Application development is quickly becoming a large and crucial section of the technology market as more and more businesses make the jump both to virtual servers and to the cloud. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal found that cloud adoption by both small and medium-sized businesses more than doubled between 2010 and 2011, and a CMB study reported that over 80 percent of all businesses are using at least one cloud-based application. If your business is seeking to maximize the utility of the application development process, a developer VPS can offer a number of benefits - both as a testing and deployment environment.
The Use of a Development VPS
A virtual private server (VPS) is one way you can take advantage of virtualization without having to pay the cost of a dedicated server. Your VPS comes as a blank slate, with only the OS, and optionally, your control panel of choice installed, allowing you to then place whatever application you want into a blank testing environment. On a VPS, you will be able to easily track any changes made to an application, as well as save multiple instances of it both before and after it is run or any modifications are made. Using a VPS will also provide you with an easy point of collaboration and contact for all developers working on the project - so long as they have the right permissions and reliable Internet access, they will be able to work on the application no matter where in the world they are. This developer VPS concept also means that your new applications can first be tested in a relative vacuum, and cannot harm your company`s infrastructure or network if they do not perform as desired. In addition, a clean testing environment means that you will be able to easily determine the point of failure for your application, rather than trying to determine if it was something on your internal network that caused a failure.
Server and Scripting Technologies
Perhaps one of the most significant benefits of a Linux or Windows developer VPS is the ability to use a multitude of scripting and Web server technologies in order to create the application you want, rather than one that is dictated by the state of your local server. If you`re looking to develop apps for a Windows-based environment, you can install Silverlight, the .NET framework and SQL, along with things like Visual Studio and WebMatrix. If Linux applications are more your style, you can choose to use PHP or Ruby on Rails as your development platform, or buy two slices of virtual real estate and host one of each. You can also install ColdFusion, Gedit, Kompozer and Aptana – to name a few – to help your development process. You might also choose to develop in the free and open source (FOSS) environment of Java, using Linux-based Apache/Tomcat solution. Apache Tomcat is designed to run as a Java applet on a server rather than in a Web browser, and is intended to provide as “pure” an environment as possible for Java code to be run without any outside interference. Currently running version 7.0.22, this development tool is constantly undergoing evolution and is backed by a large amount of community support.
A developer VPS can help you make the most of any application projects that you are working by allowing you to get them into a market-ready state as soon as possible. With a clean testing environment and a host of installable options for scripting and Web design, developing in a VPS server offers an array of benefits for testing and deployment.
