When developing an app with a customer we're often asked to predict app usage in order to correctly size cloud resources such as content delivery, media streaming and push notifications. As many are aware, the smartphone has now overtaken the personal computer in the world as the consumer platform of choice and the exponential proliferation of apps and their usage will only serve to accelerate this trend. It's therefore worth pausing for a moment to consider what this rapid growth could mean in real terms - an important consideration if one is to deliver a consistent user experience to large numbers of mobile users across the world. I recently came across a very visual metaphor for what exponential growth looks like.

"Imagine a magic pipette. It is magic because every drop of water that comes out of it will double in size every minute. So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on… This is an example of exponential growth. Now, imagine a normal sized football stadium. In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole stadium. To make things more interesting, imagine the stadium is completely water-tight and that you cannot move from your seat. The first drop from the magic pipette is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm. Here's the question: Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling in size every minute, how much time do you have to free yourself from the seat and leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top? Think about it for a moment. Is it hours, days, weeks, months?

The answer: You have exactly until 12:49pm. It takes this tiny magic drop less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. This is impressive! But it gets better: At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty? Take a guess.

The answer: At 12:45pm. So, you sit and watch the drop growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water. And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the whole stadium. This means that you think you are safe because it seems that you have plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really have to take immediate action if you want to have any chance of getting out of this situation."

Exponential growth is therefore not only rapid, but we also have very little time in which to react to any situation before it's too late. It's therefore vital to ensure that the cloud platform powering your apps is not only scalable, but also elastic enough to react to a rapid uptake in usage. Our recent work on the Official Rugby World Cup 2011 Apps bore this out - with usage spreading across over 150 countries within hours of release.

Delivering the next generation of apps therefore requires three key ingredients - the app itself, the content delivery and a cloud platform that's elastic enough to provide consistent continuity of service to an exponentially growing audience. At DevelopIQ we've therefore focussed on differentiating ourselves as an app developer and cloud services provider who can deliver this compelling, end-to-end combination of capabilities that's elastic enough to react to the exponential growth in app usage that will become common over the coming months and years.