These days the performance of applications are taken in for granted these days
. An application hang could be because of the strained system resources in the cloud or simply due to the application hang in the old client-server. The performance aspect of an application should not only be judged by usability, but the ability tocater to users needs.
With the browsers battling it out, with Google Chrome 2.0 and Firefox raising its ante with Firefoc 3.5. We often take the application performance for granted. Web 2.0 applications utilize Java applets that demand resources, browsers that efficiently use those resources are of paramount importance.
When considering putting applications for an organization in the cloud, the network performance is the first non-browser bottleneck. If directed outward from the user perspective. Wearing my SLA hat again, the development of a strong network infrastructure is a must, and really not subject to compromise. Think of this as a variation on the issue that caught some users unaware in the Web 1.0 era. High-speed fiber/broadband service to a neighborhood - but no fiber into homes. Result: Questionable performance for the end user because you are only as fast as your slowest link. Information could be due to a system burp, and perhaps some misplaced confidence in the autosave capabilities of the cloud application. It is a fair question to ask for users doing editing work in the cloud: How are you protecting my real-time editing from disaster?
Most of the applications are either small scale or medium scale. Larger applications need a different architecture. Since the smaller applications use the simple linear procedural script. Which is easy to write, and there are a few skill to maintain code for the same. The best performance and highest security is often obtained through parameterized stored procedures, followed by parameterized queries (also known as prepared statements) with strong typing of the parameters and schema.
Moving your companies business applications to the cloud will be a relief to your IT teams workload. But only if you make sure that the SaaS provider defines what they are using to monitor the performance and the uptime of the applications.