Java Developers Get Cloud Platform Beta

Jelastic, a new startup, has announced its namesake flagship product, which it refers to as a next-generation platform-as-a-service technology.

The new PaaS offering is for building and running any Java application in the cloud instead of from a PC – speeding development time and maximising computing resources, Jelastic officials said.

Build from the cloud

Jelastic enables developers to make code changes and rebuild applications in the cloud, removing the lag time caused whenever files are updated and uploaded from a PC. Jelastic can take application source code directly from version control repositories, via either the Git or SVN protocol.

Jelastic makes the Java server hosting platform for developers and hosting service providers. The Jelastic PaaS offering is designed specifically for hosting service providers to deploy and make available to their customers.

Jelastic automatically scales Java applications and allocates server resources required by applications, thus delivering the true next-generation Java cloud computing.

Using Jelastic, developers can easily swap test and production environments with simple point-and-click. The same is true for cloning an exact copy to test or prepare an application for production deployment.

Jelastic is fully compatible with existing Java applications and libraries, the company said.

Java developers have access to support for any Java Virtual Machine-based (JVM-based) application, including pure Java 6 or 7, JRuby, Scala and Groovy.

SQL support

In addition, Jelastic provides support for SQL databases that include MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Non-SQL database support is provided for MongoDB and CouchDB. Supported application servers include Tomcat 6 and 7, GlassFish and Jetty.

Load balancing and caching is done though integrated NGINX, and developer tools integration via Maven and Ant plug-ins, Jelastic officials said.

“With our Java-hosting platform, application developers have the easiest, fastest, most efficient way to build and deploy any Java application,” Ruslan Synytsky, chief executive of Jelastic, said in a statement. “We provide all the most popular options for any Java developer on the world’s first cloud platform to host and auto-scale any Java application.”

Java is the programming language of choice for more than nine million Java developers worldwide. Jelastic runs any Java application in the cloud without code changes and without writing for specific APIs.

Application developers can choose which stack components they want and need, and their application will run and can scale easily on the Jelastic platform, the company said.