Want to Build A Killer Cloud App?

Are you a cloud application producer and do you want to build a killer cloud application? James Urquhart offers some interesting advice.

1. Build an application that analyzes gobs and gobs of data. The cloud is a great place to do it, because you can provision a ton of computing on demand when the application is crunching data, and then release it (and therefore stop paying for it) when the data crunching is done. Flightcaster.com is a good example.
2. Explore applications that create commerce and communities. Exploring ideas is cheap on a cloud platform, and doesn't require high capital costs. Once  you figure out what works, you can scale it in a cloud, a hybrid cloud, or in-house. The point is that you don't have to decide until you are successful. khanacademy.org is a great example that is hosted on the Google App Engine.
3. Context applications (à la Geoffrey Moore). These applications help business improve their operational efficiency, but do not contribute directly to their core products. These are safe to put in the cloud because most of them don't give their users any major competitive advantages. For example, web applications that manage chat, conferencing, wikis, human resources processes, are all applications that could be built in the cloud. Halogen Software for managing human resources is a good example.

Interesting advice. It seems rooted in the fact that CIOs must balance the need to lower IT costs with the need to maintain data security. These classes of applications offer both because they reduce IT costs and use data that isn't particularly critical to the core of the business. Read the article for more details.