News

Java PaaS CloudBees Offers Hybrid Deployment

• By John K. Waters
• February 14, 2012

Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider CloudBees unveiled Tuesday a new service for hybrid deployments of production applications. Dubbed AnyCloud, the service aims to remove "the burden of installing, updating and maintaining a complex stack of PaaS software from data center operators by managing the PaaS software stack remotely across environments," the company says.

"We're focused on the 'service' part of software-as-a-service," said Steve Harris, CloudBees' SVP of products. "We're delivering a platform as a service and all the parts around that. Regardless of where you deploy your application, CloudBees remains the service provider for the PaaS."

The AnyCloud service, Harris explained, provides a centralized view and access to all cloud deployments. It makes it possible for developers to deploy their apps to traditional hosted or to on-premise data centers. The apps can be made to conform to requirements to run in specific geographic regions and to comply with company policies mandating an app be deployed with a specific hosted provider, he said. And because it's Java-based, it works with across a range of environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other managed Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers.

CloudBees is best known as one of the Java-based PaaS specialists. The Boston-based company's flagship platform comprises two products: DEV@cloud, a service designed to allow developers to take their build and test environments to the cloud, and RUN@cloud, a traditional deployment PaaS designed to allow dev teams to deploy their applications to production on the cloud. The CloudBees PaaS competes with Red Hat's OpenShift and Cloud Foundry, and Java-based middleware from Oracle and others.

The company is expecting AnyCloud to touch a real pain point in the data center. Harris cited a recent Forrester report ("Q&A: How To Get Private Cloud Right") showing that nearly a third of enterprise infrastructure and operations teams are putting a high or critical priority on building a private cloud this year. "But there's a catch," Forrester researchers write. "Most aren't operationally prepared to run a cloud, nor are they thinking through the operational implications of what this even means."

"I think what's happening now is that people feel they need to make a choice to go with a public cloud or a private cloud," Harris said. "If you choose to go private, you're also today choosing to invest in another layer of software and expertise. The AnyCloud approach lets us deliver that service. It offers the ability to manage all applications from a single point of control, so you can choose either one or both."

AnyCloud is available now. More information can be found here.