Apprenda today announced the release of version 5.0 of its enterprise PaaS platform for .NET and Java. Version 5.0 boasts expanded functionality for the implementation of enterprise policies, an upgraded developer portal and the deepest integration of .NET and Java in the PaaS industry today. Apprenda’s support for enterprise policies enables administrators to determine the types of access had by developers to different machines and development environments, or to create rules that constrain the degree to which development environments scale. For example, developers can leverage Apprenda 5.0’s support for enterprise policies to specify the minimum and maximum number of instances within a development environment to ensure that aberrant code does not inadvertently spawn a fleet of unnecessary virtual machines.
Apprenda 5.0’s management console allows developers to understand, at a glance, how their ecosystem is performing as illustrated by the graphic below:
Developers can click on the red or orange bars in the top left quadrant to drill down on fatalities and errors and identify the instances and applications implicated in each category. Similarly, the top right quadrant illustrates the breakdown of Memory and CPU by application tier, whether it be websites, web services or the data tier. The visualization enabled by Apprenda 5.0’s enhanced developer portal represents part of the project of building “the most sophisticated, enterprise-grade PaaS on the market” according to Rakesh Malhotra, Apprenda’s VP of Products.
In an interview with Cloud Computing Today, Malhotra asserted the superiority of Apprenda’s Java and .NET functionality in comparison with competitors such as Cloud Foundry, Pivotal HD and Red Hat’s OpenShift PaaS by noting that Apprenda delivers the most integrated version of both .NET and Java, the two most widely used development frameworks in the industry. Apprenda’s integrated support of .NET renders it particularly attractive to Windows shops, an IT constituency that is apparently gaining momentum as evinced by the decision by Hortonworks to render its Hadoop 2.0 distribution compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
Overall, Apprenda 5.0 marks a significant step toward rendering Apprenda more attractive to enterprise customers that are intensely concerned with the policies and procedures that govern PaaS deployments. Moreover, Apprenda 5.0’s dynamic visualization technology for monitoring and controlling the performance of its private PaaS deployments dovetails effectively with its policies and procedures capabilities in order to ensure effective deployment parameters and swift remediation of irregular behavior within the PaaS infrastructure. Now that Apprenda has pivoted away from its previous monolingual commitment to .NET as opposed to its current support of .NET and Java, Apprenda 5.0 represents a clear and distinct attempt to consolidate its claim to be the only enterprise-grade PaaS in the industry today. Apprenda 5.0’s attention to streamlining the implementation of policies and procedures in conjunction with a dynamic developer portal illustrates a sustained effort to listen to and realize the needs of enterprise customers. The PaaS landscape should expect the emergence of even more enterprise-friendly functionality from Apprenda over the next year as it takes advantage of its recent funding raise to accelerate product development in tandem with a parallel expansion of its sales and marketing initiatives.
Cloud Computing Today 