The more features that Amazon Web Services puts on its roster, the more nervous AWS partners — and some customers — get. As the company comes up the stack, adding workflow, richer database and other services, many partners and customers fear cloud lock-in. Read more »
Infochimps, a startup best known for its data marketplace, is now offering a cloud-based service that takes the pain out of managing Hadoop and scale-out database environments. The company hopes its new cloud-based service can do for big data applications what PaaS did for web applications. Read more »
Cloud platform-as-a-service provider Heroku has added a new feature to its Postgres database service that lets users share the results of an SQL query simply by sending a URL. The feature, called Data Clips, shows viewers both archived and current result sets in their web browsers. Read more »
Engine Yard, the popular platform as a service, said its revenue doubled to $28 million and the number of paying customers rose 50 percent to 2,000 in 2011. The company, which started in the Ruby universe, now supports PHP, Node.js and other languages. Read more »
AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson isn’t shy about touting PaaS as the ideal way for developers to access cloud computing resources, but he also knows it’s not mainstream. In this inforgraphic illustrating the evolution of cloud computing, Carlson says PaaS will hit its stride in 2013. Read more »
DynamoDB, AWS’ latest effort to rock the technology establishment, has many implications for other players in the big data and cloud computing markets. A new GigaOM Pro research note examines just who is affected, and how. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Continuing a yearlong trend, the fourth quarter in big IT was all about big data, and Hadoop in particular. Still, many are beginning to recognize the software framework’s shortcomings, which is why this quarter also saw more attention for startups claiming easy analytics and real-time processing. Elsewhere in infrastructure, SaaS startups made out well and valuations for these companies are getting higher, and naturally there was news from the AWS camp. This quarterly wrap-up examines these events and more, including the quarter’s dark spot, the hike in prices in the hard-drive manufacturing space due to the floods in Thailand. Companies mentioned in this report include Calxeda, Heroku, Rackspace, Salesforce.com and Tier3. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The free version of Jaspersoft’s analytics software will be offered as part of Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service. As Red Hat, Microsoft, Heroku, and Cloud Foundry PaaSes compete, watch for them to add more services and capabilities just as they’ve raced to add language support. Read more »
Today there is a far greater chance that ordinary folks can bring, say, the next MMO to market. What’s changed? The arrival of specialized Platform-as-a-Service. Lisa Petrucci of Joyent explains why it’s easier than ever to innovate. Read more »
Windows Azure is an ambitious PaaS that doesn’t get a lot of love from web developers. Here are four things Microsoft must do to make it a more compelling option for the new-age, non-.NET developers who now flock to Amazon Web Services or another PaaS. Read more »
Platform-as-a-Service provider Heroku is expanding its horizons by offering an on-demand version of the PostgreSQL Database-as-a-Service. Heroku Postgres is a commercial version of what Heroku has been providing for years, only it’s now available to all developers regardless where they host their applications. Read more »
In the latest indication that Node.js support is table stakes for all Platform-as-a-Service players, Engine Yard is adding support for the popular server-side framework as part of a trial program. Developers like to use Node.js because it supports JavaScript and is fast and scalable. Read more »
DotCloud, the platform as a service that won our Structure 2011 Launchpad competition, said Wednesday that it will support three new data stores as part of its multi-language platform. The company will add MySQL, Redis and MongoDB support. Read more »
Red Hat is bringing more cloud-based automation to Java developers in an update to its OpenShift Platform as a Service which integrates the JBoss tool suite and supports two open-source tools that will shift more of the programming workload to the cloud itself. Read more »
Peer 1, the hosting provider, joins the ranks of Rackspace, GoDaddy and other hosting companies that have decided to get into the cloud. On Monday, it launched its Zunicore service, which combines elements of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service with those of a platform. Read more »
With the public beta of Cloudability’s cloud cost-tracking service, new APIs are available to help customers access their billing and usage information from popular cloud providers including Salesforce.com, Azure, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. Oh, and if you refer a paying customer, there’s free beer! Read more »
AppFog, which started out as a PHP-based Platform-as-a-Service, just added Java to its roster of supported programming languages. AppFog already added support for Ruby and Node.js. Still to come: support for Python, .NET and “smaller languages like Erlang,” said AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson. Read more »
So, what’s Oracle’s going to buy next? Here are five companies that might help the software giant fill in the check boxes on its public cloud, data analytics, management and infrastructure check list. Given Oracle’s bulging wallet, it doesn’t make sense to rule anything out. Read more »
Last quarter we highlighted the fast maturation of the Platform-as-a-Service and big data spaces. Those two trends only picked up speed during the third quarter of 2011. Joining them on the cusp of IT greatness, though, are the OpenStack project and flash storage. The former gathered serious validation from big-name companies, while the latter saw less funding than last quarter but a significant number of product launches. Of course, the third quarter wasn’t all lollipops and rose petals. We saw new computing technologies and delivery models such as tablets wreak havoc on both HP and Cisco, and there are concerns (aren’t there always?) about how the Internet will handle our increased use of streaming video and cloud computing. Unfortunately for HP and Cisco, the latter problem might be an easier fix than the strategic woes facing them. Additional companies mentioned in this report include CloudBees, Rackspace, Engine Yard and Joyent. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Microsoft could use Web Matrix 2.0 tool — now in beta — to entice new-age web developers to Azure, its cloud-computing Platform-as-a-Service. While the Azure PaaS has a potentially huge built-in audience of .Net programmers, it lacks cachet among the “cool kid,” next-gen web developers. Read more »
Delivering a cloud service isn’t easy and figuring out how to handle things when they go wrong marks a huge leap in maturity for a company as guys from Heroku and Opscode explain. So what do webscale companies do when things go wrong? Read more »
Developers at the Surge conference in Baltimore have a love-hate relationship with America’s largest online retailer and cloud provider. But repeated tales of Amazon’s failures were immediately followed by assurances that the service was cheaper and better than buying your own hardware. Read more »
Online CRM pioneer Salesforce.com continues to back up its ecosystem with its checkbook, this time with an investment in cloud storage provider Box.net. In the past few months, Salesforce.com has made a series of outright acquisitions of Assistly, Radian6, and Heroku. Read more »
PaaS pioneer Heroku continued its march into the multi-language world today by adding support for Python and the Django framework. It’s just the latest change in an evolutionary several months for Heroku, and for PaaS overall as tries to become the face of cloud computing. Read more »
Heroku is reporting it saw more than 33,800 Facebook applications launched on its service since the social network giant unveiled new features at yesterday’s f8 conference. On the official Heroku blog, Adam Seligman notes “that’s more than 20 a minute.” Read more »
Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux. But now, like Microsoft itself, it obsesses more on cloud infrastructure than lowly operating systems. Questions about Red Hat’s OpenShift PaaS and CloudForms IaaS dominated last night’s earnings call, but CEO Jim Whitehurst was cautious on revenue predictions. Read more »
Facebook and Heroku have completed an integration that gives Facebook developers direct access to Heroku’s cloud Platform-as-a-Service offering for hosting their applications. It’s likely just a first step for Heroku when it comes to integrating with popular specialized development platforms. Read more »
In our cloudy times, VMware is a barometer for IT, and VMworld is what CES is to the consumer electronics industry. So check out what this week’s hoopla in Las Vegas is telling us about enterprise IT and the cloud. Read more »
Heroku, the popular Platform-as-a-Service offering initially for Ruby developers only, now supports Java. Actually, Heroku has added support for both the Node.js framework and the Clojure programming language over the past few months, but Java is in a whole other league. Read more »
StackMob, a mobile backend provider for developers, is integrating with cloud platform Heroku, extending its services to Heroku’s Ruby developers. The partnership allows StackMob to expand the languages it supports beyond Java, Scala and Clojure to include Ruby and later, Node.js. Read more »
Amazon has been adding all kinds of features to attract enterprise users to its cloud computing platform, but with it’s new caching product, it’s returning to web developers. Perhaps with an influx of platforms and OpenStack, Amazon realizes it needs to concentrate on its core. Read more »
Mu Dynamics new service allows developers building in the cloud to load test their apps for as little as a $1. The company has a product for ISPs that shows how 1 million people playing FarmVille might affect their networks, is branching out into the cloud. Read more »
AppFog, the company formerly known as PHP Fog, has raised $8 million in a healthy second round of funding for the year-old company. The company’s name change coincides with the funding and hints at a future supporting languages beyond PHP. Read more »
Here are three lessons to take away from the $10.5 million funding round for Java-centric Platform-as-a-Service startup CloudBees: Be specialized, inclusive, and first. Read more »
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Heroku might have expanded its embrace to include Node.js and Clojure, but its heart is still with Ruby. To wit, Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto is joining the company as its chief architect for Ruby, which should only improve its standing in the developer community. Read more »
PaaS pioneer Heroku has added support for the Clojure programming language to its offering. Heroku also supports Ruby and Node.js as development options. Supporting three development options might not appear like a big deal, but it is, especially for enterprise developers who require certain features. Read more »
When it comes to getting major companies to embrace building their applications in the cloud, Salesforce and its newly acquired platform-as- a-service company Heroku are relying on a tried-and-true method: Peer pressure. Read more »
Cloud computing has grown from a pie-in-the-sky vision to a major IT movement over the past few years. As its promise has grown, though, so too has its scope. This report covers six key sectors in cloud computing: commodity Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enterprise IaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud storage and private clouds. We highlight the current state of each and provide informed insights into where they — and cloud computing in general — are headed. Much like any market in a still-evolving state, the infrastructure of the cloud-computing transition is still being built by startups, practitioners and even a big-name company or two. Companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Amazon, Nasuni, Terremark and Heroku. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Platform-as-a-Service pioneer Heroku, now part of the Salesforce.com cloud empire, has released a new version that expands programming support beyond its Ruby roots and gives developers more control and insight than previously available. Among the new features is full support for the Node.js framework. Read more »
