Category: PaaS

Bonsai Launches Early Access Program to Deepen Customer Engagement with Bonsai’s Artificial Intelligence App Development Platform

Bonsai, an innovator in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, recently revealed details of the Bonsai Early Access Program that provides customers with training, consultative support and collaborative design and development for customer-specific AI applications. Bonsai absolves customers of the complexity specific to building AI apps using Google’s TensorFlow or APIs to platforms such as IBM Watson by using Inkling, a programming language that allows developers to create artificial intelligence models called BRAINs at a higher level of abstraction as compared to low-level machine learning libraries and code. The higher level of abstraction delivered by the Bonsai platform with respect to application development streamlines and simplifies the creation of artificial intelligence models and systems. The Bonsai Early Access Program intends to deepen customer engagement with a view toward optimizing the creation of artificial intelligence-based apps for industrial systems spanning use cases in segments such as supply chain, manufacturing, warehousing and business operations. Early Access Program members also have access to engineering and consulting resources customized to specific use cases, in addition to the opportunity to contribute to the company’s roadmap for product development.

In separate news, Bonsai also announced the finalization of $7.6M in funding that brings the total funding the company has raised to $13.6M. The additional funding was led by Microsoft Ventures and NEA, an existing investor, with additional participation from ABB Technology Ventures, Samsung NEXT and Siemens. The funding raise will be used to deepen relationships with customers as well as increase the pace of product development. Bonsai was founded in 2014 by Mark Hammond and Keen Browne with the vision of imbricating machine learning more broadly in contemporary hardware and software. The company’s AI platform represents a Platform as a Service for Artificial Intelligence in a contemporary-PaaS environment that has gravitated toward polyglot platforms that are agnostic to specific application purposes. Positioned as a niche PaaS player in the rapidly growing field of machine learning, Bonsai stands poised to take advantage of increasing contemporary interest in artificial intelligence by means of a platform that centralizes the development, deployment and ongoing operational management of AI-related applications.

Cloud Foundry Foundation Announces Certification Program To Ensure Portability Amongst Cloud Foundry PaaS Vendors

On Wednesday, the Cloud Foundry Foundation announced news of a certification program that aims to ensure inter-operability and portability within the multi-vendor environment that leverages the open source Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS). IBM Bluemix, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, CenturyLink AppFog and SAP HANA Cloud Platform represent some of the vendors that received the first seal of approval and certification from the newly launched program. The certification program constitutes a huge leap forward toward ensuring the portability of applications across vendors that offer PaaS platforms based on Cloud Foundry. By reducing vendor lock-in amongst users of the Cloud Foundry platform, the certification program signals the emergence of standards and recognized units of measure within the cloud computing space. The program promises to usher in a new era of certification and standards for inter-operability across cloud environments and thereby pave the way for greater collaboration between vendors and enhanced operational agility for cloud computing customers.

Latest Release Of Pivotal Cloud Foundry Features Support For Core Netflix OSS Components Through Spring Cloud Services

Pivotal today announced a new release of Pivotal Cloud Foundry marked by integrated micro-services with Spring Cloud Services, support for .NET applications, Beta support for Docker images and deeper integrations with application lifecycle management vendors. Pivotal Cloud Foundry’s integration of Spring Cloud Services empowers developers to build microservices architectures into their cloud applications by leveraging the platform for microservice-based distributed systems that Netflix open sourced after extensive production-grade usage. Pivotal Cloud Foundry brings opinionated provisioning and lifecycle management to Spring Cloud Services, thereby enabling customers to maximally derive business value from the implementation of a microservice-based infrastructure. The new release of Pivotal Cloud Foundry also features native support for .NET applications, thereby allowing organizations to create cloud-based infrastructures featuring both Linux and Windows machines. This release also allows developers to deploy Docker images to the Pivotal Cloud Foundry platform as well as to take advantage of partnerships with application lifecycle management vendors such as GitLab, CloudBees and JFrog. Moreover, Pivotal Cloud Foundry now supports Microsoft Azure in early access mode, thereby expanding its roster of available partnerships with the cloud infrastructures of Amazon Web Services, VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Air and OpenStack. Today’s release of Pivotal Cloud Foundry reinforces Cloud Foundry’s undisputed leadership position in the Platform as a Service space and continues the embellishment of its impressive array of PaaS functionalities. Given the contemporary proliferation of distributed applications and architectures, Pivotal Cloud Foundry’s integration with Spring Cloud Services represents a highly significant enhancement that empowers customers to build self-healing, distributed systems. Expect Pivotal Cloud Foundry to deepen its dominance within the PaaS landscape as the platform continues to differentiate itself from the pack by means of progressively sophisticated and powerful capabilities that its platform delivers both to its customers and the cloud computing landscape at large.

Press Release: ActiveState Reveals 5 Advantages Leveraging Open Source Technologies for Enterprise App Development

Cost, Community and Innovation Among Key Reasons for Organizations to Engage with Open Source Technologies

Submitted by samanthas on Wed, 2015-07-22 11:00

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – July 22, 2015 – The IT world is quickly shifting to the “Third Platform,” which IDC has coined as the confluence of social, mobile, analytics (big data) and cloud as the foundation for next generation IT. When it comes to staying competitive in the Third Platform world, open source will be a requirement, not an option. ActiveState today shared the top advantages of leveraging open source technologies in enterprise application development. To learn more about the Third Platform and how to enable the future of applications, please visit:www.stackato.com/vision

The use of open source has gained the attention of large enterprises, whose IT departments have a large and growing commitment to open source products. Open source advantages include:

  • Greater transparency: Source code and design deliberations are available for review, in contrast to the secretive processes of proprietary vendors. Assessment of the product and engagement with its community is available in order to determine if using the product is a good decision.
  • Greater innovation: Using a product with a potentially much larger developer base enables access to greater innovation. In addition, by allowing anyone to contribute code, an open source product can incorporate unusual use cases, which might be otherwise ignored.
  • Greater ability to affect product direction: With open source, direct interaction with developers is possible to present use cases, meaning code could be contributed that implements a desired functionality.
  • Lower cost: Because open source is distributed under an expansive license, it is typically much more affordable than proprietary-licensed software, enabling organizations to focus their investment in areas more directly tied to business value.
  • Better match for today’s enterprise IT requirements: Third Platform applications are more highly scaled and subject to much greater load variability. Open source licensing is more conducive to this highly changeable application environment as compared to proprietary software, which typically requires a high licensing fee for each server.
Bart Copeland, President and CEO, ActiveState, said:
“The nature of enterprise IT is rapidly evolving and open source is changing the game. Companies are quickly realizing that in order to succeed, they must empower themselves with the right processes, tools and culture. This is where open source is a major benefit. Once considered the domain of small businesses and start-ups, open source software offers greater transparency, innovation and opportunity to affect product direction. As this adoption increases, open source skills will become critically important, not just for using open source wisely but for attracting the talent necessary to compete in a Third Platform world.”

About ActiveState: 
ActiveState believes that enterprises gain a competitive advantage when they are able to quickly create, deploy and efficiently manage software solutions that immediately create business value, but they face many challenges that prevent them from doing so. The Company is uniquely positioned to help address these challenges through our experience with enterprises, people and technology. ActiveState is proven for the enterprise: more than two million developers and 97 percent of Fortune 1000 companies use ActiveState’s solutions to develop, distribute, and manage their software applications written in Java, Perl, Python, Node.js, PHP, Tcl and other dynamic languages. Global customers like Cisco, CA, HP, Bank of America, Siemens and Lockheed Martin trust ActiveState to save time, save money, minimize risk, ensure compliance and reduce time to market. To learn more, visit ActiveState.com.

Media Contacts:  
Michael Salmassian
Nadel Phelan, Inc.
Phone: +1-831-440-2408
michael [at] nadelphelan.com

Samantha Singh
ActiveState Software Inc.
Phone: +1-778-785-2487
samanthas [at] activestate.com

Apprenda PaaS Raises $24M In Series D Funding

Apprenda has raised $24M in new funding in a capital raise led by Safeguard Scientifics with additional participation from New Enterprise Associates and Ignition Partners. Apprenda delivers a .NET and Java PaaS that distinguishes itself from other PaaS platforms by way of greater traction amongst enterprise customers that include the likes of JPMorgan, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson. The funding raise builds upon recent partnerships forged by Apprenda with Microsoft Azure, Piston Cloud Computing (recently acquired by Cisco) and the Cisco Intercloud Marketplace. The capital raise brings the total funding raised by Apprenda to $56M and is intended to enhance Apprenda’s product development and sales operations capabilities. The $24M Series D round also begs the question of whether the company is gearing up for an acquisition, particularly given its branding as an enterprise-grade PaaS that already boasts deep integrations with some of the leading IaaS platforms in the industry.