Cloud Computing : Google App Engine

Cloud Computing, Google App Engine: How big is the market Really ?

Author:Kaushik

This year has been the year of Cloud Computing. You need to be literally hiding under a rock if you have not yet heard about it. Its everywhere, it seems enterprises are moving to the Cloud, small startup companies are moving their services to the cloud and it seems like the whole world will pretty much be on the cloud soon. Really is it this big ? It might be a good time to evaluate how big the adoption really is. Who are the big players and what does the competition look like.

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Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, Force.com, and in some ways Amazon EC2 all fall into a specific sub category within cloud computing known as Platform as a Service(PaaS). Platform as a Service typically applies to platforms which support the deployment of applications without the underlying cost of server and other hosting infrastructure underlying. To differentiate PaaS against a regular hosting it would involve using specific proprietary platform APIs and development tools which typically provide a level of abstraction which reduces the development and maintainability requirement significantly.

Platform as a Service Adoption
Based on a survey from Forrester Platform as a Service is a measly 2of the overall application/platform landscape. Check this graphic for more details

While the survey is a little dated i do think it accurately reflects the current adoption levels in the market and most of the entire discussion of rapid adoption of the cloud is more around hosting and may not be around PaaS. The rest of it is all the typical Hype Cycle in play.

App Engine/Azure/EC2 Adoption

Now within the entire Cloud Platform enabling space it will be interesting to evaluate how the various players stack up against each other. A similar survey by Forrestor of developers using the various stacks break up as Amazon EC2 - 41 Microsoft Azure - 10.2and App Engine - 8.2

What does this all mean ?
Well it means that adoption is still in its infancy. While there is a lot of excitement around Cloud Platforms and the platforms show a lot of promise there is still some way to go before these platforms become a mainstream choice. It also means that this is right time to get started and playing around with the tools and understanding the platforms while the standards are still evolving. While the enterprises may still take a while to catch up these are great platforms for small companies, individual developers, students and education to adopt and learn while the platforms evolve.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-education-articles/cloud-computing-google-app-engine-how-big-is-the-market-really-2831406.html

About the Author

Kaushik Raghupathi is a senior IT Professional and Project Manager working out of India. Over the years he has worked on numerous IT projects with large sized teams. He is personally very fascinated around Learning methodologies in general and specifically around Community Based Learning. He is currently experimenting the concepts by working with students in this area.

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