“Second, I think you’re comparing apples to oranges here. The developers I am referring to aren’t working at Microsoft building a cloud enabled version of Word (which coincidentally as you point out would run on their own company’s cloud infrastructure). I’m referring to developers building apps on Amazon AWS or Google AppEngine (and similar offerings).”

That’s Doug’s point, those people building apps on AWS or AppEngine are one man shows who have had to wear all the hats in the first place.

Again, what has changed? We have two classes of developer’s which will continue to act in the same manner as before, only with the need for new knowledge on the part of the latter.

In any case, I urge everyone to check out Erlang. Easy management and concurrency for your backend apps built into the vm. Its amazing.

http://nickelcode.com/2008/12/15/erlang-and-cloud-computing-a-fine-pair-indeed/

Good questions. First, a lot of cloud adopters from companies with established dev-test-deploy are going to the cloud because the ‘deploy’ portion of the process is too slow (perhaps for all the right reasons). Look at all the prominent enterprise case studies for AWS and notice how they all involve an “ops was the obstacle” kind of motivation. Operations teams are having to catch up with the responsibility of managing applications built outside their controlled infrastructure. This will take time, new tools, and new processes.

Second, I think you’re comparing apples to oranges here. The developers I am referring to aren’t working at Microsoft building a cloud enabled version of Word (which coincidentally as you point out would run on their own company’s cloud infrastructure). I’m referring to developers building apps on Amazon AWS or Google AppEngine (and similar offerings).

Finally, yes, the cloud is fast, easy, and at least initially affordable way to get applications out to market. Developers doing this have little or no experience managing this type of infrastructure and too often are going in expecting the cloud provider to somehow insulate them from the problems associated with scaling and running apps. The majority of these types of web developers have never had “dev/test/production” hats on.

-javier

Do you think Microsoft would drop a version of Word onto Windows Live without testing or having their IT folks check it out?

What the cloud does is make it much easier for the one person shop to get their products to the mass market. They’ve always had the dev/test/production hats on anyway, so what has changed?

doug

Deployment management, pre and post support, customer service, security and legal issues have to be addressed.

While I’m leary of moving all apps to the cloud (I am after all an ops person), my advice would be to tread carefully, and make sure you have every issue addressed.

What is the physical Security like? Who is responsible for backups and what happens if by some event all of your data is lost?

There is a ‘perfect cheap solution’ that cloud computing is masqurading around as and it’s time to tell it like it is.

Thank you,

G