ActiveState, a provider of tools for developers using dynamic languages such as Perl and Python, has announced that its new cloud platform has entered the beta stage.
Indeed, ActiveState announced the addition of a set of new features to Stackato, the company’s new cloud platform for creating private PaaS (platform-as-a-service) solutions. New features and components in Stackato include Python 3, PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases, the Perl-based Catalyst Web framework, and enhanced encryption and security with https, ActiveState officials said.
Stackato, which was launched as a Developer Preview in May 2011, is based on VMware’s Cloud Foundry open-source project. ActiveState has extended Cloud Foundry to support Python and Perl, and made it enterprise-ready for creating a private PaaS.
Early Developer Preview participants have provided strong positive feedback in support of the new features, and praise Stackato’s promise to quickly enable a private cloud, the company said.
“Stackato is really cool and we plan on moving our production stack onto a Private PaaS within the next two months or so,” Mike Frager, software developer for Dial Your Leads, said in a statement. “With Stackato as our cloud platform, our developers and administrators can focus on building applications, not configuring machines or middleware. Stackato will help us get our Web applications up and running very quickly.”
“I was impressed with the first preview of Stackato. I had a Mojolicious app running on a private cloud within five minutes,” Sebastien Riedel, creator of the Catalyst and Mojolicious Perl Web frameworks, said in a statement. “It took longer to figure out how to install the competitor’s client than to set up a whole Stackato private cloud.”
“ActiveState has taken a leading role in delivering innovative capabilities for Python and Perl developers on top of VMware’s Cloud Foundry platform,” Christopher Keene, vice president of cloud computing at VMware, said in a statement. “Openness, ease of use and flexibility are important to enterprises deploying apps in the cloud. ActiveState’s Stackato is a great option for enterprises that, for security and other reasons, want to create a private cloud or private PaaS environment.”
Stackato is a cloud platform for creating a private PaaS to enable rapid deployment, management and scaling of enterprise Web applications in a private cloud. This is done on top of a virtualization platform such as VMware vSphere or with a provider such as Amazon or Rackspace. For applications built on Python, Perl, Ruby, Node.js or Java, developers can get applications to the cloud with Stackato’s simple cloud deployment in less than 15 minutes.
“It’s great to see all the positive feedback from the development community and enterprises that have tested Stackato so far,” Bart Copeland, president and CEO of ActiveState, said in a statement. “The demand for private clouds for enterprises is increasing, and we’re responding with the features that enterprise developers and IT managers need. If you like the agility of the cloud, but your enterprise demands the security of an in-house solution, try Stackato. We’d love your input.”