Exploring the CTO’s Choice: 6 Reasons Node.js is Ideal for Enterprise Applications

Node.js continues to be the preferred choice for CTOs and decision-makers for developing enterprise-grade applications. The main reason behind this is its open-source nature. Node.js provides just the optimal environment to run applications that require minimal security and vulnerability remediation efforts. In addition, using Node.js for server-side application development enhances the performance of various platforms by 50% and lowers development costs.

Not only this, leveraging Node.js for enterprise app development boosts an application’s performance since these are lightweight and accelerates the time-to-market. That said, enterprises, both small and large-scale, are increasingly using this environment for their backend development. All these factors add up to create a seamless user experience, and help businesses maintain an edge in the industry.

Reasons to Use Node.js

1. Get Rid of DevOps with Serverless Applications

Server management and provisioning comes as a built-in feature in Node.js frameworks. Hence, developers don’t need to take care of the servers organizing their apps. This key functionality encourages many organizations to go for serverless applications. For developers, the Node.js framework allows them to focus less on managerial tasks and more on driving business value for their end-users.

For enterprises, serverless applications support innovations to go-to-market more rapidly. Since there’s no need to maintain servers, enterprises can say goodbye to traditional DevOps practices like monitoring the application, devising a proper strategy for deployments, continuous security assessment, networking, debugging, system scaling, and others.

2. Reduce App Latency with Node-Cache

Regularly accessed data or database hotspots can cause the application to crash or slow down performance. To overcome this situation, an in-built caching module, like node-cache is available, which helps developers implement caching in an application developed using Node.js. It involves recording frequently used data in memory so that users can access app data faster; thereby, reducing latency. This is one of the effective strategies for optimizing the performance of a Node.js application.

3. Stateful Authentication to Protect Resources

To offer users with a secure experience, most applications must maintain the state. This is where Node.js’ stateful authentication mechanism comes in. This mechanism can keep a track of user sessions and protect user properties, such as app credentials and payment information.

Stateful authentication offers a random session identifier to store the user properties on the memory. This identifier acts as a central storage solution to record user session data and leverages an IP hash approach to ensure that the end-user always reaches the same web server when scaling a stateful application to a load-balanced solution over different servers. The key advantage of implementing such a stateful strategy is the users can always access app data, regardless of which system is actively servicing. Besides, enterprises can reduce server maintenance efforts.

4. Dependency Injection for Better Scalability

With dependency injection, developers don’t have to use traditional components like proxyquire for patching. Instead of using hard-coded components, developers can perform patching and enhance scalability through dependency modules. This makes app testing easier. Node.js allows developers to create and implement modules to include functionalities that are fully dependent on each other. Dependency injection is always effective in modern object-oriented programming and software development.

5. Stable Web Crypto Operations

Enabling cryptographic operations in an application is a highly complex and error-prone process. Even if developers write codes using a standard approach, the incorrect usage of a cryptographic library can affect the application’s performance and fail to meet data integrity. To overcome these situations, the Node.js community launched Web Crypto, a standard cryptographic API, in January 2023. This API supports cryptographic operations in mobile and web applications, such as signature generation, hashing, verification, encryption, and decryption. Isn’t this another appealing reason to use Node.js for enterprise applications development?

6. Future-Proof Technology

The Node Package Manager (NPM) boasts a massive repository of pre-written modules and libraries. Developers can leverage these to expedite development and access functionalities without reinventing the wheel. Plus, with a large and active community, Node.js benefits from constant innovation and improvement. This ensures Node.js stays relevant and adaptable to future technology advancements.

By combining these factors, Node.js empowers enterprises to build high-performing, scalable applications that can keep pace with changing market demands, all while offering development efficiency and cost advantages.

Real-World Applications of Node.js

I. Streaming Services

Building a video streaming platform using Node.js is incredibly beneficial for enterprises, as it offers greater scalability and high speed. Multi-threaded tasks can be performed effectively, i.e., streaming platforms built using Node.js can efficiently handle numerous user requests and spread the runtime environment among diverse servers. This feature is highly beneficial for optimizing platform performance and lessens the practice of rewriting the backend to scale services. For instance, Netflix used Node.js for developing web apps and it is effectively handling 1 billion hours of weekly video data streaming, including other membership requests. Thus, it can be said that node.js for mobile apps is just the right choice.

II. Payment Platforms

Accepting online payments is a vital functionality in a mobile or web application. Node.js is best known for providing quick integration and secure tailored checkout options that improve the app users’ payment experience. To include the payments functionality in apps, Node.js offers a robust server-side kit that allows developers to integrate with popular payment gateways like RazorPay and Stripe.

Let’s look at the popular business case of PayPal:

In 2013, the leading payment service provider, PayPal, decided to move from Java to Node.js. This resulted in a 250ms rapid page response time and double the amount of user requests that could be processed per second. Since the development teams were formerly separated into those who wrote app layer-specific code and those who write browser-specific code, Node.js was a perfect solution. Its environment provided the much-required cohesiveness and fixed issues at both ends.

“Node.js helps us solve issues by allowing both the server and browser applications to be programmed in JavaScript. It combines our engineering experts into one team which enables us to realize and react to our customer’s needs at any level in the tech stack.” ~ said Jeff Harrell, Senior Officer of Payments Engineering at PayPal

Advantages:

• The typical payment response time lessened by 35%
• The rendering of pages and tabs increased up to 250ms
• The development team was able to reduce 40% of coding efforts

III. Chat Applications

Real-time solutions such as chat applications are usually meant to function in the background, regardless of if it’s a portion of an existing app or a third-party add-on. Socket IO is a Node.js framework used for implementing bidirectional communication between a server and a client. It is helpful for broadcasting information to all connected clients over a particular server just like group chats in WhatsApp. One such popular example of a chat application built using Node.js is Viber. Their development team can easily customize rules instantly based on user input.

IV. Ecommerce Applications

Developing a modern online commerce store using Node.js makes it highly efficient, since it offers better asynchronous functionality (a balance between frontend and backend loading duration). Node.js gives store owners the ability to handle concurrent user requests at a time. This is possible due to its event-driven architecture. Therefore, Node.js-built ecommerce apps consume lesser memory. eBay has an interesting story of how they handled a massive amount of traffic by creating a fast, scalable, and stable application using Node.js.

How to Hire Node.js Developers

Enterprises looking to cover both frontend and backend development can hire developers from a recognized Node.js development company through the Build Your Team (BYT) model. Through this hiring model, organizations can access dedicated developers, who work like in-house professionals and meet project requirements. Besides, organizations that opt for offshore Node.js development can get all the benefits of skilled and experienced SMEs without getting involved in time-consuming practices like candidate screening, resource allocation, and attrition.

Let’s look at the three popular engagement models provided for offshore Node.js development partners to meet business objectives:

Closing Thoughts

By now, businesses must have understood the importance of Node.js in the world of application development. So, for companies looking to create scalable business applications quickly with minimal costs, hiring offshore dedicated Node.js developers from an experienced service provider is just the right move.