6 Best Practices for Cloud Application Development

Native cloud application development has emerged as an effective way to bring applications to market for organizations with specific technical needs. Cloud-based applications offer greater scalability and accessibility than traditional on-premises solutions, enabling organizations to adapt to evolving customer demands and business goals. But achieving these benefits requires a robust strategy to guide your development project and cloud management efforts.

What is cloud application development?

Cloud application development is the process of designing, building, deploying, and maintaining applications that run on cloud servers, rather than being installed on individual users’ devices or on-premises servers. For example, an organization might develop a cloud-based time-tracking application that allows employees to log their hours and generate reports for billing clients. Employees can access the application from any device, offering flexibility and real-time insights into productivity.

Cloud-based applications offer several advantages, including:

• Scalability: Thanks to the flexibility of cloud platforms, you can scale cloud-based applications up or down based on demand. As a result, you can handle usage spikes without over-provisioning resources and avoid underutilization.
• Cost efficiency: Most cloud storage solutions allow you to operate on a pay-as-you-go model, so you’re only charged for the resources you use. Although cloud storage still involves hardware, the provider typically handles maintenance, further reducing costs.
• Accessibility: Since cloud-based applications store and process data in the cloud, they can run on devices with basic hardware specifications, like a mobile device. Users can access these applications from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing for greater flexibility. This makes cloud-based applications ideal for remote work and global collaboration.
• Agility: Cloud platforms support continuous integration (CI), which automates code testing and integration, and continuous deployment (CD), which automates the release of new features. This streamlines both the development and release cycles, allowing for faster time-to-market for your applications

Considering the benefits of cloud-based applications, it’s not surprising that the global cloud applications market value is expected to reach $168.6 billion by 2025 — up from $133.6 billion in 2021.

No matter where you are in your cloud journey, a well-defined cloud transformation roadmap can guide you through the complexities of adopting and optimizing cloud technologies. And with optimized cloud infrastructure, you can drive innovation and scalability by developing cloud-based applications that align with your business goals.

Key principles for effective cloud application development

A structured approach to cloud-based application development can take your applications to the next level in terms of scalability, user experience, efficiency, and security. Consider the following best practices to get the most out of your cloud application investments:

1. Develop a clear strategy: When developing any application, you must have a documented strategy to set goals and measure success. Align your strategy with overall business objectives and define clear metrics to measure success. The plan should account for elements like choosing the right cloud model, planning for data management, and optimizing resource allocation. Collaborate with stakeholders across various business units (e.g., IT, finance, and operations) to account for diverse perspectives in your strategy. 
2. Design with scalability in mind: As you add new users and features to cloud-based applications, your infrastructure must be able to handle increased demand. Using the right coding language and architecture can help you scale seamlessly. Additionally, leveraging microservices — smaller, independent components that can be developed, deployed, and scaled separately — can boost flexibility and scalability. Microservices also make it easier to modify parts of your application without disrupting the entire platform.
3. Prioritize security: While most cloud providers offer baseline security, you are ultimately responsible for the security of the cloud-based applications you develop. That means you have to prioritize security throughout the entire development lifecycle — and after. Potential threats, from misconfigurations to unsecured APIs, can lead to vulnerabilities that place your application and its users at risk. Adhere to best practices for secure coding to avoid common vulnerabilities like buffer overflows. It’s also important to conduct routine vulnerability assessments and penetration testing to identify and fix security issues within your application. 
4. Leverage automation: CI and CD can significantly streamline the development and release cycle for cloud-based applications. By using CI/CD pipelines that automate building, testing, and deployment, you can reduce deployment errors and write high-quality code faster and more efficiently. For consistency across your organization, maintain clear CI/CD documentation for best practices and processes.
5. Focus on user experience (UX): Since users can access cloud-based applications from various devices, a consistent and intuitive UX is crucial. Start by conducting user research like surveys, interviews, and usability tests to understand your users’ needs and preferences. It’s also important to optimize your application for various devices and screen sizes. Use a simple and clear navigation layout, and prioritize efficient coding and resource management to ensure fast loading times. Once you deploy your application, you can gather user feedback and make iterative improvements.
6. Monitor and optimize performance: Monitoring your application’s performance post-deployment is crucial to identifying bottlenecks and resolving issues before end users are impacted. As you monitor your application, focus on performance metrics like response times and latency, availability to ensure accessibility and functionality, and resource utilization to ensure efficient resource allocation. Moreover, look out for log errors so you can quickly resolve them. These tasks are a tall order for already overburdened internal IT teams, which is why many organizations lean on third parties for application performance monitoring.

Take advantage of Ensono’s cloud application development services

Developing cloud-based applications can boost scalability and accessibility, expedite your time to market, and reduce operational costs. However, developing these applications requires expertise in cloud architecture and a thorough understanding of development best practices.

Ensono’s cloud experts are here to help, offering both turnkey solutions and strategic product roadmap consulting. We meet you where you are to ensure your development projects stay on course, align with business goals, maintain scalability, and provide value through ongoing optimization.

Get in touch to discover how Ensono can level up your cloud-based applications.