Building Java apps for the cloud is about to get a bit easier thanks to a new tool from Java startup CloudBees.
CloudBees has a DEV@cloud service that provides the contiguous integration capabilities of Jenkins as a cloud service. They also have a RUN@cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering for Java applications deployments. Now CloudBees is delivering its development and production service to Eclipse with a new plugin.
“What we’re doing is bringing the power of CloudBees into the Eclipse IDE so developers can benefit from the cloud as well as improve productivity without ever leaving the IDE,” Harpreet Singh, Senior Director, Product Management at CloudBees told InternetNews.com.
Singh explained that for Eclipse Java developers, they can now build and monitor builds in the cloud with Jenkins for continuous integration. The code can then be pushed to the cloud to run as production code with the RUN@cloud service.
“We brought in the aspects of deployment and build monitoring into the IDE,” Singh said.”As part of doing this we’re also joining Eclipse.”
The CloudBees and Jenkins CI Connection
The Jenkins project which is at the heart of CloudBees DEV@cloud service is closely aligned with CloudBees. The founder of Jenkins, Kohsuke Kawaguchi is a CloudBees employee. Jenkins is a fork of the Oracle Hudson continuous integration tool.
Oracle recently announced that it was moving Hudson to the Eclipse Foundation, in an effort to prove that Hudson is open and transparent for contributions.
“We’re focused on Jenkins and will follow whatever the Jenkins community decides to do,” Bob Bickel, CloudBees Advisor, told InternetNews.com.”We think that’s where the action is from a real developer and community kind of standpoint.”
Bickel added that it looks to him like the two projects will exist in parallel and gradually diverge as time goes on.
From a business perspective, CloudBees also has a product called Nectar, which is a commercial product built on top of Jenkins. Singh noted that Nectar has a longer supported and stable release than Jenkins and is backed by commercial support from CloudBees.
Java PaaS Still in Its Infancy
In terms of growing the Java PaaS business, it’s still early days. Bickel noted that he expects Java shops to realize over the next two years that there are efficiency and agility gains to be had by moving to a cloud PaaS model for Java development.
“What will happen is similar to the early days of J2EE app servers,” Bickel said.”More and more developers will realize that they don’t need to build things themselves they can utilize services.””The market is still awfully early.”
