News

Continuuity Targets Developers with Big Data AppFabric

• By David Ramel
• October 25, 2012

Continuuity Inc. this week announced Big Data AppFabric, consisting of big data application development tools and an application runtime platform running in the cloud. Described as the first big data application fabric -- or "big data application Platform as a Service" -- it's aimed at making it easier for developers to build big data apps, said the Palo Alto, Calif., company, a 2011 startup.

Helping to ease the burden of big data app development are features such as "an amazing UI and beautiful abstractions that hide the complexity of Hadoop infrastructure" Continuuity said. The AppFabric runs on existing open source Hadoop component infrastructure, the company said. "Our platform will unleash a huge wave of developers building big data apps," said Todd Papaioannou, cofounder and CEO of Continuuity. "We focus on developers because we are developers. Our team has built parallel databases, as well as big data infrastructures and applications, and we’ve been working on open source projects like Hadoop and Hbase for years."

Papaioannou, along with cofounders Nitin Motgi and Jonathan Gray, were reportedly early adopters of the Hbase big data technology while working at companies such as Facebook and Yahoo.

The company's products are currently in beta or development, with general availability of some components expected this quarter.

The developer tools, called the Continuuity Developer Suite, include a single-node version of the Continuuity AppFabric, a software development kit and tools such as an Eclipse plugin, testing frameworks, REST APIs, code libraries and samples. The suite of tools "allows developers to build applications in their IDE, run, test and debug them on their local machines, and when ready, 'push to cloud' with a single click," the company said. The developer suite is expected to be available for general release via free download by year's end. In addition to the single-node version, Continuuity AppFabric will be available in private and public cloud editions. The former is currently in beta, while the latter is targeted for release next year.

The company said interested users can sign up to be included in early access programs for the three editions.