Azion takes pride in adopting the best practices in the technology market. Therefore, one of our primary missions for 2023 is to spread the adoption and knowledge about open standards and their importance for an improved developer experience at the edge.
What Are Open Standards?
Found on the principles of the acronym FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory), open standards are programming and communication standards that are open, programmable, and widely adopted, providing a basis for innovation and ensuring compatibility and interoperability between different technologies.
We must highlight that open standards are not a novelty created by the tech industry. ISO standards, known worldwide, exist as open standards to standardize conduct and processes in organizations and public entities based on a set of international standards.
Similarly, protocols such as HTTP have become the standard for internet browsing, being widely supported by browsers and used by web applications and web enabled devices, just as ECMA TC39 defines the standard for the world’s most widely used programming language: Javascript. Both are adopted worldwide, enabling companies and developers with the most diverse goals, using the most different platforms, to create highly compatible solutions anywhere in the world, for any device.
Why Adopt Open Standards in Your Project
By prioritizing the adoption of open standards, it is possible to program, import, export, and communicate with different solutions inside and outside your platform without specific training or certifications by the choice of your vendor.
Thus, the use of open standards brings several benefits to your project, such as:
- Avoid vendor lock-in
- Portability and interoperability
- Reliability
- Ease of finding qualified professionals
- Agility in application development;
- Broad communicability with third-party solutions and APIs
Avoid Vendor Lock-In
When you code using proprietary standards and protocols (as is the case with many service providers and cloud platforms), chances are those standards won’t communicate as easily with third-party solutions and platforms.
Thus, you risk having to purchase other solutions from the same vendor, even if there are cheaper or more effective alternatives on the market.
Portability and Interoperability
Similarly, using open standards increases your potential for portability and interoperability, allowing you to change your solution’s platform if necessary, as well as allowing it to communicate easily with other technologies.
By using open standards, you ensure that your project is compatible with other technologies and platforms, in addition to increasing the chances that it will be future-proof. That means yor application will not become obsolete with the constant developments and changes of the Internet, such as the increasing movement of widely adopting open rather than proprietary standards and technologies.
Reliability
Open standards are typically developed and maintained by communities of experts and are subject to rigorous testing and review. This ensures a high level of reliability, reducing the risk of bugs and other issues that can arise with proprietary technologies.
In addition, updates and patches are more frequent, as the user community is vast, which facilitates and speeds up the identification of failures and exploits.
Ease of Finding Qualified Professionals
Open standards are, by definition, open. This means that no company or entity holds the rights or exclusive technical knowledge necessary for its use. In this way, developers don’t need to undergo lengthy exclusive training or obtain specific certificates for their handling.
Agility in Application Development
Adopting open standards streamlines the production of applications and other solutions since these standards are common knowledge and mastered by a large number of professionals. As a result, even teams with different backgrounds can work seamlessly to develop modern applications in an agile and collaborative way.
Broad Communicability with Third-Party Solutions and APIs
The internet exists based on the simple and indispensable concept of communication. If your device or solution isn’t capable of communicating with other devices, software, or APIs, it probably doesn’t have a bright future in the hyper-connected economy.
Therefore, using standards that allow communication with the largest possible number of solutions, regardless of the company behind them, is fundamental. In addition, the IoT (Internet of Things) revolution has already begun, and the industry is concentrating on continuously increasing its communicability potential through the adoption of open and widespread standards.
Open Standards for a Better Developer Experience
In today’s world, no dev can afford being tied up to a platform or a provider, since technologies are in a fast and constant change and the market needs can take abrupt turns every day, making proprietary solutions and standards obsolete in the blink of an eye.
This is why all advantages mentioned above are key to a better developer experience not only in developing, but also in maintaining, selling, updating and powering any projects you’re invested in.
In addition, the adoption of open standards also stands out for offering a considerable improvement in the developer’s experience as it allows professionals to work with the best practices and the most modern technologies available.
HTTP/3, for example, is an open standard based on the QUIC protocol that offers speed, reliability, and security in communication between client and server. As a modern and powerful version of HTTP—which is one of the most used communication protocols in the world—, HTTP/3 guarantees that your solution or your project will be able to communicate easily via the Internet and that it will be supported by leading platforms worldwide.
Another benefit for the developer who adopts open standards is that these standards are usually supported and improved by a massive community of developers, bringing improvements and new use cases through countless tools, resources, and libraries daily.
This is the case with Javascript. This language that has been permeating the entire structure of the internet for decades is not controlled by any specific vendor or company, which has allowed the creation of countless frameworks and libraries with the most diverse objectives over the years (such as React and Next.js) in order to simplify and, at the same time, enhance what can be done with it.
Open Standards on the Azion’s Edge Computing Platform
Considering that edge computing is a fundamental technology to fulfill the needs and revolutionary use cases of the hyper-connected world, any platform that intends to bring the edge to businesses and developers that produce future-proof solutions must take special care with the adoption of open standards.
That’s because open standards play a crucial role in facilitating the growth and development of the edge by providing common languages, protocols, and frameworks for interoperability between devices, applications, and systems at the edge.
Thus, by adopting and encouraging the use of open standards, Azion is positioned to adopt the best practices in the industry, as it enables customers to easily migrate and, at the same time, expands the types and functions of the solutions that can be built and delivered by our platform, as well as enabling new use cases that haven’t even been discovered yet.
If you want to learn more about our edge computing platform, visit our blog and understand how edge can take the developer experience to the next level. You can also create a free account and discover in practice how the adoption of open standards at the edge can boost your results and dramatically improve DX.
