Appify Securely Integrates Enterprise Data to Your Application: Scalable, Agile, Secure Application Building
When making bold claims that we’re bringing all your siloed data, software systems, and legacy technology together under a single pane of glass view, the first question most enterprises ask us is, “how?” The assumption is often that data scraping or multiple complex integrations are required to bring your application to life. The answer to how Appify brings all of your enterprise’s data into one place is simple: Appify connects and communicates with your important enterprise data and systems through our proprietary Appify Flex Connect that uses REST APIs. Let’s explore what this means and how it’s different from the typical modern application development solution for enterprises.
Appify is not a middleware solution – build applications for your existing enterprise systems with ease
Appify has been architected from the ground-up to easily connect to existing sources and deliver powerful apps quickly to any device. We are not a middleware or screen scraping solution and we allow enterprises to build applications on top of important existing systems without adding the complexity of middleware, or needing to move or duplicate data. With Appify, your enterprise does not need to go through the complex and expensive undertaking of ripping or replacing existing systems – you can leverage them all entirely through a brand new modern interface.
How Appify securely connects to enterprise data, software, and systems to display and interact within an application
Appify employs cloud-native architecture and focuses on achieving resilience and scale through horizontal scaling, distributed processing, and automation. We take full advantage of the cloud computing model by creating applications as micro-services and running them on a containerized, dynamically orchestrated Kubernetes platform.
Appify uses REST APIs to retrieve data remotely from various systems and call this data in your enterprise application to present to the end user.
What is a REST API?
API stands for application programming interface. An API is defined as a set of rules for how applications and/or devices can connect to and communicate with one another. A REST API, also referred to as a RESTful API, stands for representational state transfer. A REST API is an API that conforms to specific design architectural style principles. The implementation of REST APIs allow for the use of a universal uniform interface when interacting with or communicating with data and systems. REST API was created to set a standard so any one server can talk to any other server. They are commonly used in web and cloud applications.
To access an API, Appify relies on enterprise-grade security standards and supports various types of authentication that keeps your organization compliant and safe such as 0Auth, SSO, HTTPS, as well as end-to-end encryption.
- OAuth is a standard that applications can use to provide client applications with “secure delegated access.” 0Auth is an open standard for authorization. Websites that ask permission to share certain data with third parties once logged in through a certain application rely on 0Auth.
- Single sign-on (SSO) is a technology that combines different application login screens into one place. A site that allows you to log in with Google or Facebook is using SSO and you can access all your SSO logins through those platforms, as well.
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a secure version of the HTTP protocol that uses the Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) protocol for encryption and authentication. You’ve likely encountered HTTPS on websites with forms (such as our website, Appify!) or ecommerce.
- End-to-end encryption uses an algorithm to transform standard text characters into an unreadable format for any man-in-the-middle attacks and end-to-end ensures this process for communications from one endpoint to another. You may be familiar with end-to-end encryption in iMessage and similar services.
“REST APIs provide a flexible, lightweight way to integrate applications, and have emerged as the most common method for connecting components in micro-services architectures.”
IBM
Appify uses model driven design
We believe the long-term success of any software deployment depends on a thorough upfront understanding of the nature of data and designing the right object models to represent that nature. Appify is designed for a data model-driven design which means that you can easily switch out your backend system without affecting the application’s integrity. Triggers, notifications, validation can all happen at the data model layer.
Appify uses remote objects to securely handle enterprise data
The “lift and shift” model of moving, duplicating, syncing data across various systems and software tools is a big reason that huge continuous improvement or digitization projects fail at a rate of 70%. Appify does not move the data from your existing systems in order to create applications that leverage that data. Instead, Appify can connect to any data source that has a RESTful API through our proprietary Remote Objects feature that effectively mirrors the source system’s object model in the Appify data model. Appify Apps are built to refer to the Appify data model and data from the original source then passes through.
Appify uses multi-tenancy for application development
Multi-tenancy refers to when a single instance of software and its supporting infrastructure serves multiple customers, such as how Appify allows your enterprise to add seats for each user within your organization to the single Appify account. Each tenant’s data is fully isolated from the others even though there is a shared database and application. Each individual within your enterprise who has a seat on your application builder in Appify has their own dedicated instance of the database, configuration, and user management, and is securely isolated from other tenants.
Besides clear lines of communication between individual users and the application, business administrators use a combination of user logins, privileges, permissions, and roles (role-based access control) to manage their team members who are Appify users.
Appify’s use of Virtual Private Cloud provides top security for your enterprise data
A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a private cloud computing environment contained within a public cloud. Essentially, a VPC provisions logically isolated sections of a public cloud in order to provide a virtual private environment. You can deploy Appify inside your virtual private cloud as opposed to relying on a public cloud to store your information. Running Appify behind the firewall keeps your data and enterprise secure.
Let your customers securely build applications with Appify’s white-labeled Technology Partner Program
Building applications for your own organization is an exciting endeavour in digitization of manual experiences. Process-driven applications can also benefit your enterprise customers. Join our Technology Partner Program to offer our application building solution, white-labeled, as part of your software suite or build branded applications for your customers with ease.
