Verizon and DreamFactory announced a new developer portal in the cloud.
The new development partnership aims to make it easier for enterprise application developers to prototype, test, deploy and scale applications on the Verizon Cloud. The partnership combines DreamFactory’s REST API platform with Verizon’s secure cloud services to deliver a turnkey cloud-first development environment for mobile, Web, and Internet of Things (IoT) developers.
“The DreamFactory-Verizon Partner Solutions portal addresses a key developer need: a frictionless way to instantly access RESTful API services hosted on IaaS, plus an easy progression of those new dev/test workloads to production—’all in a secure, scalable, cloud-hosted environment,” said Eric Rubin, co-founder of DreamFactory, in a blog post.
DreamFactory markets a REST API platform that detects and connects to a variety of cloud back end data sources and services, and then automatically creates an API and documentation. Now DreamFactory and Verizon have collaborated to create a “cloud first” development portal for enterprise mobile, Web, and IoT workloads. The new co-branded portal is being launched as a natural extension to Verizon Cloud Spaces.
“As developers increasingly adopt cloud-first strategies, we are making it easier for them to rapidly access data and integrate APIs without having to migrate backend resources prior to development, testing, and production,” said Quintin Lew, senior vice president of marketing at Verizon Partner Solutions, in a statement. “The DreamFactory-Verizon Partner Solutions portal will accelerate the development of many enterprise applications that would otherwise require significant integration development resources.”
By partnering with DreamFactory, Verizon has enhanced its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to provide a set of RESTful backend services, providing developers with REST API access to the data sources they need for building business applications. The longer-term goal for Verizon is to attract developers to Verizon Cloud by offering an easy on-boarding process, and then to smoothly fast-track these private cloud instances into test, production and scale-up, the company said.
“Developers are increasingly in the driver’s seat when it comes to making choices on which clouds and platforms to use,” said Bill Appleton, CEO of DreamFactory. “If you can win developers onto your platform, the easier it is to grow your business. Combining DreamFactory’s REST API back end with Verizon’s enterprise-grade cloud services in a free development portal enables both parties to attract more developers and work to grow them as customers.”
The catalog of robust cloud services is exploding up and down the stack, offering developers progressively higher levels of automation and componentization, Rubin said. This means development teams now have greater influence on which clouds to use, and when, throughout the application lifecycle.
Rubin says it makes sense for developers to start with development and testing in the cloud. However, developers often find that public IaaS is not set up for this part of the lifecycle, as IaaS providers tend to tune their self-service capabilities for operations teams and don’t necessarily offer the out-of-the-box services needed for cloud-first development, he said.
“We believe DreamFactory running on Verizon’s secure cloud platform will help make cloud-first development easier. And that’s a good thing,” Rubin said. “Project teams will benefit from shorter development cycles with a smooth path to production in a secure, cloud-hosted environment.”