CloudLaunch: Discover and Deploy Cloud Applications

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Software Engineering

Background:

• Cloud computing is prevalent for software delivery.
• Deploying complex applications across diverse cloud providers is challenging due to isolated, provider-specific solutions.
• This often results in vendor lock-in for developers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce CloudLaunch, a uniform platform for discovering and deploying applications across different cloud providers.
• To enable cloud-agnosticism for applications, allowing authors to deploy on multiple clouds with minimal effort.
• To provide a standardized interface for end-users to launch applications irrespective of the underlying cloud infrastructure.

Main Methods:

• Developed CloudLaunch as a catalog-based application discovery and deployment system.
• Implemented customizable user interfaces and launch controls for each application.
• Ensured cloud-agnostic architecture to support multi-cloud deployment.
• Designed a uniform interface for end-user application launching.

Main Results:

• CloudLaunch successfully provides a uniform platform for application discovery and deployment.
• Arbitrary applications can be added to the catalog with customizable interfaces.
• The platform preserves cloud-agnosticism, simplifying multi-cloud availability for developers.
• End-users benefit from a consistent interface for launching applications across various cloud providers.

Conclusions:

• CloudLaunch effectively addresses the challenges of multi-cloud application deployment.
• It reduces developer effort and mitigates vendor lock-in.
• The platform enhances the accessibility and usability of cloud-based applications for end-users.