I hope the platform can stay as independent as it is. I just recently won a Google arranged hackathon in Munich (and through it a fully paid trip and tickets to I/O - yay!) and it would have been totally impossible to do this without parse. A few lines of code and I was able to setup a complex messaging system between a native Android app and a server visualisation. It sets you free from so many worries and really makes any mobile app that talks to a server so much easier to develop. It's the single most useful service I have ever used in this space.