Three Ways That Cloud Computing Benefits Developers

There’s a wide breadth of departments and industries that benefit from the cloud. Because of the wide range of services and applications hosted in cloud environments, the cloud has a lot of potential uses. Developers, for example, can take advantage of several cloud-native services that can help them develop, test, and release applications.

Cloud providers offer several developer-focused offerings that can help boost app development at every stage of the process. From initial development to releasing and updating, providers have plenty of resources for developers to take advantage of. In addition to development services, however, using the cloud to assist in app development provides several benefits for developers. Here are just three of the ways that adding cloud services to your development cycle will provide a better app creation experience.

Unified development environment

Traditionally, developers have to build their own development environment every time they start a new project. This takes a lot of time to do, and it can be a pain to configure every time. Thankfully, many cloud providers offer a pre-built development environment right out of the gate. These environments already come equipped with the computing, storage, and development tools you need to start creating an app. Typically, the environment is built into an API that makes the environment simple to visualize, streamlining your development process.

Pay-as-you-use pricing model

Rather than estimate the total cost of developing a project, cloud providers usually adopt a pay-as-you-use model for pricing. This means that you only pay for the resources you use instead of paying a flat fee for usage up front. With this model, it’s easier to track the actual costs of app development and account for overages. If any hidden costs come up that you weren’t expecting, you’ll have a clear picture of what development is actually costing. This is not only cost-effective and provides an incentive to not waste resources, but it also makes both developer and management teams happy.

Resource provisioning

Developers sometimes run into the problem where they simply aren’t up to the task of developing their projects with the resources they have. Cloud providers supply the resources for developers so they don’t have to worry about gathering resources themselves. There are three different models that cloud providers use for resource provisioning. Advanced provisioning gives developers a set amount of resources which they pay a flat fee to access. This is useful for developers that don’t prioritize cloud cost management or who know they don’t need many resources.

Dynamic provisioning determines resource deployment based on the user’s needs, paid for on a pay-as-you-use model. For developers that want to manage their cloud costs while having a scalable amount of resources to use, this is the provisioning plan to go for. User self-provisioning means developers can purchase resources from the cloud provider as they go. This model also provides cost management capabilities, but is better for developers that want to pay upfront for their resources.

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