In a traditionally managed app development model, the SaaS application provider controls their customers’ data so it can be ingested and processed on their data platform. This arrangement creates risk for both the provider and the customer, especially for companies handling sensitive or highly regulated data. In a hybrid app development model, the application code is separated from the data, allowing customers to maintain control of their data and eliminating data silos.
In this article, we’ll examine how a hybrid app development model works and why separating customer data from application code provides such compelling value for application developers and their customers. We’ll also explore an alternative, the native application development model, a related approach offering additional benefits.
What Is the Hybrid Application Development Model?
The hybrid development model's concept is simple: application code and customer data don’t have to reside in the same place. Connected apps are an example of how the hybrid concept works in practice. Connected apps allow the customer’s data to remain securely stored in the customer’s own environment, typically a cloud data platform such as the Snowflake AI Data Cloud. The application connects directly to the customer’s cloud data platform, processing the data there, and eliminating the need to move it elsewhere.
Benefits of a Hybrid Application Development Model
The hybrid development model is ideal for many use cases. A hybrid application model allows vendors and customers to leverage the following benefits.
Maintain full control of data
Traditional SaaS requires companies to surrender their data sovereignty, entrusting data into the care of the application provider. This arrangement creates risk for many organizations, particularly in industries that routinely handle regulated data, such as finance and healthcare. For example, it’s common for SaaS vendors to delete access logs and financial transactions after just a few months, causing potential compliance issues for organizations required to retain them for longer.
Unify siloed data
With data spread across SaaS vendor systems, traditionally managed applications create a patchwork of data silos, splintering the organization’s data across a network of disparate systems. With the hybrid application development model, each app connects to a single source of truth stored within the organization’s cloud data platform, enhancing collaboration and allowing organizations to achieve a truly unified view of all of their enterprise data.
Improve application performance
Modern cloud data platforms such as Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud are highly performant, offering on-demand compute resources for powering the most resource-intensive workloads. The hybrid application development model allows organizations to fully leverage these resources, eliminating their reliance on SaaS applications. With the connected application model, customers can make adjustments to their own cloud data settings to gain improvements such as more responsive searches and better dashboard performance. Since connected apps operate much closer to the data sources, data latency issues are a thing of the past.
Remove the need for complex API integrations
Traditionally managed applications provide access to customer data via an API, requiring the construction and maintenance of a separate API pipeline for each application. Organizations routinely use numerous SaaS applications, creating cumbersome and resource-intensive arrangements involving multiple pipelines, long integration backlogs and data sets that are never centralized. Connected apps access data where it lives, allowing organizations to focus their time on using their data, not managing a tangle of complex integrations.
Seamlessly analyze data sets across multiple applications
The hybrid app development model allows business users to analyze data sets across applications, conducting cross-application analytics that would be challenging to perform across multiple API interfaces. Connected apps free organizations from their dependence on basic SaaS application dashboards, allowing data to be accessed through data visualization and enterprise BI tools.
Improve customer access and profitability
A hybrid app development model provides substantial advantages for developers as well as their customers. Since data ownership remains solely with the customer, the SaaS provider eliminates the data sovereignty hurdle during the sales process. Additionally, with customer data stored and processed entirely within the customer’s system, customers retain responsibility for consumption and associated costs, improving profitability for developers.
No need to manage sensitive data
Managing and securing sensitive customer data is resource-intensive. Connected applications using a hybrid development model work with data stored within the customer's environment, subject to their platform’s security and governance controls.
Native Apps: A Hybrid Application Development Alternative
Native apps take hybrid application development one step further. With the connected application model, application code is managed by the developer and is separate from customer data. Native apps run natively in the customer’s accounts in the cloud platform, bringing the application code directly to the customer’s data. Using Snowflake’s Native App Framework, developers build their applications within Snowflake and deploy them directly to their customers’ data stored in the AI Data Cloud.
Native applications offer the same benefits as connected apps; however, with connected apps, part of the code is hosted elsewhere, while for native apps, the full application is hosted on the Data Cloud. With Snowflake Native Apps, customers can leverage Snowflake Marketplace to easily discover, install and pay for their applications, streamlining the procurement process and reducing the time needed to begin using an application from months to minutes.
Snowflake’s Native Application Framework also benefits developers, providing a convenient way to build, sell and deploy applications directly within the Data Cloud. SaaS application developers have access to Snowflake Container Services, including UDFs and stored procedures and can use Snowflake’s telemetry for ongoing monitoring and support.
Accelerate Application Development with Snowflake
Snowflake supports connected and native application development, providing a unified platform for developing, distributing and scaling applications. Snowflake eliminates operational burden, allowing developers to streamline their architecture to ship features including embedded analytics and generative AI faster. Developers can securely manage and deploy containers in Snowflake, building apps using their programming language of choice, then execute using configurable hardware like GPUs with Snowpark Container Services. With direct access to thousands of Snowflake customers via Marketplace or private listings, developers can offer their full-stack applications to a broader audience, helping them broaden their reach.