Introduction to the Cloud - Beginning iOS Cloud and Database Development - page 13

Table 2-2. Fixed access data streaming comparison (Source: Sandvine Network Demographics)

Upstream Downstream Aggregate

Rank Application Share Application Share Application Share

1 BitTorrent 36.8% Netflix 33.0% Netflix 28.8%

2 HTTP 9.83% YouTube 14.8% YouTube 13.1%

3 Skype 4.76% HTTP 12.0% HTTP 11.7%

4 Netflix 4.51% BitTorrent 5.89% BitTorrent 10.3%

5 SSL 3.73% iTunes 3.92% iTunes 3.43%

6 YouTube 2.70% MPEG 2.22% SSL 2.23%

7 PPStream 1.65% Flash Video 2.21% MPEG 2.05%

8 Facebook 1.62% SSL 1.97% Flash Video 2.01%

9 Apple PhotoStream 1.46% Amazon Video 1.75% Facebook 1.50%

10 Dropbox 1.17% Facebook 1.48% RTMP 1.41%

Top 10 68.24% Top 10 79.01% Top 10 76.54%

Why Develop an App with the Cloud?
Storing your company data on the cloud can make good business sense. If your application requires
you to field service station calls while out in the field and you need to access your data remotely,
having it in the cloud will be of great help.

We always have to think about who is going to be using this data and how are they going to be
using it. So, if the field agent is using a pricing application that you have developed, and all that
information is stored within the application, if those products change prices, they won't be able
to be updated correctly from a server. There's no way for you to protect your data when it isn't
downloaded from a server. If the application were connected to the cloud, simple protocols would
be in place so that if Joe the salesman had your application and all of a sudden he decided to go
to different company or decided to use your prices, and you felt like that was the end of his job that
day, you can, within a short amount of time, disable his application. Joe would have the most recent
data but it wouldn't be updatable with his security level taken away, and with most of the data still on
the cloud hidden from him.

If you're dependent on the call data within that application, and if it's critical that user experience
be robust, then maybe the cloud is not the correct server platform. But let's just say you have an
application that has multiple platforms. This would be a no-brainer. The cloud allows the application
on all the platforms to have one center point of data rather than managing multiple data centers. This
makes pragmatic sense when you're programming for mobile applications, especially when they are
cross-platform.

Now that we've decided that it's time to develop a cloud application or data in the cloud, the first
question that you have to ask is how do you want to track different types of data. You want to have
your variables already decided in a way that makes sense with best business practices.