Introduction

Cloud applications are the primary choices of small/medium business owners due to higher feasibility and low maintenance costs. The online applications are available either as SAAS (Software as a Service) that satisfies a particular requirement of organization or PAAS (Platform as a Service) to develop an application or IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service) that hosts the application. The limited fields of online software services cannot comply with needs of an organization and hence interest in customized application development remained intact.

Recently before evolution of PAAS, applications were developed offline and ported to a server for user’s access. The development needs installation of supporting tools (platforms) on a system with configuration that is compatible to these tools. Once developed and tested on local system, an application is migrated to server system and connection strings to database are defined manually. The standard development process needs the developer to be around local system for development. The development process comes to halt if developer is not connected with that particular machine.

Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) are generally virtual machines that hosts your application. Though all the resources are available on server required to host an application, application update is not possible unless full rights of server machine is available and platforms are installed on machine. Then also, the IT and Business Engagement are seriously affected as the time required for custom update is always higher than that of client engagement.

This paper discuss PAAS for application development and hosting to accommodate the requirements of client. The online portal for enterprise application development allows analyst to create a prototype and programmers to use the code of prototype to further customize the application.

Resource Constraints

The business analyst in best practices make use of prototyping tool to create a prototype on the fly to meet customer’s requirement. The project manager assigns a technical team to develop application out of that prototype. The application prototype displays key features but with limited functionality that sometimes fails to demonstrate holistic view of application. Further, the prototype is just a show-off tactic that is only 10% valued by IT team as it only demonstrates client requirement in application.

Cloud portal is your access to an online service where you store and manage data. The portal is equipped with related services to make your work easy. The PAAS provider has a cloud portal with various platforms (Java, PHP, Ruby, .net etc.) to develop an application. The developers get a simulated environment where project can directly be started instead of collecting the resources. Current PAAS service cannot optimize the time and cost of project as the backhand code of prototyped model is useless.

Development Constraints

Difference in geographical location of sales and development team possess its own adversities. Until the code is completely developed and updated on a server, sales team cannot put forward their reviews and desired modifications. For every modification in code the cycle of compilation and uploading on server is repeated. The communication severely affect the project progress as with expanse of time, the client comes with more changes from what initially what has been agreed.

The difference in views of overall project quality also surfaces as the testing and development environment may be different due to licensing and versioning factors. The support team on client’s end can also face similar issues as features demonstrated by development team may not be compatible at client’s end.

The limitations of local development if not all, are broadly summarized in following bullets:

• The application development executes on a local platform and requires developer to be around the system.
• Install same versions and license of resources to all systems on platform to maintain perpetual quality.
• Higher time and effort expanse in minor modifications of code deployed on cloud.

Also, the application modeling using existing database requires sufficient knowledge of networking and programming. First an application is created with clear view of how the database will be used in application. In second step the database is mapped with new application. With exhaustive length of tables and their nomenclature, the complexity of task rises exponentially. Enterprise level applications needs a running web application with multiple user logins and thus cannot accommodate themselves with these limitations.

Solution as Cloud Development

Application development on cloud platform has numerous benefits over the local development. The cloud provides you numerous platforms and cutting edge technology to directly incorporate organization. The centralized storage of database provides safe and reliable access to the users based on their level of access. The cloud services in form of PAAS provides common platform for developers and testers for their work and eradicate any possibility of licensing or versioning differences.

The process of application development initiates with prototyping. An approved prototyped model from business analyst is the first look of application. This prototype model in custom application shows slight different behavior due to platform differences and limitations of individual capability. However, a PAAS platform that allows prototyping and converts it into working application can enhance resource optimization up to 50%. Here, developer can rely on backhand code of working application to generate further features.

Application/Data Management

Turanto is a cloud based prototyping cum application development tool that do not require coding for anything. The tool is accessible via web browser of internet enabled device and requires a secure login to access portal. This tool is for both programmers and non-programmers. The application prototyping takes as much time as the business analyst takes to understand the requirement. This tool can launch and deploy the prototype as working application on Turanto’s cloud. The cloud application is accessed via the application URL from any device and have full featured functionality of roles, permissions and data security.

To create an application out of client’s database, Turanto offers service to directly convert the existing database into a working application via ‘Import DB’ (Upload or provide URL). This application appears as the model (same as prototype) and can be edited to meet new requirements. The behavior of application can be seen by launching it via ‘launch application’ button that generates and deploys application on server within minutes. In short, Turanto provides developers the backhand code of working application.

Turanto application uses ASP.net coding and MVC framework. The application follows the standards of C sharp and backhand coding is systematically arranged in array of folders. Developers can edit and enhance the working application (without starting from scratch) on server itself using visual studio.

For quality analysis, the team can access the server and work directly there clipping the need of downloading the code and performing tests. The same set of tools and platform is accessible at both developer and testing end and working on same project at same time enhance company’s work efficiency.

Turanto portal stores all your application on Amazon servers with permission access to only individual records. For enterprises, a group access is provided to walk into each other’s applications. In Turanto, the data is stored not in folders but in the form of applications. The applications have symmetrical model and easily accessible via direct URL to that application. Moreover, the data of one application can be accessed to another application via reference links and API integration. It enables an organization to keep the centralized and discreet at same time.

Conclusion

Applications in Turanto are created via a web browser that connects user and portal. Users of Turanto do not rely on any system to meet the requirements neither they go for paying extra for any third party service. The application modeling initialize with prototyping through Turanto’s graphical user interface environment. The prototype application if do not need any specific requirement, same can be used as application model. The applications developed using Turanto are standard and suits the need of an enterprise. The efforts of development and testing team using Turanto are only focused to enhancement of application to meet the specific requirements. Overall, Turanto provides the rich PAAS and IAAS service that boosts the efficiency of organization.