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Are enterprises ready for the Cloud Effect?

03 March 2010

At Expanz, we hear both the buzz and hesitation around cloud computing. Enterprises are not yet fully embracing the cloud right now, but the lower costs, agility and flexible usage benefits offered by cloud applications will eventually create competitive forces that will prove impossible for 'traditional' enterprise development teams to ignore.

We believe that a new assembly line approach to developing applications that are cloud ready will enable them and the enterprises they support to benefit from both cloud computing and custom application development.

Some enterprises are dipping their toes by moving some data storage to Amazon S3 which to them differs little to an outsourced data centre. However, moving their entire ERP into a cloud platform requires a significant mind shift for any CIO. They are concerned about data security in multi-tenant or abstracted data storage environments, as well as with the lower service levels currently offered by cloud platforms.

Once enough cloud computing vendors have addressed these concerns enough, enterprises will begin to move into the cloud. How can the development teams that currently create custom enterprise applications compete with cheap, low risk and flexible offerings from mature cloud applications?

One way will be by explaining to enterprises that they may lose the competitive advantages an application modelled specifically on their business provides. However, application developers will also need to change the way they develop applications in order to co-exist, and compete with, cloud computing.

What we talk about with the app development organizations we work with is that, because they are now competing with “mass market” cloud applications, is they need to seriously consider the assembly line approach that manufacturers turned to a century ago in order to reduce costs and some of the inherent risks in building apps from the ground up.

What we mean by assembly line development is to construct those standard functions that all apps share - such as validating an email address or checking if a date is a weekday - by pulling together standard pre-fabricated widgets during the initial design stage. This is in contrast to way apps are constructed now, which is to start with a completely blank sheet and constructing everything using power tools. This workshop approach is an inefficient use of expensive skilled resources. Manufacturers realised this a century ago, despite having as a lower proportion of their costs in people than software developers.

A true assembly line app development uses those power tools in an organized way, starting with this initial design based construction and then coding the granular business logic before adding the User Interface (UI). By using standardized widgets in the initial assembly, more time can be allocated to code customization that drives competitive advantage. The overall result is that applications can be built with lower cost and risks, yet meet business requirements more closely and can be easily modified.

To fully compete with the cloud, enterprise apps need to be able to migrate to any cloud platform without modification. In this way enterprises can benefit from the cost and flexibility of the cloud without losing the competitive advantage of custom applications.

We at expanz are already helping development teams assemble powerful applications that can be deployed both in the cloud and on-premise. The expanzPLATFORM is a .NET enterprise application development platform that uniquely provides to .NET much of the security, scalability and functionality of J2EE. The platform provides the ability to rapidly construct applications with a class library containing hundreds of standard code widgets covering most application functions you would ever need, but can also be extended with widgets from your own domain specific language.

The expanzPLATFORM application server keeps all business logic and stored data server side, using secured and optimized SOAP to communicate with clients and B2B applications. This approach means that client UIs can be quickly developed in the client platform of choice, with the designer freed up to concentrate on user experience. It also means that any app can be augmented and run simultaneously from the same server, to a web or mobile client with very little work.

We are already helping development teams reduce development costs; with one global SI estimating that the expanzPLATFORM has reduced development time on the first project they used it from 2100 to 1600 man hours.

As the expanzPLATFORM is non-proprietary and comprising nothing but .NET, applications developed using it can initially be deployed on premise servers before migrating to the cloud, useful for enterprises that have a cloud service on their roadmap, but need an on-premise solution today. We were also able to use the platform ourselves to develop a multi GL ERP application for FMCG in less than 3 months.

Enterprise Cloud Computing is a wave that you can choose to catch or be dumped by. Being based in Manly, expanz know which choice we would make. I encourage you to check out our expanz PLATFORM yourself and see how to benefit from application assembly lines.

	James Rabey is Marketing and Communities Manager at expanz. James is a 20 year tech industry veteran, in a career that has taken him from development to marketing via services, and a nomadic life including stints in Silicon Valley and Europe. He has now planted roots at Terrigal Beach with his wife and 3 sons.

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