The cloud provides companies with more flexibility in deploying and handling applications. However building cloud solutions is different than conventional application development, companies have to take that into account as they progress with their deployments. Here are a few best practices for cloud-based application development.
Keep it Simple
If your developers have actually limited or no experience with cloud applications, they will certainly face a learning curve. Rather than play with a major enterprise application, let them start with a small departmental solution. After the team acquires expertise, they can take aim at more requiring projects.
Get Training
The cloud development environment consists of familiar vendors as well as a couple of newcomers. Microsoft Azure, for example, improves existing development tools, like Visual Studio. Programmers can download Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, which supports both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. The Azure SDK (Software Development Kit) for Java supports Create/Read/Update/ Delete operations on Azure Storage, Blobs, Tables and Queues.
The Azure Toolkit for Facebook, on the other hand, may be less familiar to corporate developers. IT departments will certainly need to deal with their vendors and third parties to bring personnel up to speed on these more recent classes of tools.
Track Performance
Cloud applications face distinct performance challenges because of the capacity for latency and constricted network pipes as information takes a trip throughout several data centers. Applications have to be architected so enough Wide Area Network resources are offered along each step of the trip. The Windows Azure Management API makes it possible for businesses to use programming tools to keep track of and manage cloud connections.
Check for Ripple Effects
Progressively, companies want to share data and business processes with partners and other stakeholders, but developers have to understand the implications of opening up their systems to 3rd parties. Developers should identify how these connections ripple throughout the IT architecture, with a mindful eye towards vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches or other unauthorized access.
Track Changes Closely
Agile development is often made use of to design cloud applications. Right here, software versions are spun out faster than in the past. Subsequently, a programming team has to put strong modification management procedures and tools in place to guarantee that a fix in one module does not develop a defect in another.
The cloud offers corporations with more flexibility and agility. Companies are transferring to take advantage of those benefits by establishing new applications that fully take advantage of the cloud. Moving down this path requires a clear understanding of the nuances in between traditional applications and cloud options, to prevent the potential mistakes while capturing the advantages that cloud-based application development can provide.
