Introduction

Container bundles up the OS and microservice runtime environment such as source code, dependencies, system libraries, etc. For configuring and coordinating (orchestrating) the containers, we have plenty of tools like Kubernetes (including tools like AKS, EKS, and GKE) and ECS. On the other hand, multicluster management involves handling multiple k8s clusters in an environment. For this, we have tools like rancher and kubesphere. In this article, Kubernetes deployment through Istio and Rancher multicluster management is covered Istio is an open-source service mesh that layers transparently onto existing distributed applications. Istio’s powerful features give an efficient and uniform way to secure, connect, and monitor services. Rancher is an open-source software stack for teams adopting containers. It combines everything the organization needs to adopt and run in production. As it was built on Kubernetes it allows DevOps teams to test, deploy and manage the application in a lightweight framework.

Overview of Kubernetes Deployment through Istio

Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Istio extends Kubernetes to establish a programmable application-aware network using the powerful Envoy service proxy. Working with both Kubernetes and traditional workloads, Istio brings standard, universal traffic management, telemetry, and security to complex deployments.

How system Works

Sample workflow for Istio

Architecture Diagram for Rancher

What are the best features of Istio and Rancher

• Service Mesh

• Way to control how different parts of an application share data with one another

• Secure service-to-service communication in a cluster

• Automatic load balancing for HTTP

• Fine-grained control of traffic behavior

• Provides mutual TLS encryption, and authentication, authorization tools to protect services and data

• Observability - Monitoring, Logging, Tracing

Features of Rancher

• The users can deploy an entire multi-container clustered application from the application catalog with a single click of a button

• The deployed applications are managed using automated upgrades to the newer version of the application

• Rancher contains the distribution of popular container orchestration such as Docker swarm, Kubernetes, and Mesos

• Infrastructure services include networking, storage, load balancer, and security services

• Users interact with ranchers using a command-line tool called rancher-compose. It enables users to deploy multiple containers and services based on Docker compose templates on Rancher infrastructure. The rancher-compose tool also supports the docker-compose.yml file format.

• Interactive UI for managing tasks and maintaining clusters

 

Introduction

Video on Demand platform delivers direct fast and high-quality transactional video to its customers to watch on TV or PC. It helps users to access online content from video libraries. Users can watch the videos according to their own convenience from any device. VOD is a dynamic feature and is offered by Internet Protocol. It is transmitted through Real-Time Streaming Protocol. It is the future of online content delivery.

Overview of market share

The global video-on-demand market size is projected to reach 159.62 billion USD by the end of 2027. The worth of the VOD market was USD 53.96 billion in 2019 and will exhibit a CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period, 2020-2027. This information was published by Fortune Business Insights. Smartphone penetration is increasing across the world which will create several opportunities for market growth. The availability of low-cost cloud platforms will also be a favor for market growth. VOD is gaining popularity over the last few years.

How VOD Works

In VOD the video content is stored on a server in digital form. When a User makes a demand request, it is compressed and transmitted through the internet. Then at the user’s end, the video is again decompressed, decoded, and stored on a video server in the user’s device. Here, the user has full control of the video. Video can be watched instantly, fast-forwarded, rewinded, or paused. These capabilities are available only in VOD and not in other traditional methods. These videos can also be downloaded and watched later. A library contains all videos in uncompressed format. Transcoders are used to compress videos before transmitting them through the internet.

What are the best features to have in VOD

Access for Multiple Users

Multiple users should be granted access to view the video contents. Enough security measures need to be handled to make sure that the video content is available only to the intended Audience and not to external people

Multiple viewing options

Users should have multiple viewing options to view them on a wide range of devices. When users have many options they will show more interest in viewing the videos

Recording Live Events

The Live events can be captured, edited, and recorded. This can be stored in the video content library for the ease of access to the User

Video Analytics

This will help to analyze which videos are most watched, which videos are popular, and what type of devices are used for watching. This will help to make business decisions

User interactive

The videos should be made user-interactive. For example, for education-related videos quizzes can be inserted. Surveys can be included to get feedback about a product from users

What are the Benefits of VOD

There are multiple benefits of VOD. Few of them are listed here.

• The videos will be available in the library for a long period of time. Users can access the video at any time even after years. The content can thus reach a large audience.
• The user has the option to preview, edit, add or remove the content in the video. Even effects or animation can be added to the video
• These videos can also be viewed offline. This will help people to watch it at their own convenient time.
• Cost-wise VOD will be cheaper compared to other traditional ones. In the case of VOD, there might be offer packages or discounts which will attract more users
• Also, VOD gives us total control of our content. The user has the flexibility to create his own content without compromising his creativity.

Introduction

The client offers deep and contextual application-layer visibility to remove the blind spots within distributed and cloud-native application environments, in a completely frictionless manner while being agnostic to the platform, cloud, environment, and workload type. The solution empowers information security leaders, cloud application security practitioners, and application owners with the visibility they need to address security observability, compliance, and security controls for microservices, API-based, and other distributed applications.

Overview of Challenges faced by Client

1. The client has run their pre-production application in cloud infrastructure and it costs high.
2. The client engineering team spent most of their time deploying their changes on cloud infrastructure for evaluation.
3. The client team faced more challenges in deploying their application in cloud environments and that cost 45% of their monthly budget allocation.
4. Client teams spend more time on deployment and testing in cloud infrastructure will extend the delivery time of the application.

How Current system Works

Enterprises today deploy perimeter-centric solutions, such as network firewalls, web application firewalls, and/or API Gateways. Some have tried network-layer micro-segmentation, container firewalls, vulnerability management offerings, or manual application testing. Other solutions either focus on one type of workload (e.g. containers) or are focused on data-in-use or data-at-rest and do little to secure against run-time attacks embedded deep within the application-layer components.

How we proposed system architecture

The client ideally needs an Infrastructure as a Code solution where the different topologies of system types are templated. A generic engine to generate/re-generate systems and infrastructures must be utilized. Following are some of the key considerations

1. The solution proposed is to create an environment like cloud infrastructure in local machines
2. Writing tests framework to make the client engineering team use for their Unit Testing.
3. We are using MetalLB for implementing network Load Balancer in K8 local infrastructure.
4. Implementation of microservices to simplify the deployment and improve the performance of the application. By using testing frameworks to deliver the flawless application in a production environment.
5. Containerize the microservice components to achieve the CI/CD process with the K8 cluster to reduce the time spending in deployment.
6. Provide scripts to automate the process of testing and deliver the application with zero bugs.

A MAJOR ENERGY player, multinational integrated oil and gas company, is one of the seven big oil companies in the world. The primary objective of the client was to deliver a unified solution for Azure Service orchestration for different types of projects like Web, mobile, analytics, and machine learning. The client has hundreds of projects with different architecture patterns running on legacy and Azure cloud infrastructure

Overview of Challenges faced by Client

1. The client has an existing architecture and system setup to support specific topology of applications in pre-production. The cost involved in building the infrastructure and the technical dependencies to maintain and enhance is too high
2. Industry-standard well-architected framework principles were not followed. The client is stuck with a solution that is not scalable. Ex: takes weeks to add support for a different topology of apps
3. Time taken to set up and tear down infrastructures is causing a huge delay in business deliveries and directly impacting the business deliveries and operational cost
4. Testing the service configuration and having a first-time-right infrastructure for each system type is a major challenge in any cloud provider

How Current system Works

In the existing system, the Engineer has to know about azure resources and every service to provide the resources through the Azure portal. This is a very time-consuming and error-prone way to create/update the resources with proper configurations. Also, there is a huge chance for human error in configuring any specific environment for a specific project.

How we proposed system architecture & metrics

1.  A simple Do-It-Yourself UI has been delivered to all the engineers. The engineers can just click on the UI and decide what type of system they want to build and drag and drop components.
2. A role-based system is set up behind the screens to control the generation of infrastructure as per the definition in AD(Active Directory) or any other provider
3. The opportunity was also utilized to identify resources in Azure that were causing a lot of overhead costs and maintenance costs. These were replaced with free open-source alternatives with recommended architecture standards.
4. Applications / Systems built are 100% configurable with adoption to best practices from industry standards including usage of vaults / KMS for secrets

Engineer Generated Architecture Pattern and Infrastructure

What are the Benefits of the proposed system

• Dependency on experienced and mature engineers to be always around to build systems is impossible and costly. We eliminated this need by 100%. Anyone without prior experience can now request/generate and manage infrastructure
• Cloud agnostic approach of engaging terraform ensured 100% portability for the client to repeat the same across other cloud providers like AWS
• Tested code for infrastructure ensures that the developers or dev ops engineers do not end up debugging the same issues. Over a period of 3 months, the reliability of systems improved by 60% and will continue to grow
• Modernization of existing systems as part of this opportunity also reduced unwanted licensing costs
• Time to market for the infrastructure was reduced from 3 weeks to 1 day. This is a major win for the client to onboard new customers and delivered direct business results
• Time taken for Change management and propagation of infrastructure changes has significantly reduced from a couple of hours to a couple of mins due to automation in place

There is a great demand for hiring remote developers. Remote developers are hired to fill up the talent gap, speed up the development process, lower costs, and for flexibility. Finding the right developer is not an easy task In this article, you’ll find how to hire remote developers, including the Hiring and Interview processes

Hiring Process

1. Define your Requirements

The first thing to start with, for hiring a remote developer is to identify the following:

• Project Requirements
• Technology Stacks for the Project and
• Details of Must-have skills and Nice to have skills

Using the above details, the appropriate job description should be created along with experience and skill level. The description should be clear and concise. It should be a true representation of the role. Then it will be easy to look for Developers

2. Various Hiring Options

There are various Hiring Options out of which three are the main hiring Options. Independent Contractors/Freelancers, In-house developers, and Sub-contractors Independent Contractors/Freelancers Freelancers can be chosen if it is a small project. Hiring freelancers will cost less for the company and they will deliver results fast. But there are few disadvantages in hiring freelancers with respect to their loyalty In-house developers In-house developers can be hired to work full time remotely as a part of your Company. The in-house developers can work on multiple projects too though this is a costly option Sub-Contractors Hiring sub-contractors is another option in which they can be hired from an Outsourcing company to work as part of your team. This method has a high level of security and is highly reliable. Either one developer can be hired or an entire team can be hired and payment need not be made at the initial stages

3. Choosing the Hiring Destination

You can search for hiring destinations across the globe to find the developers of your choice. Research needs to be done before investing in foreign app developers. Then there should be good communication with the developer to know about their previous works. Since this is going to be a long-term relationship like developing the app, getting feedback from the client and making improvements, adding new features, and so on the right amount of time should be invested in searching for the developers in the hiring destination. There are some popular outsourcing destinations that can be considered. With all these criteria in mind, candidates can be shortlisted

Interview Process

1. A quick background check of the short-listed candidate will be the first step of the Interview Process
2. Initial Screening can be done over the telephone to identify if the candidate can bring any value to the Company and also to find out if they can work independently and be a good team player
3. Then the technical interview needs to be conducted with technical questions from the technology stack presented in the Description. Technical questions can include questions about past projects, programming languages and frameworks, and software developer tools
4. Then the next step is making the offer. Pay details and all benefits they are worth should be mentioned
5. The last step would be the acceptance part by the Candidate. When the candidate accepts the offer the offer letter can be handed over to the candidate which completes the interview process

There are some common mistakes which many Organizations make while hiring a developer. Some common mistakes are,

1. Compromise on quality because of the low-cost package offered by a less skilled developer
2. Bypassing the technical discussion part for the candidate
3. Hiring a developer who does not have much knowledge about your business or services
4. Restricting Hiring options without widening the search for enthusiastic developers

These mistakes should be re-read while hiring developers and avoided in the future. Learning from mistakes will be a step towards success  

You can call your trip in the following criteria

• The passenger has pre-planned a trip and his travel
• The passenger has made no prior arrangement and this is unplanned
• The passenger is out on the road and looking for a taxi service

Sometimes passengers may look for companions to share costs but have a rest during long trips The main idea of taxi booking apps is to book a taxi in under 30 seconds easily. And the most convenient way is to connect drivers and riders via a mobile app like Uber, Ola, etc.

Here’s how Taxi Booking Apps work

1. Request - Passengers specify where they’re going, where they'd like to pick up and drop off passengers, and when
2. Booking - Passengers look through the type of trips, cars, and book a ride
3. Payment - Passengers pay in the app or cash when they get in the car
4. Rating - Riders rate the trip and leave their reviews

If riders choose to pay via the app, the money goes to the drivers' bank account from the time of payment within two days

Must-Have Features

Registration & Profile

Most apps ask users to enter their email, phone number, and generate a password. And it’s a good idea to offer sign-ups or ins via Facebook, Twitter, or Google as it saves your users’ time. Let users upload a photo, enter the name, phone, and car license numbers (For drivers only), add a payment method, and check their payment history As well as view ratings left, booking history, edit money transfer methods (for drivers), and postal address

Book a Ride

Passengers enter their destination, pickup, and drop-off points, then choose a driver among those who offer a ride. Riders always see the cost of the ride before they book it. At the same time, drivers should be able to look through booking requests and manually accept or decline them. Or set the app to accept all requests automatically. In case there are no suitable rides found, you may let passengers place alerts so that they will be notified as soon as a matching route is posted

My Rides (Passenger/Driver)

Passengers see the number of rides they’ve completed and their details—date, destination, car, payment details—in the ‘archived’ tab

GPS Location

In ride-sharing app development, GPS is used to detect someone's location. That's how drivers can set exact pickup and drop off points, while riders can see their whole route

Fare Calculation

The app calculates the cost for each passenger based on their number and travel distance. Here passengers choose how they prefer to be paid

• Online - The app transfers money to PayPal or a bank account
• In cash - Riders pay in the car before or after the ride

Admin Panel

Admin panel allows admins to manage users (search, block, check up an ID card), payments, reviews, reports, view statistics, etc

How to Monetize a Taxi Booking App?

Now, if you’re going to create your own rideshare app and make money with it, you should choose a monetization model. The most common are

• Paid advertising (users see third-party ads in the app)
• Reservation/cancellation fees for riders (passengers pay a small booking fee to confirm their intentions)
• Transaction fees for drivers
• Collecting a small service fee for every ride from passengers

 

Introduction

Health and fitness are always on the list of everyone’s top priorities. However, it wasn’t as easy to stay fit and on-trend back in the day due to difficulties associated with finding fitness coaches you would be absolutely happy with. Fortunately, since the digital era surfaced, the fitness industry has also gone through a digital transformation. Nowadays, there are different applications available under the category of fitness, and they are easily accessible for everyone. More and more people discover these applications and since then, apps for health and fitness have made a mark with different approaches ranging from cultivating healthier diets, different weight loss exercises with just one tap on their smartphones

Overview of Market Share

In January 2019 the Polaris Market Research published a study and presented a forecast stating that the fitness app market size is to reach $14.7 billion by 2026 and has an anticipated growth of 23% CAGR through the forecast period. On a Statista report, the revenue in the Fitness segment amounts to $17,963 million just this year of 2020 and has continued to keep growing rapidly. Hence, the revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate from 2019-2023 CAGR of 5.0% resulting in a market volume of $20,499 million by 2023. This means the fitness application market continues to grow and is expected to expand with different developments in health and fitness features

How various Fitness Apps work?

Diet and Nutrition Apps

This type of app works like a tracking device for a specific function such as eating habits. Users are able to log the food they eat, and the app helps track how many calories are included in the food they have logged. Water intake can also be tracked with this app. A feature that can be useful for this type of app is incorporating a barcode a scanner that will help relay the nutritional value information of the food choice

Activity Tracking Apps

This type can keep track of different activities or exercises a user chooses to do. Some are designed specifically for runners, cyclists, and exercise tracking depending on which activity the user chooses to do. The app tracks the distance traveled the number of steps taken or climbed, and calories that were burned during activities

Work-out Apps

This type serves as a personal trainer or a mimic of a gym or an exercise studio. It provides a specific workout routine or exercise for your fitness requirement whether you want to gain muscles or simply lose weight. Users can choose which part of the body they wish to work on like Full Body, Upper Body, Core Strength, and Lower Back, or even customize a specific workout

What are the best features to have?

Each fitness app has a different function and offers unique features for its users. However, here are the basic key features required for a fitness app to make it more user-friendly and accommodating Sign Up and Log In – This feature allows users to have the option of creating their personal account or log in through their social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email Personal Account/User Profile – Having a personal account or user profile helps in gathering more and specific information such as fitness goals, age, gender, weight, and height. This feature helps the app as well to provide a more effective and relevant fitness scheme for the best results Third-Party Device Connectivity – It is important that your fitness app works compatibly with as many trackers as possible. Wearable producers and mobile platforms provide fitness app developers with the opportunity of a broader chance of collecting and storing useful information such as heart rate, calories burned, type of exercises, and duration and intensity of physical exercise User Activity Tracking – This feature helps the user get a more accurate result in their fitness needs and requirements. Being able to track different activities can help translate the progress of users’ fitness journeys Geolocation – This allows users to create different routes for walking, running, and cycling. It also helps them see and track the distance when they run or cycle with the map provided by the app. Not only this information is useful for tracking purposes but it also gives a motivational boost Notifications and Reminders – It is important for users to have certain reminders and notifications to achieve their fitness goals. However, the time and frequency of notifications should be adjustable

How to Develop a Fitness App?

Once the type of Fitness app is decided, it is time to start with the custom software development process The Inception Phase is where you will define the scope of work, you’re collaborating with your team on the creation of a project roadmap, and planning sufficient resources with set budgets Technical Documentation and Design The business analysts and designers are preparing the technical specification of the product, based on the requirements needed for the application including use cases, platforms, user stories, wireframes, basic design, and a prototype of your fitness app Application Development Launching a fitness app for both Android and iOS users require mobile app developers specializing in these operating systems Quality Assurance takes place in the form of testing and bug fixing. Testing is performed on various devices. You will be able to see how your app works and if the features function as to how they are expected to do so keep in mind that business and development should work for hand in hand for the process to run smoothly from the definition of requirements, road mapping, development of UI/UX, front end and back end, quality testing to the deployment of your application, and support