The Cloud tools

The SmartCLIDE project aimed to accelerate the digitisation of enterprises without the need for software professionals by creating a new cloud-native IDE. This allowed companies to upgrade, develop new cloud-based services, create new opportunities for SMEs or to support the development of new applications, increase levels of quality, productivity and security, among other advantages.

Cloud computing in a nutshell

Cloud computing is the on-demand provision of computing services such as databases, implemented through data centres and server farms whose services are available to many different customers, under a pay-as-you-go model to charge only for the services they use. There are three main categories of computing centres:

-Public clouds: over public networks.

-Private clouds: over private networks.

-Mixed clouds: combining public and private networks.

Types of cloud computing services

-INFRASTRUCTURE-AS-A-SERVICE (IAAS): users are responsible for its configuration.

-PLATFORM-AS-a-SERVICE (PAAS): the configuration is done on demand by the contracting party.

-SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS): the entire lifecycle of the application, infrastructure, configuration and administration tasks are carried out.

Latest developments

Cloud-native: with the development of cloud services has been forced to start developing applications focused on this service.

Multi-cloud: the use of cloud services from different providers in a single heterogeneous architecture to meet different technical or business requirements.

Benefits and challenges

An external company that specialises in hosting and deploying servers can achieve economies of scale and provide a more secure, upgraded, and more reliable platform. It also offers a reliable platform with zero downtime and availability on a global scale. But there are costs to consider.

SmartCLIDE: a new cloud-native IDE

With cloud computing it is much easier to analyse data, however to do this requires the development of tools adapted to the cloud, which is expensive and time-consuming.

To make this easier the SmartCLIDE consortium proposed the creation of a new Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Main features of IDE:

-Lifecycle support

-Detailed source code monitoring

-Version control and configuration integration

-Demonstrative and non-demonstrative development

-Development by demonstration and text notation

-Automatic software classification

-Continuous integration and deployment assistance

SmartCLIDE was based on Eclipse THEIA, the cloud version of the Eclipse IDE, which offers all the tools needed for development in one place. It is a rich interface, with a wide range of functionalities.