The cloud also enables collaboration across multiple sites and allows for virtualization of resources, because multiple developers can work on the same project at the same time from various sites. And because most IT organizations opt to use commercial cloud-based development platforms, they gain more consistency in source documentation and workflows. Moreover, with development environments in the cloud, organizations can quickly provision and spin up the infrastructure they need.
"It's very elastic, so the application developers have more time to work on what they do best," says Rick Carbonaro, managing partner at the IT advisory firm TPS and communications chairman for the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society for Information Management.
Luc Fournier, an analyst and technology adviser at Berger Ltd., a soil supply company in Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec, says his company's IT department is using the Appery.io platform to move its app development work into the cloud and meet a tight deadline.
He says his team has three months to develop, test and deploy a mobile app designed to help the company's sales representatives manage their everyday tasks. "We needed to be productive as soon as possible and that was the shortest learning curve we could get," says Fournier. "With the infrastructure already in place, no software to set up and a good support team to ask questions, the only thing we had to validate was that we could integrate our data via [an application programming interface]."
Fournier says the development costs were lower than in a traditional process, and although the app has yet to be deployed, he hasn't identified any risks associated with using a cloud environment.
He did, however, list some potential drawbacks to consider.
"One disadvantage is that you'll always need an Internet connection to work with a hosted cloud development tool in your browser as opposed to a traditional IDE [integrated development environment]," he says, noting that "at first it's scary to not have total 'local' control of your work at all times. After three months, I still do a lot of backup of my project to keep my mind at peace."