The Important Features of a Successful Cloud Application Environment

There are several cloud environments in the world today. It is difficult to identify the right cloud provider but getting the right provider is crucial for your success.

Most enterprise leaders of the IT world are faced with a primary challenge: complexity. According to the Global CEO Study which was held in 2010, nearly 79 percent expect more and more complexity in the future since there is an incredible interconnection between all types of physical and digital infrastructures.

It is a challenge for CEOs to connect with customers in innovative ways and even formulate and realize operations with utmost speed and flexibility. By leveraging cloud computing and SaaS to deliver services less expensive ways, companies are trying to be cost-effective. Cloud computing involves the deployment of network-based applications in a shared environment thus facilitating prompt service delivery and superb value.

Cloud computing offers much more advantages than traditional application deployment models since it is built around scalable development resources, and involves less costly maintenance. It also has the ability to deliver consistent offerings through a variety of channels. Cloud computing helps out businesses to collaborate with other companies and combine services for better profitable returns.

Developing cloud-based applications should revolve around the unique requirements of SaaS. Rarely do cloud providers deliver the promise of cloud application development. The successful ones are even efficient in building custom cloud applications and are ready to deliver all services ranging from planning to design, application development and its deployment.

Here are some typical attributes of an ideal Cloud Application Environment:

Robust architecture – The basic attribute of cloud applications is its capability of having a single application instance for supporting multiple clients while also meeting high service levels. This approach offers many advantages including the overall ease of maintenance and optimum use of existing resources. One needs robust cloud architecture since this directly affects performance. The overall security and integrity of data is under question here.

Performance and scalability – All cloud computing vendors need to have resources which can be up scaled or downscaled rapidly and seamlessly. The cloud resources need to be ready to address dynamic user demand and all applications need to keep this in mind.

Virtualization benefits – The efficient use of resources is the prime benefit offered by cloud services. One can take advantage of virtualized IT environments and drive greater business value too.

Self-service - Cloud applications are built and designed so that they can be modified and accessed to reduce operational expenses and a better user experience.

Pay-as-you-use - With cloud applications, one does not have to pay upfront software license fees. Hence, most app functions monitor and charge for the overall usage. This flexible model helps clients to save on overall capital expenditures.

Compatible to multiple devices - Today's consumers want to gain services which can be accessible from anywhere and everywhere, no matter which platform they use. From the cloud, one should be able to design applications which can be delivered on multiple devices.

Security - The cloud virtual environments should address security and privacy challenges since most organizations repose their trust on the cloud services. The right application design is essential for protecting sensitive data, and for addressing regulatory compliance.

Cloud computing technology and importance of cloud developers

Cloud computing is focuses on a category of computing solutions in which users get complete or partial access to the different computing resources depending on demand and as needed. The resources can be physical or virtual and also available on a dedicated or shared basis. The cloud computing resources are not dependent on the way of access but mostly characterized by self-service interfaces. The resources are acquired as and when needed by businesses. Cloud is also termed as a concept which defines an approach. Cloud developers are dedicated to provide IT services which take advantage of growing power of virtual servers.

The importance of cloud development has been mostly in the form of cost savings in infrastructure investment. Developers save an ample amount of time in application development as well as deployment on cloud servers and thus resource allocation overheads are reduced to a great extent.

A public (external) cloud is a perfect environment which exists beyond the regular company's firewall. It is a service which is offered by many huge third-party vendors. Clouds are sometimes shared or multi-tenanted and managed by a company which hosts a self-service portal.

The delivery models of public clouds are replicated in private clouds for the specific benefit of an organization as well its internal employees and customers. The interface manages it wholly. The hybrid cloud environment includes external services which are used for extending an internal cloud.

Many people consider Software as a Service (SaaS) as an integral subset of cloud computing which is also applicable to IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service which remotely access server/storage capacity) and PaaS (Platform as a Service which lets developers to build and deploy apps on the hosted platform).

There are various cloud groups which are communities which work towards streamlining various services for quick development and deployment associated with the cloud. Bookmarks which are set on the browser work on having a systematic listing of cloud services which can be useful for the company like libraries of resources.

There are many types of applications which can be run on the cloud. Not everything should run in a cloud although it could. Software which have beneficial attributes for the users can find a place on the cloud and some of the information should be better be local since they might mean of critical importance to the company and the users on a local basis. Additionally, it would mean security of information if it is local. Sensitive user data should never be on the cloud since it affects privacy rights.

A cloud is the perfect for applications which deal with different types of resources related to IT management, productivity or capacity (server and/or storage). Social networking sites and collaboration sites are also mostly used in the cloud and serve to be perfect for a wide range of users.

Software as a service (SaaS) revolves around applications which are centrally hosted and in recent years there are many business applications which are being deployed using SaaS as the common delivery model. Many businesses prefer the model owing it its simplified deployment process and cost effectiveness.

Cloud developers are in huge demand for deploying web apps on the cloud as well developing new apps. Customized web services are also in great demand too.