Three key methods for developers to apply cloud computing

In the past, we did not know that the rise of cloud technology can develop such a large resource. Today, you can hook up with an unprecedented wealth of cloud resources to your business applications.

In this article I will outline three key methodologies that allow developers to take advantage of the cloud.

PaaS: Cloud Development Platform

You no longer need to install thousands of software development kits and Ides on your desktop. There is no need to compile on the machine in the office. Now these even more work can be done in the cloud. This better ability is called a platform, a service (PaaS).

Heroku is a future PAAs provider. Think of Heroku as your plugin and play ruby environment. This is more than simple application hosting or server hosting. This is a complete ruby environment that you expect to have all the cloud features. Each layer from HTTP to Debian Linux, Ruby, and back-end databases is a fluid dynamic resource (see Figure 1). Don't worry about installation, maintenance, upgrades, and high availability. You can write, compile, and run all applications in the cloud.

Figure 1. Platform as service settings

Heroku not only provides a cloud development environment, the portal also faces the world. You can choose to open the application and provide your services on the Heroku infrastructure. Includes deployment, cloud, load balancing, etc.

Other PAAs manufacturers include Amazon's Amazon Network Service (AWS) and Google's Google application engine. Amazon provides computing resource requirements including storage, databases, messages, queues, and more. However, unlike the Heroku program that prepares everything for you, Amazon allows you to create your own environment, including the operating system, IDE, SDK, and so on. So Amazon needs more overhead.

Google provides an application development model that itself is still done locally. They provide Java and Python software development kits that allow you to take advantage of Google's APIs. This is about Web apps running on Google's infrastructure, so they also provide cloud storage and so on.

Most major internet services, such as Facebook,linkedin, Amazon, Salesforce and Twitter, offer APIs that allow programmers to create software to apply their products. Cloud-oriented is a very easy way to find APIs, and you need a service like programmableweb.

Figure 2. A programmable web site for the Facebook API

Cloud Software Development Lifecycle

In addition to building code applications, one key in the area of software development is the lifecycle management process. From setting up test users to acceptance testing (UAT), IT Service Management (ITIL) and SDLC can be applied in the cloud.

For those internal application development, you can still tap the potential of the internal cloud and gain the benefits. A system similar to the VMware Vcenter Lab Manager can cite self-service services for many different groups to access cloud resources (see Figure 3). With such a single resource as a multi-tier application tool, it is easy to manage powerful applications through his lifecycle. This is the concept of infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Figure 3. The lab manager for VMware Vcenter

Cloud is a hobby for developers

We are at the beginning of the cloud computing revolution. By leveraging the enormous energy of the cloud, savvy software developers can dramatically speed time-to-market.