Amazon Web Services is rolling out new Mobile Hub features aimed at simplifying the development of secure mobile apps.

The cloud giant says that its Cloud Logic feature will now let developers create Lambda functions specifically for mobile apps and integrate them with AWS's API Gateways. This, Amazon claims, should allow for serverless mobile apps to be easily created and tested. Obviously, there will be a server or two involved in the backend but mobile app devs don't have to worry about setting one up and running it – their code just talks to the API gateway to perform cloud-based processing.

"With Mobile Hub, you don't have to be an AWS expert to begin using its powerful backend features in your app," blogged Amazon's Vyom Nagrani.

"Mobile Hub then provisions and configures the necessary AWS services on your behalf and creates a working quickstart app for you."

While AWS had previously allowed the use of existing Lambda functions – event-driven code that runs outside of a server instance – to be used with its Mobile Hub, the new features allow Lambda functions to be created directly through Cloud Logic specifically for mobile apps.

This speeds up the process of developing mobile apps that make use of both serverless functions and APIs, in theory.

Additionally, AWS says it is adding support for an email and password login system on mobile apps with the Cognito account management tool as well as integration with SAML login supporters.

Amazon's diagram of the serverless mobile process

When used together, Amazon believes that the Cloud Logic, email and password login, and SAML support will allow developers to add support for secure mobile logins to their cloud apps – either those hosted in public cloud or a virtual private cloud – with the ability to choose what sign-in method (such as Google or Facebook login) will be offered to end users.

The result is a system that, AWS claims, will remove the need to hand-configure access policies and account security, and will allow developers to set up and deploy the backend of mobile apps in minutes. ®