Every startup and enterprise is jumping onto the cloud bandwagon as its advantages have become evident to the world. Cloud based software or applications run in the cloud environment and can easily interact with web browsers and APIs.
Businesses leverage cloud based application development to enhance product quality and productivity by injecting agility. Increased agility allows corporates to quickly respond to the business needs with greater flexibility.
Developers are drawn to cloud applications as these applications can be developed, updated, tested, and deployed at a fast pace.
Read this blog to explore cloud based application development in detail to better understand why it matters and how it can take your business to the new heights. Let’s jump right into it,
Diving Deep into the Cloud based Application Development Benefits
Businesses have realized the need to bring application development to the cloud wherein the software applications are developed in the cloud. The advantages of cloud application development are multifold.
Applications can be developed, updated, tested, and deployed robustly that can increase your business agility and flexibility.
Major principles of application development includes containers, microservice architecture, serverless structure, event-driven computing model, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and purpose-built databases.
Cloud based applications rely on APIs that allow a quick access to third-party data sources and storage services. As these applications are relatively small hence can be developed faster and better.
Time to Market – Cloud based application development allows developers to speed up the procedure by creating applications at a faster pace.
It in turn allows businesses to incorporate the clients’ feedback into existing and new development, fulfill users’ expectations on time, and accelerate the time to market as applications can be developed quickly.
Security – Cloud vendors spend millions of dollars towards making the cloud security infallible.
Cloud security measures include IAM, VPN, firewalls, penetration testing, tokenization, obfuscation, encryption, etc., to secure and safeguard data against the manual security configuration hassles or any sort of leakage, omissions and theft.
Cost-effectiveness – As cost is one of the key concerns of every organization. Contrary to the on-premise infrastructure, cloud technology results in cost savings as it works on pay as you go model and does not require upfront investment or capital expenditure.
Cloud kickstarts the product development by significantly trimming unwanted IT spendings.
Scalability – The applications hosted in the cloud have unbridled scalability as compared to the old traditional server hosting. A specific portion of application can also be scaled seamlessly at ease with a cloud based infrastructure.
Without scalability, a product is doomed to fail in the market due to the inability to cope with the volatile market fluctuations.
Constant Updates – Timely and quick updates allow organizations to save unnecessarily time and cost, seamlessly manage cloud servers, and swiftly adopt security updates to become robust and resilient.
Constant software updates allow developers to use the latest version which helps them to be on the frontfoot.
Exploring the Cloud Application Types in Detail
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
The SaaS market size is expanding rapidly due its advantages like lower initial costs, robust configuration and deployment, quick updates, easier accessibility, and more scalability.
SaaS eliminates issues associated with software maintenance and incompatibility, rather it focuses on achieving high productivity. This cloud service offers a complete product managed by the service provider.
SaaS ensures flexibility, stability, predictability, personalization and customization along with service delivery automation.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS allows businesses to harness the potential of cloud to get the most out of their IT infrastructure.
It increases performance, decreases capital expenditure, improves security and scalability, strengthens flexibility, supports disaster recovery measures, and ensures business continuity.
With IAAS, the third-party vendors manage servers, storage, and networking, and the IAAS users would manage their database, security aspects, and operating systems.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS is a cloud solution which is best suited for companies that want to develop their own applications or customizable software. It allows businesses to access the framework to develop a cloud storage system.
It fits perfectly for the infrastructure like hardware or operating systems. PaaS improves scalability and productivity, reduces capital expenditure, minimizes lead time, and offers consistency in delivery.
PaaS services include application design, testing, development and deployment, web service integration, information security and database integration.
Main Features of Cloud based Applications:
- The application’s data is put in the cloud infrastructure and can be partly cached on the user’s device. Information may be temporarily stored on the user’s device to help them access it when they are offline.
- Cloud based applications allow the users to access third-party cloud services with APIs integration. A user can set up data encryption, backup schedules, data optimization and compression.
- Cloud applications involve various API integrations hence data encryption, secure socket layers (SSL), and reverse proxy usage can empower businesses to strengthen the security posture of the cloud based applications.
Conclusion:
Cloud solutions are ruling the digital world as the technology offers organizations an ability to develop and manage applications using its framework.
Cloud based development empowers corporates to establish standardization, reduce the overheads, adopt better scalability, ensure business continuity and more.
Partner with an experienced cloud service provider to overcome the challenges associated with cloud based application development in terms of API integration, data decoupling and data architecture planning.
With cloud application development becoming one of the most discussed topics of 2020, its pre-eminence has piqued the interest of pragmatic IT leaders to not only adopt it but also to propagate it to take the business to the next level.
Author Bio:
Martin Moyers is a business analyst and an avid tech blogger who is associated with Zymr, Inc. He is obsessed with AI-ML, cloud technologies, and the universe of social media. In his leisure time, he enjoys rafting, sailing, and hiking.