Back-End Development

Plan, Required Talents, Cloud Hosting Options, and Project Costs

In software development since 1989, ScienceSoft offers professional consulting on and development of back ends for all types of software solutions.

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Back-end Development: Highlights

Back-end development focuses on creating the server-side logic, setting up databases, and building up communication between a back end and a front end. A back end is an indispensable part for a large number of solutions, including web apps, mobile applications, and IoT ecosystems.

ScienceSoft presents its detailed guide on how to organize a back-end development project and is ready to undertake yours.

Back-end development steps: Discovery, architecture design, back-end software development & QA, database setup, deployment & integration.
Required talents: Business consultant, back-end architect, back-end developer, project manager, DevOps engineer, QA expert.
Sourcing model options: In-house, team augmentation, partial outsourcing, full outsourcing.
Cloud services for back-end hosting: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure.
Costs: Around $20,000–$50,000 for small/medium-sized back ends. You're welcome to use our configurator to estimate the cost for your case.

Back-end Development Plan

With around 4,000 successful software development initiatives and 250+ back-end developers on board, ScienceSoft is experienced in carrying out effective back-end development projects. As a rule, we break these projects into 5 key steps, described below.

1. Discovery and conceptualization

Duration: 2-6 weeks

To properly plan out the back end, it’s important to understand the business idea, requirements, and processes behind software that you plan to develop or equip with a new back end. For that, ScienceSoft's business consultants and software architects discuss the software type, the existing and planned user count, the integrations, and options for on-premises or cloud hosting. By relying on the gained understanding, they formulate the necessary functional and non-functional requirements, risks, and constraints of the future back end.

ScienceSoft’s tip: In our practice, the unrushed discovery phase (2–3 weeks) has proved the most effective for high-quality budgetary and time estimations, thus preventing additional expenses at the development stage. We also recommend involving front-end developer(s) in the back-end conceptualization process as their input speeds up planning.

2. Back-end architecture design

Duration: 4-8 weeks

The design of the back-end architecture is the backbone of your solution. If the architecture isn’t planned out well, the entire solution fails regardless of the high quality of front-end code or neatness of back-end code. Hence, a lot of consideration needs to be put into choosing and describing the right architecture pattern. This process usually includes 5 steps:

1. Analysis – a software architect discusses back-end requirements and constraints with you to single out the must-have and nice-to-have criteria to the final solution.

2. Design and pattern choice – the architect creates a number of back-end architecture options, organizes them according to the criteria, and chooses the one that fits your needs best.

Best practice: ScienceSoft defines the following back end architecture qualities:

Reliability – fault-tolerance, availability, and security.
Scalability – ability to allow for a solution’s easy growth and concurrent development.
Testability – clean, readable code that is continuously deployed after passing automated testing.
Maintainability – flexibility, enabling updates with minimum effort.

3. Decomposition – the architect breaks the architecture down into smaller components, which helps pinpoint reusable elements for simplified back-end implementation.

4. Approval – the architect presents the high-level back-end design to you, shares their decisions on the technology stack (programming languages, framework, and a database type), and discusses the back-end hosting options.

5. Documentation – the architect writes a step-by-step instruction on back-end implementation for the development team with the elements to be developed and integrations to be performed. A PM uses this implementation plan as a base for estimating project efforts, choosing a development methodology, and creating a detailed project schedule.

Best practice: ScienceSoft involves QAs and/or back-end developers in the documentation step for creating test cases and drafting a testing plan early on, which helps ensure consistency with the requirements throughout the project.

3. Back-end software development and QA

Duration: from 2 months

Following the back-end architecture design, back-end developers build server-side software consisting of scripts, algorithms, and APIs that will be hosted in the cloud or, more rarely now, on an on-premises machine and drive the work of the entire solution. Quality assurance experts work hand-in-hand with the developers, continuously performing manual and automated testing of delivered code.

Best practice: ScienceSoft’s teams use frameworks (development tools with ready-made components and libraries) to accelerate back-end development. Our developers see advantages in every framework type: the PHP ones offer extensive tools for web development, .NET helps target any application type running on any platform, back-end JavaScript presents the opportunity of full-stack development, and mature Python and Java frameworks provide the tightest security.

Below, you can see that the frameworks recommended by ScienceSoft can power all kinds of large-scale solutions.

4. Database development and setup

Duration: from 1 month

A database contains all the data used in your solution and communicates it on-demand to the client-end via APIs. In some cases, it can also contain additional business logic for data optimization.

Database development can be a separate service, but in back-end projects, back-end developers usually set up the database and APIs as part of the solution. In case of cloud hosting, cloud database services help data get distributed and replicated across multiple virtual machines so as to enable data access even in case several machines are down.

Best practice: There are two major types of databases: SQL and NoSQL. At ScienceSoft, we opt for SQL databases for simple/medium sized web solutions, web portals, and enterprise apps. NoSQL databases are effective for social networks, IoT, big data, and large e-commerce solutions.

Database management systems

Data organization pattern

Upgrade and maintenance

Implementation complexity

Implementation costs

Development speed

Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MariaDB

Highly specific

Harder to upgrade, may imply downtime

Less complex

Cheaper

Faster

MongoDB, Apache HBase, Apache NiFi

Flexible

Easy to upgrade, minimum downtime

More complex

Costlier

Longer

5. Deployment and Integration

Duration: 1–3 weeks

Once your back-end software and databases are implemented, they can be deployed in the cloud or on on-premises servers and integrated with the client-end as well as with other third-party software. If these integrations are thoroughly planned at the first back-end development project stage, no unexpected situations should cause delays of your back end’s launch.

ScienceSoft’s tip: To ensure faster solution launch, ScienceSoft relies on the DevOps practices and sets up a CI/CD pipeline from day one. This helps us make the back end and the entire solution fully operational as soon as the last developed batch is tested and deployed.

Sourcing Models for Back-end Development

All in-house

You have full control over the back-end development project but may encounter issues related to a lack of experienced resources.

Team augmentation

Development is partially outsourced to a vendor. The cooperation helps to speed up delivery by getting more experienced talents on board.

Partial outsourcing

All processes, except for project management, are outsourced to a vendor. Guided by your PM, the hired team helps to bridge skill gaps or take the load off your employees.

Full outsourcing

You outsource business analysis, project management, development, and QA to a self-managed vendor like ScienceSoft - and enjoy quality results with minimum involvement.

Why Choose ScienceSoft

35 years in IT.
750+ IT talents on board, 250+ of them are back-end developers.
Dedicated Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Node.js, and Golang departments.
A Project Management Office for effective management of medium/large-scale projects.
Partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
ScienceSoft is a 3-year champion in The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies rating by the Financial Times.

Any technology

ScienceSoft is skilled in all back-end development technologies, including the latest ones, such as Node.js and Golang.

End-to-end solution

Thanks to our 750-employee team, we can offer both back end-only development and full solution implementation, with client apps.

Integration and support

We aid with deploying the back end, performing all the necessary integrations, and are ready to keep supporting and evolving it.

What makes ScienceSoft different

We achieve project success no matter what

ScienceSoft does not pass mere project administration off as project management, which, unfortunately, often happens on the market. We practice real project management, achieving project success for our clients no matter what.

See how we do it

I was in search of developers to handle parts of our back-end development. ScienceSoft came across as a reliable partner with decades of experience in the field and proven track record. ScienceSoft delivers great technical quality, really dedicated developers, eager to solve problems, and positive about their work and area of expertise.

David Frenay, CEO at Emolytics

ScienceSoft's Development Highlights

Talents ScienceSoft Typically Involves in a Back-end Development Project

Business consultant

Analyzes business needs, describes the scope of the entire solution and the back end.
Compiles functional requirements of the back end and the entire solution.

Back-end architect

Compiles back-end non-functional requirements.
Plans the back-end architecture.
Discusses architecture pattern and tech stack choices with the stakeholders.
Controlls compliance with the requirements.

Project manager

Creates a back-end development project schedule.
Estimates efforts.
Controls the development progress.
Reports the progress to the stakeholders.
Manages the project team.

DevOps engineer

Establishes CI/CD processes.
Oversees project automation throughout the project.

Back-end developer

Delivers code of server-side software.
Sets up databases.
Overviews the project on the application level.
Fixes code issues on a QA specialist’s notices.

QA engineer

Plans test cases based on back-end requirements.
Verifies compatibility with the quality standards defined in the initial plan.
Logs testing results.

Consider Back-end Development with ScienceSoft

In software development since 1989, ScienceSoft offers professional consulting on and development of back ends for all types of software solutions.

Consulting on back-end development

Back-end functional scope definition.
Architecture design and decomposition.
Assistance with the choice of a programming language, a framework, a database type.
Help with choosing a cloud services provider.
Preparation of all project documentation (back-end specification, schedule, testing plan, etc.)
Long-term back-end evolution plan.

Go for consulting

Back-end development services

Analysis of business needs for a back end and an entire solution.
Formulation of functional and non-functional software requirements.
Back-end architecture design.
Back-end software development and QA.
Database setup and integration.
Support and evolution.

Go for development

Clouds ScienceSoft Recommends for Back-end Deployment

Description

Flexible storage service options.
SQL and NoSQL database service options.
SQL Support of Amazon Aurora, MariaDB, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL.
Object size limit of 5 TB.
Charging per hour, pricing might appear convoluted.
Pricing is the highest on the market.

Best for

Medium-size businesses, large enterprises.

Pricing

AWS pricing calculator

Learn more about AWS services

Description

Varied storage service options.
SQL and NoSQL database service options; SQL Support of Microsoft SQL only.
Object size limit of 4.75 TB.
Charging per minute, thus making its pricing more precise.
Native support of .NET frameworks.
Simplified integration with Microsoft products: Office 365, Dynamics 365, Power BI, etc.

Best for

Start-ups, medium-sized businesses, solutions requiring integrations with other Microsoft services.

Pricing

Microsoft Azure pricing calculator

Learn more about Microsoft Azure services

Costs of Back-end Development

The cost of back-end development is around $20,000–$50,000 for a small/medium-sized solution. The specific price calculations usually base on the following considerations:

The scope of your solution (the back end complexity is directly proportional to its cost).	The complexity of the architecture and the number of elements to develop.
The number of integrations with third-party software.	Location and structure of the back-end development project team.

Need Estimation of Your Back-End Development Costs?

ScienceSoft’s consultants will provide a full cost breakdown for your back-end development project in under 3 days and offer personalized consulting on cost optimization strategies.

Request a quote

About ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is a global IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. Relying on our ISO 9001-approved quality management system, we design and develop quality server-side software. We also advise our clients on the architecture design and project planning of back-end development initiatives. Don't hesitate to contact us and get more details.