CreOFF can put your idea in the cloud

  Filed under creoff, cloud, appengine

There are several cloud hosting solutions out there, but Google's App Engine is currently CreOFF's favourite by far.

Because it has such great potential for hosting scalable apps and services CreOFF is promoting Google App Engine usage by offering 25% off normal development rates for App Engine projects for a limited time only. (1)

App Engine is a good choice for:

• Backends for Flash/Flex/Facebook/mobile games or apps
• Brand activation campaigns and minisites
• Web services or online software (Software As A service)
• Sites for big events like rock concerts, international seminars, Royal Weddings...

In fact, any project where traditional servers would have a hard time keeping up with the sudden peaks in traffic will benefit from running on Google's cloud.

Benefits and limitations of Google App Engine

Google App Engine is a good choice, but not suitable for every project. It's important to know when to use App Engine and when to use a different solution.

BENEFITS

• Pricing: pay what you use, below quota the hosting is COMPLETELY FREE
• Automatic scaling: can handle sudden peaks in traffic automatically
• Decentralized: your app can automatically run on different servers around the world depending on location of users
• Platform As A Service (PaaS), allows easier deployment and versioning
• New features and bugfixes being added by Google on a regular basis

LIMITATIONS

• Several technical constraints to ensure scalability
• Less suited for very complex database queries and transactions
• Still very much do-it-yourself, no ready-made open source solutions like WordPress or Drupal available
• Python based development (although some consider this a benefit)

Get started

Contact CreOFF to see if your idea would benefit from running on Google App Engine. I will gladly discuss the possibilities with you.

And even if your project would be better off running on a traditional server environment I can be of assistance too: CreOFF has been developing PHP based solutions for the past several years, with CodeIgniter and recently Zend Framework as the frameworks of choice.

More info:

• App Engine Free quotas
• App Engine billing rates (above free quota)
• UPDATE May 2011: Google's new pricing structure (starting 2011)

(1) offer valid until August 2011, pending project approval by CreOFF and if planning permits. Lower rates apply to development costs not hosting