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dotCloud, provider of a popular polyglot programming platform as a service (PaaS) solution, has announced the release of dotCloud JS, a new environment for rapid prototyping and development of Web applications, based entirely on JavaScript and HTML5.
dotCloud prides itself on making things easy for developers and IT shops, and now, with just a few lines of code, Web developers and designers can build full-featured applications and take advantage of a selection of cloud APIs, without writing a single line of back-end code or worrying about servers. The beta release includes APIs for data storage, real-time data synchronization, as well as integrations with the Twilio and Twitter APIs.
Theres never been a better time to be a developer, said Solomon Hykes, CEO of dotCloud, in a statement. The variety of tools available to create applications is mind-blowing; languages, databases, APIs. However, too much choice can be overwhelming. What the cloud needs right now is a starter pack, an environment that is super-simple and lets you build new things very fast, without locking you into a proprietary straight jacket. Thats what were building with dotCloud JS. Its the perfect way to start developing in the cloud.
dotCloud JS provides a full-featured JavaScript SDK with support for data storage, real-time synchronization, Twitter and Twilio integration; an open stack based on NodeJS, MongoDB, Redis and websockets; free deployment with unlimited sandbox applications; and a complete ecosystem of 14 powerful cloud services via the dotCloud platform.
With this release and our recent announcement of new pricing and support services, we are beginning to redefine the role of PaaS and its responsibility to developers and IT organizations, Hykes said. Cloud platforms are now a legitimate alternative for critical business applications. The technology works and it scales. Smart technology leaders are looking for the right PaaS vendor that they can trust with reliability, long-term support and compliance. That trusted vendor is what were building.
Hykes said developers want things to be simple, but they also dont want to be constrained; they want something thats open and thats what weve given them, he told eWEEK. dotCloud launched with support of PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, Java and Node.js. The company later added support for MongoDB, Redis and MySQL. Now, dotCloud offers support for 14 different language, database or framework scenarios to offer the most choice and the most openness in the industry, Hykes said. With a simple command, developers can create an automatically managed development and deployment environment that supports PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, Node.JS, MySQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, Solr, MongoDB, PostgreSQL and more.
“Were seeing many developers come in and say ‘Give us a starting point and well worry about the platform later,'” Hykes told eWEEK. “Were offering a starter packa super-simple development environment thats all JavaScriptthat lets developers get started and take advantage of all the benefits of PaaS.
To build an application for free, go tohttp://js.dotcloud.com.
Most Developers Havent Seen PaaS
Hykes noted that he believes PaaS has been available primarily to a small sector of the developer community. Ninety-nine percent of all developers have not seen PaaS; its still too elitist. However, dotCloud is working to lower the barrier to entry. One way is through pricing, and the other is by keeping things simple.
In June, dotCloud announced the availability of dotCloud Sandbox, dotCloud Live, dotCloud Enterprise, three new flavors of development environments that provide unlimited development, elastic pricing, and the ability to scale applications with enterprise-class service and supportall through a single account.
dotCloud Sandbox is a supported, unlimited environment for development, testing and experimentation. With it, developers can design and develop multiple applications in a single environment for free. dotCloud Live delivers reliability and easy scaling. dotCloud Lives elastic pricing is based on resource consumption and enables developers to start as low as $4.32 per month and reasonably scale to an enterprise-class software as a service (SaaS), supporting millions of uniques for a few thousand dollars. And dotCloud Enterprise is a highly customized environment to meet the specific needs of an organizations application and users, including white-glove support and in-depth monitoring from dotClouds team, the company said.
“Developing in sandbox mode really lets me dig in and play with my code in a way I never could before, Neil Giararantana, president of Lucidus, said in a statement. I’m able to duplicate any configuration in sandbox mode to create a whole new version of my Websitenot a new instancebut a whole new version of my site for testing with just 20 lines of code. And that testing site is up and running immediately, and it’s totally free.”
dotCloud’s new pricing model is definitely cheaper for Newlio over the original, instance-based model, said Richard Safran, CTO of Newlio, in a statement. It also gives us more flexibility to scale since instances are effectively free, and we can then spread a little more memory over more instances.
“When we launched a year ago, nobody used PaaS for mission-critical applications and we designed our pricing accordingly, Hykes said. A year later, everything has changed and the market has grown incredibly. We are talking to real businesses looking to deploy real, mission-critical apps.
“They expect support, they expect guarantees and they expect control over their stack. They are asking: ‘Can I rely on you for the long term?’ That is what ultimately will differentiate trustworthy PaaS providers from the rest. And that is what our new pricing enables,” he said.
Hykes added that this level of support and commitment is what differentiates dotCloud and is what will enable the company to compete with much larger, more established competitors.