Impact of Cloud Services on Software Development Life Cycle

Abstract

Cloud computing provides a natural extension to service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the World Wide Web. It leads to a complete paradigm shift in a number of areas such as software development, deployment, IT usage, and software services industry. Among these areas, the impact on software development life cycle needs special attention as they form a pivotal part in the cloud assessment and migration. In this context, some key aspects include (a) implications of cloud-based (public cloud based) solution on the privacy requirements, (b) implications of cloud-based solution on testing services and project testing methodology, and (c) implications of cloud-based solution of configuration management. In this chapter, we propose to address the impacts, strategies, and best practices to minimize the negative effects of these implications. The chapter discusses variations to software development life cycle and related processes with respect to private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud models. These variations are analyzed based on the usage pattern of each cloud-based solution, especially with respect to requirement analysis, architecture and design, software construction, testing, and rollout. Relevant processes such as project management, configuration management, and release management are also discussed. The chapter concludes with a summary of various cloud usage patterns and their impact on each of the software development life cycle stages. These usage patterns and the impacts are generalized and can form the backbone of an enterprise cloud application development methodology.