JAMstack improves your platform’s resilience
Geopolitical, technological, environmental, or public health dynamics can produce a series of events that can strongly impact market conditions or people’s behavior. Thus, JAMstack has enabled companies to cope with disruptive events more effectively in this context.
Over the last few years, many companies saw their operations affected, resulting in eCommerce growth which significantly increased the digital visibility of brands.
Uncertain times that call for resilience
The flexibility to adapt has become the “new normal,” and a key concept that defines it is resilience. It represents the most suitable strategy to cope with disruptive events’ changes, challenges, and problems while achieving positive outcomes.
Resilience helps organizations reduce potential economic losses generated by disruptive events with shorter response times. A McKinsey Global Institute study showed that an unprepared company could suffer losses equivalent to almost 45% of its annual profits from these events over the course of ten years.
According to Deloitte, “resilient organizations prepare and invest for disruption and can adapt, resist and recover quickly, not as a means to further success, but also to show the way to a ‘better normal.’”
Acquiring this resilience involves, among other things, the digitalization of processes and the adoption of dynamic, agile, scalable, and customer-centric digital technologies and solutions. This is where the JAMstack methodology is crucial.
When is the JAMstack methodology useful in helping companies cope with change?
JAMStack is a web development philosophy that combines static site practices with serverless features and cloud services that connect via API. The purpose is to build flexible platforms with fast loading and highly customizable experiences. It is based on headless architecture, so that different user interfaces (UI) can be connected to the same system, facilitating the implementation of personalized digital experiences in each channel.
As Matt Biilmann, CEO and co-founder of Netlify, which runs Jamstack.org, says: “Jamstack’s core principles of pre-rendering and decoupling enable sites and applications to be delivered with more confidence and resiliency than ever before.”
The factors that make this type of platform possible are:
- SSG (static site generators) such as Gatsby, Hugo, or Jekyll allows building lighter sites based on a content repository distributed through headless CMS as Contentful, unifying content management across the platform.
- The CDN (content delivery network) optimizes speed and flexibility in content delivery. A simplified way to explain how it works is that the content is stored in the CDN cache, and its distribution is done from the nearest point (nearest node), reducing latency and increasing loadings speed. We don’t strictly depend on the server’s capacity, but the content rests on a global network of nodes.
- By using cloud-based services, integrations will have a better ability to withstand disruptive events. Still, more importantly, they empower companies to be prepared for drastic changes in their platform’s demand or visits. There’s no need to configure anything or adjust contracts as before.
- In JAMstack, headless architecture is fundamental, as it serves content to a wide range of customers through several channels regardless of their focus or development. It’s ideal for large brands that already have digital strategies in their channels and are looking to consolidate an omnichannel strategy.
At Reign, we work with clients who have already mastered the strategy for their digital channels and are looking for a platform to help them achieve their goals.
The key role of specialized teams
JAMstack is neither a programming language nor a framework, it’s a mix of web development best practices. It facilitates the work of IT and development teams because it lets us program sites and applications with a variety of tools without relying on unique or special frameworks.
For this reason, a JAMstack platform is recommended when brands have the required teams to streamline the development and implementation processes. That is where we step in as Reign since, besides generating the platform using the best technologies suited for each brand, we transfer the skills that the teams need to continue their operations.
Scalable technology
An eCommerce’s success is strongly influenced by its ability to manage its traffic. For sites developed using JAMstack, this is no longer a major concern because the site’s loading is done in advance, in the build time. It also allows to defer the loading between the critical content and the less relevant content waiting to be requested by the customer–this is called DPR.
From another point of view, there is no server overloaded with queries, but rather a network of nodes that provides beforehand all the basics that a person might ask. And when extra content is demanded, it’s stored for future requests.
No need to manage PHP or compile CGI plug-ins and dependencies
In a traditional architecture, when a data query is performed, the data is not extracted and sent directly to the client but is usually processed by CGI. In the JAMstack philosophy, each integrated service has its own servers in the cloud, so the demand for operations does not fall on a single server.
This feature is an excellent strategy to reduce Cross-site Scripting or XSS, a cyber-attack that exploits vulnerabilities in a web application by introducing malicious scripts to damage your platform.
At Reign, we are JAMstack's dedicated experts. We create custom platforms for big brands, pushing them even further when they have a well-defined channel strategy, with IT and content teams ready to master the JAMstack philosophy.