For enterprises looking to develop new applications, the cloud offers considerable benefits. From development through to deployment, it enables companies to design, build and manage applications quicker and more effectively, all from within a single, secure environment. Here, we take a look at the benefits of cloud-native app development for enterprises.

All the storage you need

The vast amounts of data that modern applications make use of means that organisations need efficient storage space to run their apps effectively. This can be difficult and expensive to achieve using in-house servers, however, in the cloud, scaling up storage space as and when needed is something that can be done instantly with a click of a mouse.

A cost-effective way to build apps

One of the biggest attractions of the cloud for enterprises is that it removes the need to invest heavily in the purchase and maintenance of hardware and software. By using the infrastructure of a service provider, there is no requirement for an in-house data centre, and so the costs of physical security, power and cooling, housing, IT talent and even things like data centre insurance can be dispensed with. Instead, organisations simply pay a more manageable monthly fee.

Increased speed to market

In a competitive market, the speed at which apps can be developed and deployed is crucial. Developing apps in the cloud can help speed up deployment. As computing resources, tools and platforms are available on demand, development environments can be set up and ready to go in a matter of minutes. As a result, enterprises can shorten the time it takes to begin development and have increased flexibility to manage operations during the process.

Cloud reduces burden and increases productivity

When developing apps in-house, IT teams will have to carry out a range of management tasks, such as the updating of operating systems, software patching and the maintenance of the physical machines. In the cloud, these are taken care of by the service provider on the customer’s behalf which means that IT teams can spend more time working productively on developing new applications.

Guaranteed performance

The speed of technological development today means that any hardware purchased for in-house use is only going to have a limited shelf life before it is outperformed by the next generation of chips, drives and other components. This puts considerable financial pressure on enterprises that need to keep pace with their competitors in terms of their infrastructure.

By migrating to the cloud, this burden is taken care of by the service providers, most of whom have multiple data centres that are regularly upgraded with the latest hardware, like Intel Xeon clusters and SSD drives. This ensures that enterprises in the cloud can take advantage of this increased performance with applications running faster and smoother and with reduced network latency.

High availability

High availability is essential to ensure that app development is not stalled and, more importantly, that once critical apps are deployed, they stay online. In the cloud, users are guaranteed 100% uptime as the possibility of service disruption due to hardware failure is completely removed. As cloud servers are virtual machines, should a hardware issue be discovered, the virtual server is simply migrated to another machine in the cluster. In this way, the hyper-converged nature of the cloud protects users against hardware failure, ensuring mission-critical applications remain constantly available.

Better collaboration

As the cloud is accessible over the internet, it means that development teams can be assembled from anywhere across the globe, all of whom are able to access the tools and code from wherever they are located and at whatever time. The nature of cloud storage also means that everything is in one place and that all members of the development team have access to the most up-to-date versions of files and data. They can even work together in real time.

Improved security

Cloud service providers, like Hyperslice, deploy a wide range of security measures. They employ IT security experts, implement physical on-site data centre security, enforce robust policies and make use of advanced technologies, like FortiGate firewalls, data encryption and Veeam backup solutions. Putting these levels of security in place in-house is both technically challenging and expensive for enterprises.

For organisations that collect and store sensitive information and are concerned about the multi-tenancy aspect of the public cloud, there is also the option to make use of a private, single-tenancy cloud or even a hybrid cloud.

Conclusion

Developing applications in the cloud provides a wealth of advantages compared to building them in-house. They can be created quicker and less expensively, with all the resources and tools needed available on demand. At the same time, teams can collaborate more effectively and without the burden of having to carry out server management tasks. What’s more, once the application is launched, the cloud provides a cost-effective, high-performance, high availability and secure environment in which to deploy it. For more information about our cloud solutions, visit Hyperslice.com.