The mobile developer community was up in arms with the news of Facebook shutting down Parse, the popular MBaaS platform. But the good news is that the source code for Parse is available on github.
MBaaS is a relatively new phenomenon when compared to the other cloud service delivery models such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and DaaS. The shift to mobile and cloud started almost the same time. It was in 2010 when mobile application development picked up momentum. The cloud revolution also began almost the same time. MBaaS was to mobile developers what PaaS was to web developers. It brought server-less, low-touch deployment model to mobile backends.
One of the first MBaaS offerings came in the form of Parse. Found in 2011 at San Francisco by Kevin Lacker, Tikhon Bernstam, James Yu, and Ilya Sukhar, it started as a Y Combinator startup. Parse called itself “Heroku for mobile” emphasizing on the ease of deployment. In a short span of time, it became the de facto MBaaS platform attracting some of the best-known clients such as Hipmunk and Weebly. Parse's infrastructure ran on Amazon Web Services, and it quickly became a case study for AWS. In 2013, Facebook acquired Parse to attract mobile developer community. This move was one of the very few attempts made by Facebook to build a developer platform. Parse continued to add new features including some of the recent investments in positioning the platform for IoT applications. Ilya Sukhar, CEO of Parse, was on stage at F8, Facebook's developer conference.
While there is a negative sentiment that Facebook is killing Parse, the decision to open source it must be certainly appreciated. StackMob was another popular MBaaS, which PayPal acquired in 2013. It faced the same fate as Parse when PayPal decided to kill it in less than a year. But, unfortunately, StackMob's customers were left in the lurch with no migration path and clear direction on the next steps. Facebook did the right thing by open sourcing Parse SDKs and the Parse backend server.
Customers running their mobile apps on Parse backend can seamlessly move to the open source version, which can they can deploy on their own infrastructure. It's easy to setup a MongoDB server and run the Parse Node.js backend in a VM. There are step-by-step guides available to setup and configure Parse on Heroku, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Bluemix, Docker, and other platforms. Parse did a commendable job by publishing the detailed migration guide.
Running Parse server in Docker is one of the best options for customers who prefer portability. Sign-up with MongoLab for setting up a managed NoSQL database instance and run Parse server in Docker containers for easy configuration and scalability. One of the missing features in the open source Parse is the mobile push notifications. Services such as Urban Airship and OneSignal, which specialize in push notifications, are decent alternatives.
Facebook Parse might open a new chapter in the open source MBaaS by becoming one of the most popular FOSS projects. I expect the community to keep Parse alive by adding new capabilities and features. While OpenShift and Cloud Foundry have become the open source alternatives for proprietary PaaS, the MBaaS community hasn't seen a full-blown open source implementation. This move comes as a blessing in disguise for customers looking for a proven open source MBaaS with access to source code and community backing.
Facebook made Parse immortal by turning in into an open source project. Take advantage of it.
