Google (News - Alert) announced its application platform service on the Web, becoming the latest entrant in the space, further signifying that corporate users would do well to take note of the growing range of basic infrastructure services being offered online.
Google’s Application Engine allows developers to create and host Web apps, using several online services, like distributed data store, replication and load-balancing services. Developers usually write applications in Python, and create links to other Google services, like its authentication platform.
Google clarified that its Application Engine is not ready for enterprise use as yet. Tom Stocky, Google product manager, confirmed that the company has not even approached companies with the service, but, in future, it may extend it to business users as the service evolves and includes features like offline processing and support for more languages.
Google now joins other companies, including Amazon.com, Bungee Labs, Elastra, and Salesforce.com (News - Alert), in expanding its online services. All of these firms offer platform-level services, like application development, database access and querying, and storage, in addition to pure computing power as either bundled, structured suites of online services, or as unbundled and relatively raw ones.
Microsoft (News - Alert) is in the process of testing its SQL Server Data Services, a hosted data-storage and query-processing service. Microsoft’s utility computing platform, which may be released within a year, is expected to offer several computational, service management and storage services.
The services offered online by most companies are often meant for consumers, start-ups, and small businesses, but large enterprises also use them for services like hosting business and customer-facing apps.
For instance The Schumacher Group, an emergency medicine practice management company, uses Salesforce’s Force.com application platform for a database application that schedules physician visits to disaster zones.
NASDAQ uses Amazon’s S3 storage service to host data for NASDAQ Market Replay.
Claude Courbois, associate VP of product development for NASDAQ data products said, “S3’s cheap scalability has garnered considerable interest from people working for NASDAQ corporate IT. That’s a really nice cost model. However, there are plenty of situations where an online service is “a nonstarter” at NASDAQ, particularly with transactional or highly secure data.”
Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services agreed, saying, “Companies still have “deep, dark fears” over security.”
He pointed out that applications that house critical data that requires low latency or falls under regulatory constraints may not be the best choice for hosting online.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment