| This year has been the year of Cloud Computing. You | | | | While the survey is a little dated i do think it accurately |
| need to be literally hiding under a rock if you have not | | | | reflects the current adoption levels in the market and |
| yet heard about it. Its everywhere, it seems | | | | most of the entire discussion of rapid adoption of the |
| enterprises are moving to the Cloud, small startup | | | | cloud is more around hosting and may not be around |
| companies are moving their services to the cloud and | | | | PaaS. The rest of it is all the typical Hype Cycle in play. |
| it seems like the whole world will pretty much be on | | | | App Engine/Azure/EC2 Adoption |
| the cloud soon. Really is it this big ? It might be a good | | | | Now within the entire Cloud Platform enabling space it |
| time to evaluate how big the adoption really is. Who | | | | will be interesting to evaluate how the various players |
| are the big players and what does the competition | | | | stack up against each other. A similar survey by |
| look like. | | | | Forrestor of developers using the various stacks |
| Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, Force.com, and | | | | break up as Amazon EC2 - 41%, Microsoft Azure - |
| in some ways Amazon EC2 all fall into a specific sub | | | | 10.2% and App Engine - 8.2 %. |
| category within cloud computing known as Platform as | | | | What does this all mean ? |
| a Service(PaaS). Platform as a Service typically | | | | Well it means that adoption is still in its infancy. While |
| applies to platforms which support the deployment of | | | | there is a lot of excitement around Cloud Platforms |
| applications without the underlying cost of server and | | | | and the platforms show a lot of promise there is still |
| other hosting infrastructure underlying. To differentiate | | | | some way to go before these platforms become a |
| PaaS against a regular hosting it would involve using | | | | mainstream choice. It also means that this is right time |
| specific proprietary platform APIs and development | | | | to get started and playing around with the tools and |
| tools which typically provide a level of abstraction | | | | understanding the platforms while the standards are |
| which reduces the development and maintainability | | | | still evolving. While the enterprises may still take a while |
| requirement significantly. | | | | to catch up these are great platforms for small |
| Platform as a Service Adoption | | | | companies, individual developers, students and |
| Based on a survey from Forrester Platform as a | | | | education to adopt and learn while the platforms |
| Service is a measly 2% of the overall application | | | | evolve. |
| platform landscape. Check this graphic for more details | | | | |