In business, development time can mean serious money. There’s a delicate dance of cost vs. benefit – processes that could potentially be automated aren’t because the time it would take to write the code isn’t worth the time that would be saved. Luckily, the industry is changing, and we’ll soon see a day where your business can develop an app without writing a single line of code.
That day might just be today, AT&T’s new “Platform as a Service” (PaaS) product is a huge step in the right direction. PaaS offers a complete development environment designed help your business build and launch custom applications quickly, run them reliably and manage them easily throughout the full application lifecycle. The best part is that you can make it accessible from any device, all at the click of a mouse.
“AT&T Platform as a Service is like rocket fuel for developing cloud apps,” said Steve Caniano, Vice President, Hosting and Cloud Services, AT&T Business Solutions. Looking at the specs, if it’s not rocket fuel, it might at least be a Red Bull for app development, offering:
- A complete cloud-based development and deployment platform
- Web tools and customizable templates for software development, including a library of 50 pre-built apps which can be customized or used as-is
- A high-performance, redundant and scalable infrastructure to run online applications and databases
- Development tools to mobilize applications
- Integrated social networking features
- 7x24x365 infrastructure monitoring, management and support
- A monthly per-user fee for access to AT&T Platform as a Service applications.
These tools should go a long way towards streamlining the app development process for IT departments and independent software vendors alike. As a developer, I of course take some enjoyment in the mystique that surrounds the development process. However, it’s not magic – and products like AT&T’s PaaS offering means that drag-and-drop app development will hopefully take some of the mystery out of the process. Soon, anyone will be empowered to develop and release useful apps – an appealing prospect that both empowers those that don’t speak Java and allows developers the freedom to work on more complex projects.
You can check out the full details of AT&T latest offering by reading the press release. And if you want to stay up-to-date with the latest in what AT&T is rolling out in terms of cloud tech, their Cloud News Media Kit is a great place to learn.