News

Jelastic Updates 'Platform-as-Infrastructure' Solution

• By John K. Waters
• February 26, 2014

Java/PHP-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider Jelastic has updated its namesake Java-and-PHP cloud hosting platform, upping the scalability, security and performance features for both enterprises and hosting service providers, according to the company. Version 1.9.3 of the platform also furthers the company's evolving "Platform-as-Infrastructure" (PaI) model of a combined PaaS and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), it said.

Jelastic offers a cloud-hosting platform designed to run any Java and PHP application in the cloud without code or language changes, and without the need to write for specific APIs. It supports any JVM-based app, including apps developed with Java 6, Java 7, JRuby, Scala and Groovy. The platform's support for PHP extends from 5.5 to 5.4 and 5.3, and users can deploy PHP projects from a GIT repository with submodules/dependencies added.

But that platform has been evolving as the company blends the capabilities of a PaaS and an IaaS into a single solution. In a recent IDC whitepaper ("Jelastic's Private Cloud PaaS Gains Momentum with Hosters"), analyst Al Hilwa profiled the company and this blending strategy, which he says is on the rise in the IaaS and PaaS markets. "By integrating PaaS and IaaS into their private and public cloud solution," he wrote, "Jelastic provides enterprises and hosters with a turnkey stack that provides rapid deployment and immediate ROI."

"As enterprises continue to migrate to the cloud, new requirements and needs emerge," said John Derrick, Jelastic CEO, in a statement. "Developers need a comprehensive platform that allows rapid application development and deployment. Enterprise IT departments need scalability, high-availability and cast-iron security. Hosting service providers need optimum density and tight integration with billing systems. This new release of Platform-as-Infrastructure delivers key features that enable our customers to implement scalable private and public clouds rapidly and securely."

Of particular interest to Java developers in this release are new garbage collection (GC) features. Mitigating the performance impact of GC is a long-standing challenge for Java jocks. Jelastic employs a special garbage collector agent to release reserved memory and unused RAM, which reduces GC pauses that limit scalability.

This release also includes a number of enhancements aimed at PHP developers, including performance optimization, which, the company says, increases PHP app performance by up to 40 percent, and new auto scaling of PHP workers to scaling limits. Also in this release: new database and application access security features, and new billing features specifically for enterprise clouds and additional billing system support for hosting service providers.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Jelastic was founded in 2010 by Hivetext, a Zhytomyr, Ukraine-based startup focused on Java application development in the cloud.