Is Flutter Ready For Enterprise Mobile Apps?

If you are looking to develop cross-platform mobile applications, Flutter is surely the software for you. Flutter has become one of the most popular UI software development kits, which are now used by several companies, from Alibaba to eBay. Like Kotlin, the framework does a better job than others by removing their disadvantages, making it popular globally. 

What Makes Flutter Better?

Flutter has become quite helpful to the developers. It allows them to develop mobile applications using a single code, making it great for cross-platform app development. You can create both “Android” and “iOS” applications using a single code from Flutter. 

Moreover, reusable UI elements and tools like SDK and UI library of widgets will help you customize your mobile application similar to that of native machine code. Apart from this, Flutter’s applications are quite reliable and secure. You will experience better performance, animation, and better UI Flutter app development. Some other benefits of Flutter include –

  • Widget tree
  • Hot reload 
  • Pixel rendering 
  • 2D- rendering engine 
  • API for desktop

So with these many benefits, a question that always comes up is, “is flutter ready for enterprise app development”? This question has been asked several times for good reasons. The market is shifting towards a robust app development process. However, the biggest obstacle that developers are facing is the division of the “Android” and “iOS” applications. This division between iOS and Android is to remain and only cross-platform app development will solve it.

As both of these operating systems have many users with them, the enterprises should be mindful of targeting their audience with their applications, which is where Flutter as a cross-platform app framework can be helpful.

Why Do You Need An Enterprise Application For Your Business?

Many people think that enterprise applications are only for large and leading firms, well it is not true as irrespective of your business size, enterprise applications are great for your business. The application is designed to streamline the work in your industry. With the help of these applications, admins can control the flow of information and ensure there is large-scale automation throughout the organization. 

However, to make these applications functional, enterprise application must have some essential features, which are –

  • Seamless UI 
  • High-security 
  • High-performance

These are some features that are fulfilled by Flutter for enterprise, making it a great choice for enterprise app development. However, there are other aspects that we should discuss to see if Flutter is ready for enterprise application development. 

What Makes Flutter Enterprise Ready?

Some features Flutter offers make it good for enterprise application development. Here are 6 essential requirements which we have selected to show that app development over Flutter is a good idea. These are – 

  • Development environment
  • App security
  • Layered architecture
  • Hardware features
  • User interface
  • Miscellaneous requirements

1. Development environment

Developers can choose any IDEs for their enterprise app development to debug, deploy, profile, and build the application. So, what makes the development environment of Flutter so good? The reasons are given below – 

  • Scalability: Flutter applications can scale. Work can be split into smaller units between teams using Flutter Dart packages, making it easier to scale up.
  • Testability: Every flutter widget can be easily tested, providing maximum test coverage.
  • Continuous delivery and integration: Flutter deploy applications to the app stores and make the application available with CI/CD pipeline.

It should be noted that implementing Flutter applications requires good knowledge of cross-platform application development. 

2. App security

Application security is one domain that is of great importance for your enterprise application. With proper application security, your application becomes reliable to the users. It is assumed that the Flutter application has the native security aspects same as those of iOS and Android applications built on iOS and Android sandbox environments. Flutter’s Simple Auth caters to other essential requirements like authentications.

Moreover, SSL certification is also mandatory for your application, decreasing application vulnerability. These security features also make Flutter a reliable tool for the developers and make the end-users quite comfortable in using applications made with the help of this framework.

3. Layered architecture

Suppose you want your enterprise application to have seamless functionality and better productivity for all your team members. In that case, you must have layered architecture in your enterprise application. These layers are separate but have interconnected presentation and data access. When the layers of the application are interposed, developers must offer –

  • Enhanced access to design patterns 
  • Simultaneous work on the codebase
  • Understanding of different application features

With its library plugins, SQLite database, and secure networking, Flutter works like magic in this domain. Let us see how flutters shine out in this area –

  • RxDart: RxDart seamlessly integrated Flutter app development services and state management frameworks to fulfill your asynchronous programming requirements. 
  • State Management: This is like a core to Flutter’s application architecture and is easier yet efficient to build on.
  • Background processing: It maintains the UI responsiveness of your application while performing computational intensive work. 
  • Deep linking: This provides enhanced navigation to launch specific areas and features of your application by getting redirected from a push notification or website. 
  • JSON serialization or Deserialization: This is a must-have for your enterprise application and RESTful client. 
  • Dependency injection: Dependency Injection helps you make your code units independent, reusable, and easier to test.
  • Local storage: Small amount of valuable data is stored in local storage and allows your application to work even when the application is working in the background or has stopped working.
  • Push Notifications: Enterprise application requires to notify users about certain information. Therefore, push notifications are a must which Flutter provides.
  • SQLite: Use it for working with a large amount of structured data.

4. Hardware features

Hardware is one of the most important aspects that will affect your application’s work. So when you develop your enterprise application, you need to use the hardware’s full potential and have their support. Some hardware and software support your application needs are –

  • Biometric authentication 
  • GPS 
  • Camera 
  • Accelerometer 
  • Microphone 

5. User interface

The user interface is one of the most important aspects of the user experience. Enterprise applications strive to deliver an exciting user interface to the end-users. Flutter comes up with extremely accurate renditions to meet this requirement. 

  • Animations: Animations can be scaled up to any complexity. Using certain tools, your enterprise application can have a great interface.
  • Page transitions: With animations, the transition between the pages can become seamless and perfect.
  • Infinite scrolling list view: This comes in handy when you have to display a large amount of data without using too much device space. 
  • Caching and Loading library: If you want your application to handle many images, then Caching library is what you need. Flutter provides its developers with the ability to manage these images through its caching and loading libraries.

6. Miscellaneous requirements

Other than those mentioned above, there are multiple requirements to develop an enterprise mobile application. These are –

  • Error Reporting: With the Sentry Library of Flutter, developers can experience error reporting.
  • Analytics: Use Firebase or Adobe analytics libraries to meet this requirement.
  • Push and play: Your application can also have a music and audio function, which can be provided in the Flutter applications.
  • Payment gateways: Your application must have integration of payment gateways that will help the user accept and send payments.
  • QR code generation: QR code scanning has become quite important for advanced levels of security and other functions.

Conclusion 

Flutter has already gained much popularity and is used at several places for application development. Moreover, it has become a great option for businesses with many libraries. The growing usage of flutter libraries ensures that Flutter is now ready for enterprise application development. We are sure that Flutter for enterprise can now establish itself as a viable option for enterprise application development in the coming years. So, get your enterprise a cross-platform application to meet users’ requirement with the help of Flutter.