the pre-migration stage, you must:
Map out a detailed migration plan.
During the migration itself you should:
At the post-migration phase, don’t neglect to:
Cloud migration is a complex process that requires meticulous planning and accurate implementation. To accelerate its smooth progress and accomplishment, it is wise to address professionals in the field who will accompany you all along the way and ensure the ultimate success of the endeavor at an affordable price.
The article contains tips on cloud migration acceleration program related to virtual machines and offers solutions to major challenges this procedure may face.
30.6.2021
7
min read
Do you know why many young businesses fail to find partners and investors? One of the basic reasons is having no idea about startup metrics. You cannot expect someone to believe in your business unless you do. It is not enough to be able to interpret them; you need to know what each number stands for.
Investors typically look for a great, friendly team, an awesome product or service, and outstanding execution. You can show it all in a single report that would contain key business metrics for startups. Find the most popular of them below.
It all starts with the main entry point to pitch a potential investor. Forget about meeting with potential investors until you define and estimate the major metrics. Often, you’ll face analysts with vast experience, so trying to trick them makes no sense. Here are some of the basic startup metrics.
These are users who interact with your goods or services over a certain period of time. The system tracks how many people are there per day and month. It allows you to gauge the stickiness of your product/service. Only the number of active users can tell how many people use your goods. Estimate daily active users (DAU) by adding the sum of original active users per day.
Shelling out plenty of money makes sense if you want to attract more customers. But it’s better to avoid having high COCA for an extended period of time as it may destroy your business. The formula is COCA = Total Spend on Marketing & Sales divided by the Amount of New Customers Obtained. This metric will help you see how much you spend on ads and promotions.
Average Sales Cycle Length
The obvious shapes of this metric identify serious issues with sales. It shows the period from initiating negotiations to closing the deal. The shorter it is, the better. Estimate by taking the total time between former contact and sale and dividing it by the quantity of sales.
This is the median amount of income from every client during the period he/she uses the company’s products or services. To estimate it, take an average buyer sale value and multiply it by the median customer lifespan. This way, you’ll see how profitable the project is.
Would you like to find out how fast your business spends the budget? This metric will help. It prevents startups from going bankrupt as they see how much they can afford. Just subtract the budget that you have by the end of the month from the one you have at the start.
If your business is more than one year old, estimate its annual recurring rate or at least find out the monthly rate. Companies that use such revenue models tend to generate profits from subscriptions on different bases. The basic formula used is ARR(t) = Σ Annual Recurring Revenue(t).
What is the right revenue model of a startup? How to attract investors? It depends on how much money you plan to raise and why. Today’s startups have several options.
It happens when one company buys the majority of another company’s shares to obtain full control over it. If you want some giant to absorb your business via a takeover, impress them by showing a deep understanding of who, how, and why is using your services. Prove that your site is doing well at converting customers. Retention rate and active users per day matter in this case.
This process stands for gathering funds as donations. The person who is raising the capital is called a fundraiser. They have to convince the potential investors of the product's usefulness, as well as specify how much money has already been raised and how much is left. Prove that you know what you’re doing and control the entire process.
In most cases, it is enough to showcase your business income statement for the recent period. Banks and private lenders are not very interested in the product itself. Prove to them that you have started obtaining traction and making some money. Qualifying for a traditional bank loan is a good idea in case you are sure that the required period of time would be enough to pay back your debts. Many banks have an enhanced commitment to startups. This might be the option for those who are looking for sums that do not exceed $500,000.
Before your first meeting with angel investor in person, research to find out more about the potential investor. You may decide that you need another partner, or that you barely have a chance. Hopefully, you have an executive summary and business plan ready by the time you meet potential partners. They wish to see specific numbers instead of naked facts.
Before the due date, get armed to the teeth with your presentation and pitch. Hire someone who specializes in this field or do it yourself, but just make sure to have a quick rehearsal. By adding passion, you can energize your story to impress your audience and grab their attention with a bang. A Q&A session is a must. While you can come up with some questions and answers during the meeting, it’s better to prepare some kind of FAQ for your guests.
We can assist you in that based on our extensive experience as specialists in the field. In particular, we can help you conduct a business analysis and build clickable prototypes or even full-on designs that will help you most favorably present your product to the most demanding investors.
Your key startup metrics may change over time. That is why it is necessary to re-calculate them before each new investor meeting. As the business expands, you may change your priorities, so the basic metrics to consider will also change. Dedicate some time to identifying your business and revenue model and adapting to changes. Show them that you really know your startup, and you’ll get the desired financial support!
Without estimating and knowing your startup metrics, you will barely attract any investor. Read this post to get ready with the necessary business reports.
23.6.2021
7
min read
In den kommenden Jahren werden Computer Vision-Technologien die übliche Produktion, das Bildungswesen, die Art und Weise, wie Geschäfte gemacht werden, und viele andere Prozesse bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verändern. Experten zufolge wird der weltweite CV-Markt bis 2027 auf 19 Milliarden Dollar Marktumsatz anwachsen.
Rasantes Wachstum wird durch die Einführung der Prozessautomatisierung und die Nachfrage nach Robotersystemen mit visueller Kontrolle angetrieben. Aber Sie müssen ein Team von Spezialisten mit den erforderlichen technischen Fähigkeiten zusammenstellen, die von den führenden Unternehmen der Welt umworben werden. Dies erfordert Zeit, Geld, eine klare Strategie und ein Verständnis dafür, wie potenzielle Risiken gemindert werden können. Angesichts der Komplexität der Aufgaben ist eine professionelle Beratung für Computer Vision die beste Wahl.
In diesem Artikel gibt Axisbits Tipps für die Auswahl eines zuverlässigen Partners anhand von Erfolgsgeschichten aus der Praxis. Erfahren Sie, wie Sie die digitale Transformation angehen und die wichtigsten Herausforderungen meistern können.
Computer Vision ist ein fortschrittliches Computerfachgebiet, das auf der Nachbildung des menschlichen Sehens basiert und es einer Maschine ermöglicht, Objekte in Bildern und Videos deutlicher zu erkennen.
Das weite Feld der KI-Technologie umfasst eine Reihe von Techniken, die es dem Computer ermöglichen, die von ihm benötigten Informationen zu extrahieren. Dies ist einer der Bereiche des maschinellen Lernens mit integrierten Konzepten.
Mit den Fortschritten im Bereich des Deep Learning und der neuronalen Netze hat es einen grossen Sprung nach vorne gegeben und CV hat es geschafft, den Menschen bei Aufgaben im Zusammenhang mit der Objekterkennung und -markierung zu übertreffen.
Um einem Computer das richtige "Sehen" beizubringen, muss man viele Daten sammeln und Objekte genau genug identifizieren, um ähnliche Merkmale und Zeichen hervorzuheben. Diese Ideen werden auf unterschiedliche Weise umgesetzt.
Erfolgreiche Beispiele für den Einsatz von Computer Vision finden sich in der Industrie, der Medizin, dem Sport, der Luft- und Raumfahrt, dem Finanzwesen, der Werbung und anderen Sektoren, was zu einem Anstieg der Nachfrage und der Zahl der entsprechenden Anwendungen geführt hat. Nachfolgend finden Sie einige der spannendsten Fälle.
Zusammengefasst ist Posenet ein Open-Source-Modell, das mit Hilfe von Computer Vision die Pose einer Person oder eines Objekts in einem Bild/Video bestimmt.
Die Analyse der Körperhaltung erfolgt durch Identifizierung, Lokalisierung und Verfolgung der Koordinaten von Schlüsselpunkten des menschlichen Skeletts. Die Lösung wird angewendet für:
Und diese Datensätze können Ihnen helfen, ein ähnliches Modell für sich selbst zu entwickeln:
Faceapp ist ein Tool, das ein Eingabebild mithilfe von Filtern transformiert. Beim Training verwenden Generative Adversarial Networks, auch bekannt als GANs, zwei neuronale Netzwerke, die gegeneinander spielen, um neue Daten auf der Grundlage der Verteilung der Trainingsdaten zu erzeugen. Hier finden Sie Datensätze, mit denen Sie etwas Ähnliches erstellen können:
Mit Hilfe der Technologie können Sie Personen in einem Raum oder einem Bereich in Echtzeit verfolgen, um zu sehen, ob sie sich an die Normen halten.
Die Erkennung einer Verletzung wird festgestellt, wenn das Objekt über das Begrenzungsrechteck hinausgeht. Um die Instrumente genauer zu machen, können Sie Transfer-Learning-Methoden verwenden. Es gibt auch verschiedene vortrainierte Modelle zur Objekterkennung wie YOLO und Mask R-CNN.
Forscher von Deep Mind haben ein KI-System entwickelt, das 2D-Bilder in 3D-Darstellungen umwandelt. Das generative query network kann Bilder aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln wahrnehmen.
Nvidia hat eine Architektur entwickelt, die die 3D-Eigenschaften eines Bildes vorhersagen kann. Facebook AI bietet ein ähnliches Tool an, das als 3D Foto-Funktion bekannt ist.
Und hier sind einige verwandte Datensätze:
Bilder, die von CT- und Röntgengeräten erzeugt werden, können bequem in interaktive 3D-Modelle umgewandelt werden, um sehr visuelle, einfache und dennoch tiefgehende Interpretationen von Patientendetails zu ermöglichen.
Nach den Forschungen der zentralen Radiologieabteilung in Wuhan können Deep Learning-Methoden am effizientesten eingesetzt werden, um zwischen Covid-19 und normaler Lungenentzündung zu unterscheiden. Die Datensätze von Kaggle werden dafür mehr als nützlich sein.
Sie sollten sich auch die Geschicklichkeit der Software-Ingenieure ansehen:
Sie werden vielleicht überrascht sein, aber genau das ist das Profil von Axisbits - wir haben Ingenieure, die bereit sind, die gewagtesten Projektideen für Computer Vision zu übernehmen.
Trotz beeindruckender Fortschritte ist die Welt noch weit davon entfernt, alle CV-Probleme zu lösen. Vor allem, wenn es um Computer-Vision-Projekte für Einsteiger geht. Aber der Trend ist vielversprechend, was der Grund dafür sein könnte, dass so viele Unternehmen sich für Computer Vision Consulting entscheiden.
Wenn Sie beschliessen, Ihre Geschäftsprozesse radikal zum Besseren zu verändern, kontaktieren Sie unsere Spezialisten. Axisbits ist ein Unternehmen, das sich auf die Entwicklung von Computer Vision spezialisiert hat und über genügend Fachwissen verfügt, um eine qualitativ hochwertige Lösung für jede Komplexität und jeden Zweck zu liefern.
Werfen Sie einen Blick auf Erfolgsgeschichten und vielversprechende Computer Vision Projekte für 2021. Erfahren Sie mehr über Computer Vision Consulting und holen Sie sich die besten Ideen!