InfoWorld has put together a very thorough review of what the top cloud computing services have to offer by way of a mobile development stack. The full article is well worth the read, but here are some key points:
- Microsoft Windows Azure Mobile Services: “The secret is that Windows Azure Mobile Services is a beautiful front end on Node.js. The logo on the top is from Microsoft central branding, but it takes only a few minutes to realize that almost everything underneath is Node.js acting as a gatekeeper to a Microsoft SQL database.”
- Google Mobile Backend Starter:“Google’s collection of APIs is huge, and it’s always been a good start for any app or desktop tool… The Mobile Backen is focused more on messaging, authentication, and continuous queries.”
- AWS Mobile Developer Center: “While the other clouds have specific products aimed at mobile developers, Amazon’s Mobile Develop center is little more than a pointer to regular services for any machine on the Internet. There are dozens of APIs for Amazon Web Services; a few of them are also ideal for mobile devices.”
- Parse: “Parse may not have as big a name as the other in this review, but it offers a solid collection of back-end services as well as libraries for accessing these services from all of the major and not-so-major platforms.”
