To help with the tooling process, eXo, a maker of Java user experience and portal technologies, has announced the eXo Cloud IDE for Elastic Beanstalk, the new platform as a service from Amazon Web Services.
The recently announced AWS Elastic Beanstalk enables Java developers to easily deploy and operate their applications on a scalable platform. The eXo Cloud IDE is an open cloud service that extends the Elastic Beanstalk runtime benefits into the development phase, making it simple for developers to access, view, edit and commit their code from any browser and deploy their applications with a single click. A beta version of the eXo Cloud IDE is available Jan. 26 as a free machine image (AMI) that can be added to an Elastic Beanstalk instance.
In a statement, Benjamin Mestrallet, CEO and founder of eXo, said: “We intend to make the eXo Cloud IDE a useful onramp for developers to take advantage of this new wave of platform-as-a-service offerings from companies like VMWare/SpringSource, CloudBees, Google App Engine, Salesforce/Heroku and Red Hat as they release open alternatives to Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk. eXo Cloud IDE is independent of other eXo components, but will easily integrate with future cloud services that eXo will be bringing to market later this year.”
First released as a Web IDE in eXo Platform 3.0 in September, the eXo Cloud IDE is a standalone offering that has been updated for cloud services. It is tightly integrated with the Elastic Beanstalk platform to provide an out-of-the-box container for applications that can be deployed within the IDE. This includes mobile and social applications for platforms like Facebook, which can leverage the elasticity of Elastic Beanstalk.
Moreover, the eXo Cloud IDE provides a robust development environment with features such as a full color-coded, context sensitive and auto-complete multi-file editor, with preview panel and, in the future, integration with source control systems like Git. The eXo Cloud IDE is an open editor and will be available on other cloud platforms beyond Amazon and beyond Java, the company said.
The eXo Cloud IDE AMI is immediately available for free; instructions for configuring an Elastic Beanstalk instance to utilize this custom AMI are provided in the Cloud IDE installation guide. As eXo rolls out additional releases towards general availability in Q2 2011, future AMIs will be made available. eXo will be detailing tips on using eXo Cloud IDE in a free webcast, “Code in the Cloud,” on February 2 at 1pm EST.