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ActiveState, a maker of development tools for dynamic language developers and that enable the enterprise to move from code to cloud, has announced the general availability of Stackato 2.0, an application platform for creating a private platform as a service (PaaS).
Stackato 2.0 now supports .NET applications, offers Web-based visual cluster management and delivers performance improvements that foster enterprise development agility, ActiveState said.
Along with the 2.0 release, ActiveState also announced a Stackato enterprise customer relationship with Aeroflex. Aeroflex designs, develops, manufactures and markets a diverse range of microelectronic and test and measurement products to support communication systems, networks and automatic test systems.
Corporate Stackato adopters are leading the way to the cloud for their enterprises. Aeroflex will use Stackato to automate its cloud application stack configuration, saving time and money, company officials said.
Todays enterprise must be more agile, better engineered to innovate and able to govern its cloud without impeding progress, said Bart Copeland, CEO at ActiveState, in a statement. Stackato 2.0 redefines private PaaS for the enterprise, enabling more agile development, greater DevOps transparency, more efficient cloud management and faster time to market.
ActiveStates new release enables enterprises to deploy .NET applications to Stackato via technology integration with the Iron Foundry platform. Stackatos automatic configuration tool links with Iron Foundry to support .NET apps in a Stackato PaaS cloud. In addition to .NET, Stackato supports applications coded in enterprise development languages like Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, Node.JS, Clojure, Scala, Erlang and more to support a polyglot programming environment.
It is exciting to see the .NET community continue to grow via Iron Foundrys .NET support and tools, said Jared Wray, founder of the Iron Foundry project. Stackato now works seamlessly with Iron Foundry’s Windows Virtual Machines to provide runtime support for .NET applications.
“As PaaS platforms have become less constrained, offering more choice in the underlying technologies, interest in them has begun to accelerate,” Stephen O’Grady, principal analyst at RedMonk, said in a statement. “Enterprises, accordingly, are increasingly looking to incorporate PaaS into their long-term strategies to reduce their operational overhead and time to market.”
In addition to support for .NET applications and numerous under-the-hood performance improvementsincluding a faster app store and improved Heroku buildpack supportStackato 2.0 introduces product enhancements for the enterprise, including enhanced containerization technology to secure cloud apps and also conserve scale and capacity. This means apps will run better in less virtual real estate, with multiple containers per virtual machine.
The product also features an enhanced Web Management Console for visual cluster administration to give DevOps greater visibility into cloud applications deployment management, so developers can spend time coding instead of writing reports.
“As private PaaS goes, nothing comes close to Stackato’s enterprise development feature set,” said Jeff Hobbs, CTO and vice president of engineering at ActiveState, in a statement. “Stackato 2.0 delivers the broadest language support, the most flexible deployment models and unparalleled production environment simulation. For enterprise developers using Stackato, it’s not a question of if you can be agile. It’s how agile you want to be.”
Cloud solutions must do more than just scale with infrastructure requirements, ActiveStates Copeland said in a statement. They must also be able to grow with business needs. With its customizable app-store framework, secure LXC containers and .NET support, Stackato 2.0 is a PaaS game-changer. It can provide the scalability and flexibility that enterprises want with the security and control that they need, now and in the future.
Stackato 2.0 is available in Enterprise and Micro Cloud editions. In addition, Stackato 2.0 is available on Amazon EC2 and will soon be made available on HP Cloud Services.