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What are some of the hurdles we have encountered with Cloud Development? What mechanisms have we used to overcome them? The problems posed by the different cloud platforms are different. I will be writing on this topic in a series blog posts. I expect to blog on these topics. If you know of others, please let me know. These list items will get hyperlinked over time.

1. Cloud Development for Google App Engine
2. Cloud Development for Amazon EC2
3. Managing software delivery from outsourcers
4. Managing evolution of database configurations
5. Performance and Stress Testing
6. Security Testing

In this introductory post, I want to cover activities that cross all platforms. The premise of Cloud Development is that the company does not own any hardware. Under these circumstances, how does software development get done?

Tight control over source code is essential. This need does not go away with Cloud Computing. It becomes more important! It used to be that if you lost track of the latest source, you could always look at the working machine. No longer, not consistently anyway. In the Google App Engine support forum, there is a predictable weekly request from someone or the other for Google to help them retrieve their latest source code. The answer is always the same (no, can’t be done).  The team needs to use the source repository frequently to build from.  The source repository should be backed up, versioned and secure. What should be under source control? Everything! That includes source code (duh!), install scripts (Rightscale scripts, for example, for creating an environment), security settings,  even database configurations. This last item will require further discussion; more on it in a subsequent post.

The issue tracking database is the team’s second most important asset, after source code. It too needs to be backed up, versioned and secure^†.

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^† Here are a couple of recommendations to “rent” source code management and issue tracking software from:  DynamSoft and ProjectLocker. We use the former in our practice but both come well recommended.