With Catalyst 2.0, developers have complete control of both the front-end and back-end of their applications, giving the developers unprecedented control and flexibility. Catalyst 2.0 has been designed to be more efficient and user-friendly for developers by adding new data centers and more language support. The platform is now designed in such a way that it reduces the latency and a prebuilt code library is also made available that can be deployed in minutes. It also offers budget alerts, an extension for Visual Studio Code IDE, an upgraded CLI, environment variables, advanced authentication, environment variables, API gateway, and application performance monitoring, making it easier for developers to create and manage their applications.

What is Catalyst?

Catalyst by Zoho is a full-stack no-code development platform for developers to build custom applications and solutions of any scale. From simple microservices to independent software modules to interactive and dynamic cloud apps, you can build anything you want on Catalyst,

As a pro-code development platform, Catalyst allows developers to focus on building the application without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. It gives us tools and services for building, deploying, hosting, and managing feature-rich, scalable applications. 

What can you do on Catalyst?

Catalyst is a full-stack development platform that simplifies the app development process and lets you build, test, host, deploy, and optimize applications and microservices using popular frameworks and AI/ML services. Now, let’s see what you can do on Catalyst:

• Serverless Computing: You can perform simple and advanced operations, computations, and HTTP operations using functions that allow you to write code without managing the servers.
• Microservices Architecture: It gives the power to developers to develop modular and scalable applications with ready-to-use microservices.
• Real-Time Data Processing: Supports real-time data processing and analytics.
• Orchestrate: Design workflow and orchestrate functions to create resilient business-critical tasks using features like branching, retries, fallbacks, and more.
• Storage: Store and retrieve a large volume of data and user-generated content on a powerful, managed relational data store and a file store with fine-grained access control.
• Intelligence: Perform predictions and forecasting and solve complex data science problems with a simple-to-use AutoML framework, and use various AI/ML services such as OCR, object detection, face analytics, image moderation, barcode scanning, and text analytics.
• Other functionalities: You can use services such as Algoli search integration, Zoho CRM bulk import, database connector, and Stripe payment integration to enhance your applications and microservices.

Why is it Developer-friendly?

Catalyst has been designed to be developer-friendly, to reduce project development time. Here are some reasons why Catalyst is considered developer-friendly.

• Simplicity: The platform simplifies the development process, making it accessible to both novice and experienced developers.
• Extensive Documentation: Zoho Catalyst provides comprehensive documentation and resources for developers.
• Ease of use: The platform is known for its user-friendly interface and simplified development process.
• Quick Development: Now developers can quickly deploy their application and reduce the time.
• Scalability: Catalyst automatically scales seamlessly based on the application’s requirements and reduces the cost.

What Makes it Simplest Dev Platform?

Catalyst Pro-Code nature gives you full control over your app’s functionality and appearance and appearance, you can choose from a variety of ready-made components to build the logic and interface. Use the code snippets, templates and tutorials to get started quickly.

It simplifies the app development process by providing you with a single platform to build, test, and deploy fussfree. You do not need to install any software, configure any servers, or manage any databases. You can access your apps from any device and browser, and easily share them with anyone.

USPs:

• Comprehensive Ecosystem: Catalyst is part of the broader Zoho ecosystem, allowing seamless integration with other Zoho apps.
• Flexibility: The platform is adaptable to various development needs, from small projects to large-scale applications.
• Cost-Effective: With its serverless architecture, it minimizes infrastructure costs and offers a flexible pay-per-use pricing model and you also get generous free usage credits every month.

Services offered by Zoho Catalyst:

Catalyst offers many scalable services for custom application development. It provides services in different categories and we will discuss the services that Catalyst provides us:

1. Catalyst Serverless: Catalyst Serverless is a serverless platform that provides FaaS and PaaS solutions for various environments to suit your application development needs.
2. Catalyst CloudScale: Catalyst CloudScale gives you backend components that empower you to build and host secure, resilient serverless applications and microservices. This solution provides end-to-end support for application storage, security, integration, and deployment.
3. Catalyst Zia Services: Catalyst Zia Services presents a suite of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) microservices that seamlessly integrate into your preferred programming environment. Notable features include Optical Character Recognition (OCR), AutoML, Text Analytics, Image Moderation, and more.
4. Catalyst DevOps: Catalyst DevOps facilitates the implementation of a DevOps model in your software development process. It offers components for operating code at scale, conducting application monitoring, iterative testing, and ensuring quality checks with efficiency.
5. Catalyst SmartBrowz: Catalyst SmartBrowz provides a convenient way for you to configure and access a headless browser programmatically by using the popular browser automation libraries. You can also crawl and scrape authorized websites, design templates that include dynamic content, and generate visual documents.
6. Catalyst QuickML: Catalyst QuickML empowers developers to create end-to-end machine-learning pipelines through a fully no-code ML pipeline builder service. It provides access to various pre-built ML algorithms, operations, and data preprocessing techniques, allowing seamless connection with datasets to construct ML models.

Free Trial:

Get a Free Trial with $250 free credits when you sign up for the Catalyst.

You can use it to try any component and build your applications. You also get generous free usage credits every month for various components, and they are renewed every month forever. With Catalyst, you only pay for the resources you use, and you can enjoy services up to a specified free usage limit per month.  You can find more details and examples on the official pricing page.