MADCAT: A Methodology for Architecture and Deployment of Cloud Application Topologies

The cloud computing paradigm introduces new possibilities and challenges for application design and deployment. On-demand resource provisioning, as well as resource and cost elasticity, need to be considered when realizing large-scale distributed applications for cloud environments. Current approaches do not sufficiently address the challenges of efficiently architecting and deploying cloud applications in a holistic manner and do not deal with the specific challenges encountered in cloud infrastructures. In this paper we introduce a methodology tackling the practical problems encountered when designing and deploying cloud applications. It enables the structured creation of cloud-native applications, addressing the complete application development lifecycle, from architectural design to concrete deployment topologies provisioned and executed on cloud infrastructure. By using iterative refinement and seamless provenance documentation of decisions made in the process, the methodology eases communication with relevant stakeholders and enables efficient design and deployment of distributed cloud applications.