Amazon’s EC2 platform is the platform of choice for developers building and deploying applications in cloud environments.

The platform is used by more than 70 percent of the 106 developers who responded to the Q3 2012 Global Cloud Developer Online Survey. The next most popular platform is Microsoft Azure used by about one quarter of developers, with Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform used by about 22 percent.

EC2 looks likely to increase its lead over competing platforms, with about 40 per cent of developers planning step up their use of it. In comparison only 18 per cent of developers were planning to increase their use of Microsoft Azure.

Cloud environments from major IT suppliers such as HP and IBM were barely used by developers questioned.

Developers choosing a cloud environment generally favour the level of deep platform access that comes with infrastructure as a service, the report found. They felt the most important components to have access to when building and managing cloud apps are the app server, web server, and database.

Speed of development is the top reason for developing an app in a cloud environment, but respondents also said they chose a cloud environment for ease of development and low cost.

The majority of developers are still making limited use of cloud environments, with 64 percent building and deploying no more than five apps on these platforms.

Javascript is the preferred programming language for building cloud applications, followed by Java and PHP.