Designing IDE as a Service

This paper presents the architecture behind a PaaS type of service for developing applications in and for the Cloud. The reviewer is enthusiastic about such services allowing software developers and companies for improved time-to-market. This paper serves as a simple and good tutorial on how IDE can be provided as a service. However, it isn't clear whether similar papers already exist. The authors could go through scientific literature in software engineering field and provide pointers for similar studies (if they exist).

The reviewer also suggests raising the bar and applying design science approach to paper. Simply put, you shouldn't compare Arvue to the desktop IDEs, but against current IDEs in the Cloud. In the background section, you could describe the current state-of-art in similar services (IDE in the Cloud) and discuss what is missing. Then, in concluding section, you could argue which of the deficiencies Arvue cures and what is better with the present architecture. This would require some heuristics for the evaluation.

Another interesting addition to the paper would be to envision future adoption for this type of services. The reviewer suggests looking at different user segments (e.g. small software companies or large vertical enterprises) and outlining the benefits that each segment would be seeking and which need this type of services would be fulfilling. This would serve as starting point for further adoption studies.

This paper presented the Arvue system, which transforms application development to the browser and related cloud services. The paper describes the architecture, components, security functionality and discusses shortly the differences to other related systems.

I would have liked to read even more about the differences to closest comparable approaches. In constructive research analyzing related systems, comparing them and showing the differences is the key. You can further show how well you pass the market test, that is, how widely this new system has been adopted.

In the text there is also room for some technical improvements making the paper easier for the readers. A good practice is to organize the material so that text refers to a figure prior to the figure. That is, no figures prior their explanation.
The text has also places requiring rewrite. You write that “Arvue IDE is going to be run..” ? Is this the status quo of an existing system or a plan? Also “...the security problems attached to multiple public untrusted web application hosting.” requires rewriting. Etc.
In the end you write “Most of the browser-based development tools have some of the features of Arvue, but none has exactly the same.” Please, elaborate this further.

Editor Decision

Congratulations! Your manuscript has been conditionally accepted for publication in the first peer-reviewed issue of the Communications of Cloud Software journal.

To achieve this you need to read carefully the comments of the reviewers and update your manuscript accordingly in two weeks (by December 13th).

Pay special attention to the evaluation section, i.e. comparison of the presented construction against alternatives and the acceptance of the solution in the markets.

Please, check also the information for authors section providing useful guidelines for revising the paper.

Looking forward for the updated version by 13.12.

Thank you for the insightful review comments.

Both the reviewers suggest that we should give deeper comparison to other similar approaches. We strongly agree with the suggestion and added description of other similar web IDEs and scientific work to Section 3: Related work. In addition we added analysis on the novelties of the Arvue project to the same section and conclusions.

We also addressed the minor comments about the writing and clarifications.

Editor Decision

Congratulations! Your manuscript has now been accepted for publication in the first peer-reviewed issue of the Communications of Cloud Software journal.