Azure seems to provide a cloud based framework to connect to ios app. The big advantage seems that Azure also has SDKs for Android, HTML, Windows Store and Windows Phone - this seems to help one to develop an app on multiple platforms and communicate via common Azure backend. The Azure site gives a a simple example to crate a XCode Project (Prefabricated by Azure ) that will help you communicate to backend Azure via POST.
This seems a good idea for a starter. However if you want to develop a app that scales to millions of instances, will it work? Whatsapp and facebook have their own proprietary backend.
The background app I am thinking of: will have to work both person to person and also business to business. Person to person cab be hosted on any platform, ordinary user does not care. However when the app is business to business, most of the businesses would like to host the app on windows platform and hence Azure will be preferable.
My Questions:
is it worthwhile to explore keeping in view of app with plans to scale into millions of instance. Microsoft can limit the API scope between Azure and iOS and control, so the app now will be at the mercy of Microsoft api. Further you may be limited to use SQL and get into licensing issues for SQL, Azure, etc - I would like to know the repercussions.
If not, does IOS offer similar framework that will allow the app to communicate to other mobile OS’es like Android. If so what is it?
(3) If both 1 and 2 are not recommended, then what is the third option? This will probably give the flexibility with open source databases and APIs.
Can someone please respond so theis will help plan the app’s future scalability and viability.
