How Cloud is Shifting the Software Stack

To the average consumer, applications have become an integral of everyday life. Interaction with technologies over the past decade have shifted tremendously from desktop to mobile, including tablets and smartphones. While there isn’t much to notice besides shifting user interfaces and interaction, there is a lot happening in the back-end, much of which is up for debate among engineers, especially those looking at traditional models versus the cloud. In today’s blog post, we’ll look at exactly how prevalent these changes have been and gauge their impact in the long run.

Turning On the LAMP

Software engineers who have been in the industry for quite some time are familiar with the LAMP stack, which is a skill set consisting of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Along with WAMP (Windows-focused) and other software stacks, these were the accepted needs that many technology companies asked for from job applicants. Over time however, these philosophies have become incredibly complex as the cost to maintain such architectures rises, depleting any efficiency gains.

For the consumer who does take a look at where the development space has evolved, it’s easy to see that there is a mishmash of languages, coding frameworks, and philosophies. Head to any user group meetup and you might just land yourself between two seasoned veterans arguing over the viability of .NET or JavaScript. Depending on the audience, someone might even be defending the usefulness of FORTRAN – but that’s a conversation for another time.

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At that point, it might be your turn to interject and speak about the cloud.

Shifting to Cloud-First

The 2008 Recession shifted how we work and how we view the world at large, and technologies weren’t spared. For those in IT, the traditional method of purchasing technologies became worrisome, as many managers noticed that assets wouldn’t be used, wasting precious budget dollars that could have been funneled towards other aspects of the business. It was here where the notion of adopting the cloud came into view, as many who had stood on the sidelines prior admiring and even discounting the possibilities of software, platform, and infrastructure in the cloud had second thoughts and jumped into the fray.

What these executives discovered after jumping into cloud was a different paradigm, supported by trusted platforms which offered not only financial viability, but unrivaled scalability and an ecosystem that responded well to changes in the market. Without being tied down to on-premise hardware, organizations could now experiment, explore, and augment their existing technologies through the hybrid cloud while enjoying the possibilities of what was to come. Much of the shift has been noticed in the following areas:

• Continuous Deployment, or shorter go-to-market cycles. As consumers demanded from their technologies, organizations had to choose agility or lose to their competition. Such a philosophy was incompatible with LAMP.
• Evolution in Code, seen in learning new platforms including AWS, Dell Boomi, and Pivotal. Additionally, developers must also take on learning about microservices and application programming interfaces (APIs).
• Integration versus Standalone, seen in the ecosystem of cloud. In the past, many applications neither talked to each nor worked together. Through the cloud and Integration Platform as a Service solution like Dell Boomi, organizations can see how their data connect together, while offering developers an opportunity to create more relevant innovations based off of how the data is seen.
• Increased collaboration through DevOps, enabled by tools that allow teams to divide up the work and allow for specialization. Instead of having employees work on a stack of capabilities, they can work on specific areas.
• Flexibility and customization, with platforms that are out of the box and ready to use immediately. Components can also be swapped out without a lot of need for back-end engineering.

Where Do We Go Next?

As we move forward in technology, there are no doubt going to be more developers who are skilled in the new cloud platforms. With older platforms and philosophies taking a back seat, time will tell with adoption and impact.

If you’re wondering how these changes impact your organization, get in touch. Send an email to sales@perficient.com and let us know where your strategies are headed for the year ahead.

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