5 Key Considerations When Developing Secure Chat and Video Conferencing Applications
Over the past two years, the speed of innovation around remote-first engagement has created incredible opportunities for those looking to develop consumer or enterprise apps requiring real-time communications. But regardless of the industry — from healthcare and education to connected fitness and virtual events — building a tightly integrated in-app experience with robust real-time engagement is challenging. Let’s look at five crucial factors you should consider as you develop secure, real-time chat and video conferencing apps that will truly engage your customers.
1. Global Scalability and Reliability
Unsurprisingly, your app needs to be scalable and reliable, whether you’re dealing with five, five thousand, or five million concurrent users. And it needs to perform well regardless of concurrency or location of end users. If these fundamental requirements of scalability, reliability, and performance aren’t met, many users might not be able to access critical functionality.
2. Robust Features
Chances are that your users will already have a preconceived notion of what to expect from your chat and video conferencing app, given today’s prolific use of remote-first engagement. For example, chat needs to be full-featured (similar to WhatsApp or Slack) and communications like audio-video and live streaming need to be high-quality. Plus, there needs to be flexibility to add other functionality, such as identity authentication and access management, user and content moderation, language translation, screen sharing, virtual whiteboards, and even chatbots for automated engagement.
3. Security and Compliance
One of your biggest concerns will be security and compliance. A “security-first” approach will help ensure that end users benefit from the highest regulatory security and privacy safeguards, including ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, SOC, HIPAA, and GDPR. Critical elements that need to be considered include encryption, localized data storage, access and authorization schemes, attack prevention measures, and any required third-party compliance certifications.
4. Futureproofing
Believe it or not, this consideration is frequently missed by development teams, who are generally tasked with solving the most immediate problems. Basically, your choices today need to be made with the future in mind, so it’s important to factor in long-term business goals and strategic objectives, as well as how partner technologies can help. Above all, investing time to understand architectural best practices to optimize your build will ultimately reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver the best possible end-user experience that scales with your success.
5. Visibility
Finally, once your app is in the market, you’ll need to know how things are performing. Having access to a real-time admin dashboard that provides visibility of usage and traffic stats will be essential for ongoing optimization. Data analytics and visualization tools will enable more accurate business decisions based on predictive trends and actionable insights.
Keeping these five considerations in mind, you’ll create a secure, personalized, and deeply engaging chat and video conferencing experience for all end users. Achieving your overall business vision is an exciting yet challenging voyage, combining cost optimization and managing expectations. That’s why it’s important to select a cloud technology partner who can provide expertise and experience on all fronts. With a consultative approach, SourceFuse implements the most advanced cloud services and partners with the best real-time communications platform providers, such as PubNub and Vonage.
Ready to start making your chat and video conferencing application a reality? Contact the SourceFuse team today — let’s chat.
Additional Resources
Check out these great resources from SourceFuse, PubNub, and Vonage:
Digital Transformation 101: Get More Business Value from Your Cloud Investment
UI/UX Application Modernization: The Heart of Digital Transformation
Using serverless functions to execute business logic on messages at the edge
Using Vonage Communication APIs for Voice, Video, SMS, and more
About SourceFuse
SourceFuse is transforming the way today’s most successful companies develop breakthrough roadmaps by leveraging cloud-based technologies. A leading AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, SourceFuse has delivered over 600 AWS implementations that boost efficiency, ensure compliance, deliver actionable insights, and lower total cost of ownership. With 16 years of deep expertise, commitment to digital innovation, service excellence, and customer success, SourceFuse enables enterprises through secure and scalable cloud solutions, leveraging their open-source catalog of microservices. SourceFuse has offices in the U.S., UK, Australia, and India.
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