The cloud is becoming an increasingly popular choice for software development teams. Find out the best cloud tools for software development in this article.
Today, many businesses and software organizations are embracing the cloud as the backbone of their digital operations. Why so? It offers several advantages over traditional on-premise solutions.
For one, cloud services can cut costs on IT equipment. When you move systems online, you don’t have to purchase expensive hardware anymore. Another perk is the flexibility that cloud systems offer. With cloud services, your employees can access work processes anywhere. As a result, you can offer flexible work arrangements or purely remote work setups.
These benefits couldn’t be more useful in software development. Many software teams implement projects within cloud environments. Add to that the current software development trend where most software developers prefer to work from home. Ergo, cloud tools are the way to go for many companies. Let’s dive deeper.
Best Cloud Tools for Software Development
There are many different cloud-based tools in the market today, all of which have different uses in software development. In the list below, we will introduce some of our favorite cloud-based tools for software development, their usage, and their advantages. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Amazon Web Services
The first cloud-based tool on our list is Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is a cloud computing platform that offers a wide range of services, including storage, computing, networking, and more.
It is also one of the most popular cloud providers among software development teams. One of the main reasons for this popularity is that AWS offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model. This means that you only have to pay for the services that you use.
Another advantage of using AWS is that it offers a wide range of tools and services used for software development. These services include:
- EC2
- S3
- DynamoDB
- Lambda
- RDS
- EC2 Auto-scaling
- Firewall Manager, and more
Microsoft Azure
Another cloud-based tool that is popular among software development teams is Microsoft Azure. Azure is a cloud computing platform from Microsoft that offers a wide range of services.
Like AWS, they provide data storage, computing, networking, and more services. They also offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure also offers many tools and services that you can use for software development. These services include:
- Active Directory
- CDN
- Data Factory
- CosmosDB
- Azure DevOps
- Virtual Machine
- Azure SQL
- Azure Function
Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is another cloud provider that is popular among software development teams. GCP also offers a wide range of services related to software development, including storage, database management, networking, and more.
Just like the first two platforms, GCP has a pay-as-you-go pricing model. They offer multiple useful tools and services for software development. These services range from AI and machine learning tools to Analytics, API and Database management, and financial gateways. Here are some examples:
- Compute Engine
- Cloud Storage
- Cloud SDK
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- Dataflow
- Cloud Functions
- Translation AI
- Deep Learning Containers
- BigQuery
- Payment Gateway
These are the three major cloud computing services. For a more detailed comparison, check out Cloud Computing: AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP.
Nevertheless, software teams still use tools or services outside of the three preceding platforms. Why? Certain software projects require highly-customized features. Or, there are more suitable cloud-based platforms to use for software development areas than the ones mentioned above. Let’s look at our top picks of cloud-based tools for different development aspects.
Code Management
Here are some of the most popular cloud-based tools for code versioning and management:
GitHub
GitHub is a cloud-based code hosting platform that is popular among developers. It offers a free plan for individuals and organizations. Moreover, the platform is a great place to look for open-source libraries and tools to make development more productive.
Bitbucket
Bitbucket is a cloud-based code hosting platform from Atlassian. It offers both free and paid plans depending on which tier you’re on. The platform has an efficient workflow for code versioning and team interaction.
Heroku
This is a cloud-based platform as a service (PaaS) that enables developers to build, run, and operate applications entirely in the cloud. Developers use Heroku to manage and deploy code into applications.
Cloud Tools for Project Management
We also list the following cloud-based tools for software project management:
Jira
Jira is a cloud-based project management tool from Atlassian. It offers both free and paid plans consisting of different service scopes. With Jira, teams can create customized workflows that fit their processes.
This is a great tool for issue tracking and bug management. However, Jira has become a powerful tool that can accommodate multiple use cases, and process flows in modern-day Agile project management.
Asana
Asana is a cloud-based project management tool that offers a free plan for teams of up to 15 people. Organizations use Asana to collaborate, manage, and organize projects and tasks. You can utilize this platform for teams of any size.
Trello
Another cloud-based project management tool, Trello offers a free plan for individuals and small teams. However, you can scale your plan depending on the size of your organization. This tool also offers customized workflows and displays tickets in a visual way.
Cloud-Based Software Documentation Tools
Here’s a list of cloud-based software development documentation tools.
Confluence
Confluence is a cloud-based documentation and collaboration tool from Atlassian. It offers both free and paid plans. The best thing about this tool is that you can integrate it with other services under the Atlassian platform.
Read the Docs
Read the Docs is an open-source cloud documentation tool. This one simplifies software team documentation through seamless collaboration, automated versioning and hosting, and detailed tracking.
And there you have it! These are just some of the best cloud-based tools for software development teams. These cloud providers offer different services, tools, and pricing models, so you will need to evaluate each one carefully to find the best fit for your needs.
Pair the Best Tools with the Best Software Developers
You can reap the benefits of cloud tools for software development when you have great software developers on board. So, it pays to have a great team that can optimize the use of these technologies to improve business performance.
If you want to hire software developers quickly and affordably, try Full Scale!
We are an offshore software development company with a roster of hundreds of software development experts. With the nature of our operations, our talent pool is proficient in using cloud-based tools for software projects.
We have already performed the recruitment and evaluation processes, so you don’t have to! Just define the software development help that you need, and we’ll take care of the rest.
Our tech experts include software engineers, project managers, QA analysts, and content specialists. What are you waiting for?
