Chapter 11
Working with Cloud Development Services
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:
- Understanding the different kinds of cloud development services
- Using the FeedHenry app development platform
- Using the Appcelerator app development platform
- Using the appMobi app development platform
In this book, you have learned how to build a cloud-based mobile app from the ground up. You have done everything yourself, including setting up your own Amazon server. You’ve used the Amazon cloud, but you’ve still had to do a lot of system administration work yourself. You will often need this level of control, and the knowledge you’ve gained in this book will be very useful when you need to meet client requirements in a flexible way.
Sometimes, you will not need quite so much control, and it may be more cost-effective to let someone else worry about server configuration. In such cases, you can use prebuilt services in the cloud and focus on building your mobile app. This chapter looks at three commercial vendors that can help you build apps very quickly, by abstracting away many of the details.
It is useful to have a conceptual framework in order to help make a decision about what cloud vendor to use. There are three main types of cloud services:
- Infrastructure-as-a-service — You get virtual infrastructure software, such as operating systems, databases, and file storage. Amazon and Rackspace are good examples.
- Platform-as-a-service — You get a prebuilt execution environment for your code, ...
