Performance Engineering for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing potentially solves some of the major challenges in the engineering of large software systems. With the promise of infinite capacity coupled with the ability to scale at the same speed as the traffic changes, it may appear that performance engineering will become redundant. Organizations might believe that there is no need to plan for the future, to optimize applications, or to worry about efficient operation. This paper argues that cloud computing is an area where performance engineering must be applied and customized. It will not be possible to “cloud wash” performance engineering by just applying previous methods. Rather it is essential to both understand the differences between the cloud and previous systems, and the applicability of proposed performance engineering methods.