Oct 5 2009   6:17PM GMT

Frameworks emerging for cloud computing

Posted by: Mpontacoloni
Uncategorized

By Jack Vaughan

Over many years, application development has proved to be something of a search for the appropriate level of abstraction. As integration projects have gained sway, APIs that somehow encapsulate means of performing basic tasks have become as important as the programming languages that developers use daily.

As an example take the Zend Framework for PHP development. This framework helped bring broader object-oriented techniques to a language that started life as something of a scripting tool. Much like how SpringSource managed to encapsulate best practices in Spring-based light-weight Java apps, Zend Technologies managed to steward PHP toward enterprise use.

Application frameworks may show the way as to how application development will eventually work in the cloud. As recent stories suggest, (see IBM, Microsoft, Zend and others to create PHP cloud API and VMware buys SpringSource, embracing application development) the frameworks may form something of a nexus for applications moving to cloud architecture.

No one wants to go back to the bad old days when teams would have to manage different code sets for multiple operating systems. So, the framework makers are adjusting their APIs, with the idea of encapsulating best practices that work across various clouds.