The Keene View on Web 2.0, Ajax and SaaS

Until today, web developers creating SaaS apps have been faced with an ugly choice: use proprietary development platforms like Force.com or build an open solution from scratch.

WaveMaker today released the first open cloud development platform. WaveMaker 6.0 is a visual development platform that runs in a browser.

WaveMaker makes it ridiculously easy for anyone to prototype, develop and customize great looking web applications.

How easy you ask? Well, how 'bout:

• 15 second WaveMaker hello world test drive
• 7 minute WaveMaker multi-tenant SaaS screencast
• Free open source download of WaveMaker at www.wavemaker.com/downloads
  
• WaveMaker cloud edition at cloud.wavemaker.com

With all this open and cloudy goodness, it is not surprising that the momentum behind WaveMaker continues to build.

What kind of momentum? Well, how 'bout:

• WaveMaker's open source community now numbers more than 15,000 active developers
• The Cloud Quick Start Partnership teams WaveMaker with IBM, Amazon and RightScale
• Citrix makes WaveMaker available as an integrated development platform for NetScaler
  

Let the fireworks begin!

Labels: citrix, ibm, paas, rightscale, saas, WaveMaker

With all the hullabaloo about cloud computing, it is easy to get caught up in the trend of the day and miss the big picture. The big picture is that cloud computing disrupts the data center world by slashing the capital and skills required to deploy a web application.

If that is the big prize, then most of what passes for news in cloud computing is more along the lines of "me speak cloud too."

Today, cloud development and deployment is still the exclusive domain of highly paid web experts and just as highly paid hosting providers and systems administrators. As much as cloud providers like Amazon and Rackspace have done to simplify web hosting and eliminate people from the equation, it still takes far too much expertise and effort to get applications built and deployed in the cloud.

The goal of cloud computing is to make web development and deployment something that any bum can do and charge in on their credit card with nary a care in the world.

With all due humility, I think RightScale and WaveMaker have taken a big step towards that goal this week, introducing an easy-to-use cloud development platform with one-click deployment to Amazon EC2 via RightScale.

It is now monkeys-on-keyboards easy to create a web application and deploy it in a secure, scalable cloud environment using WaveMaker/RightScale and Amazon.

So who cares about this stuff anyway? How 'bout IBM and Amazon!

On Thursday, October 1, IBM and Amazon are hosting a half-day webinar entitled Cloud computing for developers: Hosted by IBM and Amazon Web Services . At that webinar, WaveMaker and RightScale will provide an online demonstration of building a web application with WaveMaker and deploying it to a WebSphere AMI using RightScale. One small click for man, one giant cloud for mankind!

Labels: cloud computing, paas, rightscale, websphere

The biggest problem with cloud development platforms to date has been lack of portability. For example, what if I want to move my cloud application from Coghead to some other platform? Answer - you can't.

WaveMaker changed that today by releasing the first open-source IDE for the cloud. With WaveMaker, you are no longer locked in to developing for a particular cloud. You can access our studio by downloading our open source version or access the cloud version of the studio directly (hosted on Amazon EC2).

On EC2, we are using Rightscale to manage scaling, load balancing and failover for our multi-tenant studio. We have also integrated with Elastra to provide scalable database connectivity.

Here are some things you can do with WaveMaker's cloud edition

• On-site or on demand development: create applications with the open source studio (download to your desktop).
• Portable cloud deployment: with one click, deploy applications to the cloud, to the desktop or to the data center.
• Open source cloud IDE: migrate applications from the hosted cloud version to the free open source version whenever you want.

The WaveMaker cloud edition beta is free for development. Deployment will be through a paid Amazon machine image (AMI), with pricing starting at $0.30 per hour.

Check out the new WaveMaker cloud edition here

Labels: elastra, rightscale