To start with, let's hear it from the horse's mouth:

"What Is Google App Engine?

Google App Engine is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that lets you build and run applications on Google’s infrastructure. "

But what does it bring to the table, when it comes to deciding how and where to host your application when you "start up"?

Besides all else, first consideration is cost. As a startup, let's face it, you'll be broke. Pricing for app engine is based on traffic and usage, and while we would want a lot of traffic it won't happen at the onset. Until your product really kicks off, you get it all for free.

The application being built as modules, also allows developers to apply principles guiding enterprise application build. And viola, you have a highly scalable enterprise application built on a robust and high availability platform.

A product at its onset will also be dynamic (hope it is stable before you install, unstable products create bad reputation). You will have a lot of changes to make to your product as you get more knowledgeable about your market, trends and end user behavior. Google app engine allows dynamic install, which means zero downtime for your application, unless absolutely necessary.

All this is great but the question might be asked, what happens when your product, actually, grows big. There will be a point where usage based cost will show diminishing returns. With that argument put forth, considering enterprise like Best Buy are on app engine, that point will not come too fast.

Yet, some day you might want to get out of app engine, diminishing returns or some other reason, and install it on your own hardware. Times change, requirements and decisions too. It is always good to have an exit strategy. And that makes Google app engine a great choice at the onset.

Porting your application out of app engine as and when needed, will be quite easy. Once your product has earned its fair share and you might want to port it on dedicated infrastructure, you sure can. Since the application is developed using standard languages such as Java or Python (hope you choose one of these two only), it can be easily moved to dedicated application containers.

In addition to the ability to port, the app engine applications can, and should, be built as modules. That means, it is not necessary to port the application in one go. That also means parts of the application may never be ported. Integration with Google high replication datastore and Google drive is awesome enough to never go away from.

All in all, it will be a good decision to build your application on Google app engine.

-- Cross posting from Blogger