A Lifetime Supporting Framework for Cloud Applications

This paper proposes a framework, which integrates the development and operation environments for cloud applications. Adopting perspectives on lifecycle management, the framework is equipped with tools and platforms, which seamlessly integrate lifetime phases: requirement analysis, architecture design, application implementation, operation and improvement. These are predicated on theories in design engineering, enabling identification of constraints arising in the development process and of dependencies among functional modules. A case study shows the feasibilities of the design principles, and indicates possibilities for the framework to be an Application Platform as a Service (APaaS), which can form an eco-system of datacenter operators, systems integrators and application providers.