Introducing Zoho Catalyst

As one of the most popular technology companies, Zoho has built and vertically integrated everything from applications, operating system, network infrastructure, app infrastructure, and even data centres. It has been investing in technology for a long time now. An important form of this investment was released in the form of Zoho Catalyst, a reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure that promises many features to the developers.Zoho catalyst is a highly comprehensive serverless development platform that can be used for power applications. It provides multiple serverless features that are considered important for building applications and other solutions.In essence, Zoho Catalyst is a serverless web applications platform that enables specific vertical applications to get developed quickly, tested, deployed, and even supported without worrying about global standards. Essentially, it sits at the very core of the serverless strategy and gives unlimited flexibility for digitalizing multiple manufacturing processes.Ever since the launch of Zoho Catalyst, it has empowered many developers to build services and applications. With Zoho Catalyst, you can turn your ideas into innovation. It allows you to build many common serverless solutions.Let’s have a look at them in brief one by one.

1. Microservices

Zoho Catalyst enables you to build modular, independent, and autonomous components that put the development process on a fast track while accelerating time to market. The developers can use Zoho Catalyst for accessing many out of the box services including sign up and authentication, search indexing, emailing, and push notifications.

2. Serverless Web Applications

Zoho Catalyst can be used to build powerful serverless web applications by crafting backend logic and using data stores, functions along with other components. You can then host them securely over the HTTPs with the web hosting of Catalyst.

3. Data Processing

Zoho Catalyst can be used to create many powerful data processing applications like data migration, ETL operations, cleansing, thumbnail generation, and many more using event-driven functions.

4.Scheduled Tasks

This lets you execute functions, data processing jobs, and microservices with the use of Catalyst’s scheduler. This helps in handling time-sensitive and periodic tasks for the applications.

5.Serverless APIs

The serverless APIs help in exposing backend logic to the first party and third party applications safely while using well-defined REST API endpoints. This further helps in improving security and advancing the APIs with the use of the Catalyst API gateway.

6. Intelligent AI Solutions

You can add intelligence to your applications using an extensive set of artificial intelligence and data science tools that are powered by Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant. This helps in creating AI-powered applications.

7. Mobile Applications

Zoho Catalyst allows mobile developers to quickly access backend data sources using the native SDKs and offloads intensive computer tasks to the backend using different functions. You can sign up and track users safely, gather the usage data, or debug crashes on mobile devices with the use of mobile analytics. In this way, you can also keep your users informed about using push notifications.

Developer First, Developer Friendly

Zoho Catalyst strives to offer a seamless experience to the developers which are the reasons why it has handcrafted tools with each kind of developer in mind. It has a unified interface that drives the productivity of developers and enables them to access all the important tools from one location. In addition, it also offers web and mobile SDKs and APIs for developers so that they can build serverless applications easily.The serverless development platform of Zoho Catalyst is such that the developers are able to host their web applications within the Catalyst along with managing distribution through built-in Mobile Device Management (MDM). Zoho Catalyst comes with extensive performance monitoring and metrics for tracking usage in real-time.Some of the ways in which it helps the developers are:

1. Speaks All Languages

Zoho Catalyst is a serverless web applications platform that creates serverless functions in the favourite language of the developer such as Java and Node.js.

2. Deploys from Anywhere

The developers can use their favorite code or give the online version a complete spin. The code can then be tested and deployed with the powerful command-line interface or from Zoho Catalyst’s site.

3. Seamless Development and Production

With the use of Zoho Catalyst, the developers can ship with confidence. One can use separate sandboxes for the process of development and production while always being sure to ship a well-tested product to the users.

Features of Zoho Catalyst

1. Compute

Zoho Catalyst helps the developers to compute with three main functions. They are:

• Event Functions The developers can automatic and event-driven solutions with functions that essentially respond to changes in the Catalyst environment such as file stores, cache, user management, data store, and much more.
• HTTP Functions Zoho Catalyst also enables you to build REST API endpoints quickly. The developers can choose between an advanced HTTP function that helps in processing requests and sending responses with the custom status body, code, and much more. In addition, you can also use HTTP functions to process string-based requests and responses.
• Cron Functions You can schedule functions to run at a specific time or at a recurring interval as well.

2. Orchestrate

Zoho Catalyst is a serverless development platform that also enables the design of workflows and functions.

• Circuits With Zoho Catalyst, you can design workflows and orchestrate functions for creating resilient business-critical tasks. You can also use features such as branching, fallbacks, retrying, and much more to create a perfect fault-tolerant system.

3. Storage

Zoho Catalyst is an excellent storage platform.

• Relational Data Store It helps in storing and retrieving large volumes of data on a powerful, managed relational data store. The catalyst data store comes with fine-grained access control so that security is taken care of completely at a database level for the applications and microservices.
• Filestore Zoho Catalyst enables you to store and retrieve user-generated content such as images, videos, documents, and much more at a great speed. The catalyst file store comes with great security so that the files can be more secure and can also be accessed by authorized users only.
• Cache Zoho Catalyst allows value-based backend caching that further helps in accelerating the applications and their functions.

4. Intelligent

Zoho Catalyst is a serverless web applications platform that is intelligence-based.

• Auto Machine Language You can perform predictions and forecasting with the use of Zoho Catalyst. It helps in solving complex data science problems with an easy to use Auto ML framework. In addition, it also helps in uploading large datasets for training your model and measuring its accuracy just as you go.
• Optical Character Recognition Zoho Catalyst is a platform that enables developers to use advanced optical character recognition that helps in scanning and digitizing paper documents, receipts, and other images.
• Object Detection With Zoho Catalyst, you can also detect objects in images with just an API call.
• Face Analytics The developers can use face analytics for facial detection in images and computation analysis of the face with attributes such as age, smile, and gender.
• Image Moderation Zoho Catalyst enables the developers to use image moderation for inspecting and identifying inappropriate and unsafe content in images, verifying compliance of user-generated content, and flagging, filtering, or even automatically deleting unfit uploads.
• Barcode Scanning Zoho Catalyst helps in implementing barcode scanners in the applications that further help in scanning standard barcode formats, and obtaining encoded information.

5. Other Services

In addition to all the services mentioned above, Zoho Catalyst also provides some other services. They include:

• API Gateway It helps in creating, maintaining, and publishing REST APIs from the HTTP functions and web client using the API gateway. With the API Gateway, you can also create custom endpoints, throttle the API endpoints, and add authentication to the API.
• User Authentication Zoho Catalyst offers the users registration and authentication for applications with just a single line of code. It offers many different options ranging from simple user ID and password to federated logins such as Zoho and Google.
• Web Client Hosting The developers can comfortably host their web applications and serve them securely over HTTPs. It is also possible to map the custom domain to the web client.
• Mobile Analytics Zoho Catalyst has in-app analytics, crash reporting, and usage stats for mobile applications which further helps in making informed decisions and shipping error-free and feature-rich applications.
• Mail You can compose and send emails programmatically to many users with just a simple API call.
• Push Notifications Zoho Catalyst also enables to send of push notifications to the users on both web and mobile.
• Logging and Metrics With advanced logging and metrics, developers can diagnose the app performance and stay at the best of their game.

Benefits of Zoho Catalyst

1. Simplicity

In general, app development can have a lot of complexity. However, with the serverless development platform of Zoho Catalyst, this can be simplified. You can test everything with multiple sandbox environments before taking apps to production.Catalyst removes any hosting and distribution problems. You can in fact host your web applications within Catalyst while managing distribution using the built-in Mobile Device Management (MDM).

2. Low Coding

Zoho Catalyst helps you in choosing your programming language including Java, Python, Node.js and Zoho’s relational datastore for quickly creating functions with the comfort of Command Line Interface or a chosen code editor.With Zoho’s Catalyst, you never have to worry about server and database maintenance or repetitive coding. You can leave the maintenance and any other complexities to Zoho.

3. Save Time and Money

You can develop apps and services in a smarter and easier way. Zoho Catalyst allows you to build your applications using the ready-made components that are otherwise available with Zoho while customizing the functional server-side components and integrating everything effortlessly into the microservices.This is a cost-effective and quick development process that saves valuable time and budget. In addition, Zoho’s Catalyst is priced competitively based on a pay per trigger model. You are likely to be charged only for the time taken by the functions to execute and components Catalyst API call.

4. BaaS (Backend as a Service)

You can get an easy access to served side components and pre-written templates from one interface. Zoho Catalyst helps in taking care of hosting, database, testing, analytics, integration, and cloud storage.This is while you focus on improving the user experience by modifying the programmable elements from the CLI in your terminal.

5. FaaS (Functions as a Service)

Zoho Catalyst offers cloud functions that contain intensive business logic. These functions are stored in one safe place. The developers can use APIs and libraries to call these functions whenever required. It provides server-side functions in Java and Node.js programming environments.The server-side functions can be accessed dynamically at any time and these functions can be developed easily with a single command. These functions minimize developers’ work by automating reusable behaviours and execute background processes automatically.

Conclusion

You can break new ground with the simplest serverless platform. Zoho Catalyst is a highly scalable serverless platform that enables developers to build and deploy world-class solutions without managing servers.Zoho Catalyst proved to be a strong tool to use in order to quickly develop and concept applications. The deployment process is well contemplated, with separate sandboxes for development and production, and the relational datastores is a lot different from the competition.Encaptechno can support you in the implementation of Zoho Catalyst. Get in touch to get a variety of components that help you in shipping high-quality serverless solutions first.