Enterprise JAMstack
Building a good website is hard, but speeding up the development, and keeping it running despite traffic surges and security threats, is even harder. So how is all of this possible?
To answer this question we will be looking at Enterprise JAMstack, so first of all what is JAM stack?
What is JAMstack
In recent years JAMStack represented a major trend in web development. If you’re familiar with modern web development, chances are that you’ve heard of the JAMstack. The ‘JAM,’ part stand for Javascript, APIs, and Markup.
- JavaScript is used in the browser as the universal runtime layer to add extra functionality and dynamic behaviour.
- APIs replaces the database and fetch everything you need directly from the services required.
- Markup serves the actual website content and HTML needed.
Together these technologies form a revolutionary new way to build websites that don’t rely on traditional web servers. They will all be handled in a decoupled architecture with a clear split between server-side and client-side.
In fact, the main idea behind building JAMstack websites and applications is to push as much of the load as possible away from the server and on to the client. By doing so, it dramatically reduces the amount of requests sent to a server and thus eliminates a lot of the waiting time that comes with a server handling a request and sending it back to the client.
Main Benefits of JAMstack
Switching to new tech is always a challenge, but most of the time it is worth it. So to help you decide, let’s unearth the main benefits of JAMstack websites.
- Performance — There are at least two reasons for better performance in JAMstack websites. First, you are serving pre-rendered static files, which aren’t generated on the spot. Second, JAMstack uses CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) which allow users around the globe to have the best user experience.
- Scalability — Another reason to sing the praises of CDNs is that they are almost endlessly scalable. Thus, if a product goes viral, the load increase won’t be an issue. This is because JAMstack sites always demonstrate great performance, no matter how many visitors use it at once.
- Security — With the JAMstack architecture, there isn’t a built-in server and database. Instead, the server-side processes are handled by third-party services (APIs), making it harder to find vulnerabilities.
- Cost — CDN hosting is much cheaper than traditional options. Besides, without plugins and built-in databases, you can reduce operational and development costs.
Challenges when it comes to Enterprise
- Visibility: Building websites for enterprise level is challenging for a few reasons. One of the most difficult parts of building enterprise is not building the site, it’s keeping everybody who’s working on the project aligned. When it comes to complex or large scale projects, ensuring consistent standards across internal and external teams is key. Otherwise, the team will have trouble to keep track of the development and this will reduce productivity.
- Consistency: A lot of time is spent on making things work and ensuring the different teams are aligned. What’s exciting about this approach is, it creates better boundaries so it’s less likely for developers to break each other’s code. That is a powerful thing, especially when you’re looking at scale.
- Security: Another challenge might come when you’re dealing with sensitive data and enterprise security requirements. Since JAMstack websites are characterized by a static front end and don’t have dynamic interactions with a server, they are far less prone to attacks. However, there are still potential security vulnerabilities. When it comes to enterprise security compliance, it is necessary to conduct different types of security testing and it can be a tedious cycle.
Our Solution
In order the tackle these challenges, the Digital COE team came out with the SwiftSight solution. In light of the new UST branding, the Digital COE team helped to build multiple websites that support UST’s new brand guidelines. Therefore, the team has created a template lake with different type of templates for different use cases. So how does the SwiftSight solution help to overcome these challenges?
- Visibility: The Digital COE team created a unified operation dashboard to automate the provisioning of the websites, integration services, logging and monitoring, editable dashboard etc. Furthermore, the team planned out the roadmap to integrate various serverless accelerators and components. These would include additional microsite templates to empower new use cases, further collaboration with the serverless community and tools for integration. Using the unified dashboard will help to accelerate the process of development and management visibility.
- Consistency: These SwiftSight template lakes help to ensure design and compliance consistency throughout. Along with this, the team created pluggable API powered code snippets/libraries to enable new features. For any changes to a site the team can simply replace the component from other templates or add the pluggable API for new features. Using the SwiftSight approach helps improve the development speed and scale for clients and internal team.
- Security: To ensure faster development, higher quality and security compliance we utilize the CI/CD. The team uses this to cover automated build, automated testing, static application security testing and dynamic application security testing. All of this happens before releasing it to the target environment. The DevSecOps pipelines is created in flexible approach to be reused across SwiftSight templates.
In conclusion, the SwiftSight solution provides several serverless solutions, templates lakes and plug and play architecture. Other useful components and tools are also incorporated, such as provisioned templates via a dashboard and editable drag and drop dashboards. Feel free to contact us if you like to find out more from the Digital COE!
