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 »
Two weeks ago, Google announced a significant price increase for use of its App Engine Platform-as-a-Service. With vendor lock-in comes vulnerability to price increases. And for developers and app makers, this drastic shift may have been a “bet-the-company” decision without ever realizing it. 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 »
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 »
AppFog, the Platform-as-a-Service startup that began life a PHP Fog, now supports both Ruby and Node.js applications. The expanded support comes as no surprise, but speaks volumes about the potential for Cloud Foundry as a PaaS equivalent to what OpenStack is for Infrastructure as a Service. Read more »
Google App Engine is growing up by changing both its service model and its pricing, and many developers who have been using the service under the old model are none too happy about it. Perhaps they should just be happy that App Engine is sticking around. Read more »
To find out how these two services measure up in the real world, Craig Knighton of LiquidSpace and Zach Richardson of Ravel Data lay out the cases for their clouds of choice to see how the services compared in real-world use at living, breathing companies. Read more »
VMworld can be a lot to digest, but it also can be a good barometer of where IT is and where it’s going. A couple days removed from the show, I gave some thought to the interesting trends I noticed and the insightful discussions I had. Read more »
CloudSpokes, an Appirio-led community that hosts contests in which developers compete on projects for cloud companies with the goal of winning a monetary prize, recently re-architected the site from Microsoft Windows Azure to Database.com, and its team couldn’t be happier with the results. Read more »
Speaking to a jam-packed room of thousands, VMware CEO Paul Maritz kicked off today’s VMworld conference by declaring, once again, the advent of the cloud era. If you don’t believe him, just look at the number of virtual machines deployed. But cloud is more than virtualization. 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 »
VMware has released Micro Cloud Foundry, a fully functional version of its open-source, Platform-as-a-Service software condensed into a virtual image that runs on developers’ personal computers or laptops. The aim is to make it easier to create cutting-edge applications without the hassle. 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 »
Platform-as-a-Service veteran Engine Yard is getting on board with the recent trend of multi-language support by acquiring Dublin, Ireland-based PHP PaaS startup Orchestra. An industry shift toward supporting more than one language and/or framework likely influenced the decision to close the Orchestra deal now. Read more »
If HP does sell off its PC business, it might have to nail its foray into cloud computing to avoid becoming a punchline decades down the road. Without that PC revenue, and billions lighter in the wallet after buying Autonomy, something must pick up the slack. Read more »
Dell’s Crowbar installation-and-configuration tool now works VMware’s Cloud Foundry. With servers fast becoming low-margin commodities thanks to the push toward micro servers, Dell is doing its best to make deploying the software that inspired the new generation of servers a breeze. Read more »
OpenLogic, a software vendor that helps companies better utilize open-source software, is turning its attention toward cloud computing. On Tuesday, it announced $2 million in funding for a new Platform-as-a-Service offering featuring open-source components. Read more »
Joyent has open-sourced its cloud operating system. Called SmartOS and already utilized in Joyent’s public cloud and SmartDataCenter private-cloud software, it will be available via an open-source license much like the Joyent-led Node.js effort is, says Joyent CTO Jason Hoffmann. 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 »
The next big leap in both technology and business models around sharing elastic compute resources will be bidding for those resources at auction or acquiring them through a broker, according to Forrester. But this broker business just adds more abstraction to an already abstract business. 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 »
Cloud computing startup CumuLogic is making its Platform-as-a-Service software available for beta users that want to deploy it on their own infrastructure. Until now, CumuLogic’s Jave-only PaaS software had only been available for beta users running it atop the Amazon Web Services cloud. 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 »
IBM shares were trading up Tuesday morning after it reported strong second-quarter results yesterday. While Big Blue got a profit boost from recently released mainframe products, it also gave us some indications for the future growth of the cloud and big data. Read more »
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 »
With all the great languages, databases and cloud hosting options available, now is a great time to be a software programmers. But that same variety makes it very difficult to be the IT manager tasked with configuring applications. That is where PaaS startup DotCloud comes in. Read more »
PHP Fog is a cloud computing Platform-as-a-Service with a laser focus on PHP applications. It’s what PHP Fog does in the foggy middle that’s so unique and that garnered it a place in our second-annual LaunchPad competition. Read more »
At last week’s Structure conference, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels used his “State of the Cloud” keynote to highlight how cloud computing is evolving beyond its traditional IaaS, PaaS and SaaS layers. I’m not so sure it’s outdated yet, but it’s getting there. Read more »
If there’s one thing that can make the idea of platform as a service (PaaS) succeed, it’s this: make it easy for developers. That was the overall consensus from a panel of execs working on the platform as a service at Structure 2011. Read more »
IDC today released the results of a report finding that the cloud services market by $72.9 billion by 2015, drive almost entirely by Software as a Service. This suggests — likely accurately — that SaaS is the key to cloud computing ubiquity. Read more »
At Google’s I/O event last month, the company announced new features and a new pricing model for its App Engine PaaS offering, and now the web giant thinks it’s prepared to compete with companies like Red Hat and Salesforce.com in bringing enterprise users to its platform. Read more »
VMware announced the late-summer availability of vFabric 5 this morning, an integrated suite of the various application-platform components it has acquired over the past couple years. The news illustrates pretty definitively that, for the time being, VMware’s on-premise and cloud-based platform strategies are fairly distinct. Read more »
CloudBees, the Java-focused Platform-as-a-Service company, is now offering a paid “Premium” version of its RUN@cloud PaaS offering. CloudBees, it appears, is trying to gain a foothold in the PaaS space while other Java-focused efforts are still getting underway. Read more »
Since the concept of “private cloud” was introduced, there have been efforts by certain people to prove it “wrong” or show that it doesn’t make sense when compared with the public cloud. This seems like a silly crusade — both provide tremendous value. Read more »
The new trend in cloud computing appears to be app-store-like marketplaces where software vendors and infrastructure experts can share their operational know-how. Cloud-computing management platform RightScale became the latest to hop on the trend today with its MultiCloud Marketplace. Read more »
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 »
The dream of open cloud computing took a couple of small steps forward in the past 24 hours with Apache promoting the Libcloud project to top-level status and with Microsoft releasing a new software development kit for PHP applications on its Windows Azure platform. Read more »
Platform-as-a-Service startup DotCloud is acquiring fellow startup DuoStack in an attempt to gird itself for a fight that’s likely to leave some casualties in the years to come. DotCloud and DuoStack are making a smart move to ensure their mutual survival while combining their innovative capabilities. Read more »
