CLOUD DEVELOPMENT
Amazon's EC2 and the open source cloud projects
Tom Nolle, Contributor
05.14.2009
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If cloud computing is considered "platform as a service," then there are "platforms" that may be uniquely flexible enough to support both development and deployment of cloud applications. With a little inventive mixing and matching by developers, it's even possible to support both public and private clouds.
Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is the most generalized and well-known of the cloud computing service offerings. It's thoroughly documented, with a good developer program and easily executed development, and it offers comprehensive support for narrow- or wide-ranging deployment of applications. Pricing is pay-as-you-go for the ability to host Amazon Machine Images (AMI), which consist of an application and their associated runtime libraries. There is a per-hour charge and a data exchange charge, both of which are reasonable, and there is no monthly minimum. Any additional charges are for "reserved," as opposed to on-demand, service. Persistent data storage is also available at additional cost per gigabyte.
Any programming language can be used for application development, and deployment is supported on x86 platforms running Linux, Solaris and, for an extra charge, Windows. The AMI can make development easy by mirroring the development/test system. EC2 applications can use other Amazon web services like Simple Storage Service, Simple Queue Service, and SimpleDB, but this is not required. EC2 is also supported by key IT vendors: Oracle and IBM have partnered with Amazon for some cloud offerings, and their collaboration will enhance the utility of EC2 applications for enterprises.
Since EC2 can host virtually any application, it can also use any protocol or web service/service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology to integrate with companion applications or components in the enterprise. There is a standard EC2 linkage capability available, and in addition, the Eucalyptus open source cloud project mentioned below provides an EC2-co...
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