PaaS enables moving legacy Java and .Net applications to the cloud, brings slider interface to automatically scaling server instances as demand rises and falls.

Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine, OpenShift, and Cloud Foundry are prominent platform-as-a-service vendors, using cloud techniques to assist developers build cloud apps. But there’s another contender coming at PaaS from contained in the enterprise: Apprenda.

Tuesday, Apprenda released the 5.0 version of its PaaS platform, packaged software to present enterprises how to launch PaaS on premises. Considered one of Apprenda’s main differentiators from the opposite PaaS providers is that it doesn’t supply services from a public cloud. Rather, it leaves it as much as customers to launch Apprenda on “any infrastructure that they choose.” There’s nothing stopping someone from using Apprenda on Amazon Web Services. But most customers are running it all alone infrastructure, said Rakesh Malhotra, VP of product, in an interview.

In addition, the 5.0 version deepens Apprenda’s integration with existing applications in-built either Java or .Net. That’s another differentiator. Excluding Microsoft, not one of the other PaaS platforms support .Net languages and technologies of their commercially supported PaaS. VMware’s Cloud Foundry, now section of its Pivotal spinoff, includes the Iron Foundry project, which goes with all of the .Net languages. But Malhotra said that the enterprise version, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, would not include Iron Foundry.

Malhotra is a ten-year veteran of Microsoft and was product manager for the Virtual Machine Manager component in System Center systems management. A better place virtualization would lead, he concluded as he watched Hyper-V being established, was to PaaS. He joined Apprenda because it was attracting venture capital and preparing to launch a commercially supported PaaS system. The 1.0 version came out two-and-a-half years ago. In 2013, Apprenda received $16 million in more venture capital funding, bringing its total to $31 million.

[Wish to learn more about competition within the PaaS field? See Red Hat Takes On VMware For PaaS Crown.]

The 5.0 release include a dynamic scaling feature for applications. Scaling is a key cloud characteristic which might be achieved alternative ways, however the main one is solely writing scripts that tell the cloud manager to launch more instances on a server cluster and route traffic to them. Apprenda has simplified the method right into a developer portal-control mechanism. When setting an application’s scalability, a developer or application manager can use a slider that, reckoning on where he sets it, might tell Apprenda to scale the appliance as much as 16 instances and back as demand falls. Those movements would be controlled by policies built into Apprenda. Checkboxes set other parameters without operations staff needing to write down scripts.

Malhotra termed it the industry’s “first API for controlling dynamic scaling.” Developers can automatically scale apps, reckoning on traffic.

Enterprise customers using Apprenda include JPMorgan Chase, healthcare provider AmerisourceBergen, and healthcare supplies supplier McKesson. “No other private PaaS we considered delivered the depth of Java and .Net capabilities,” said Matias Klein, VP of Intelligence Hub for McKesson, inside the announcement.

Malhotra cited Apprenda’s ability to work with existing Java and .Net applications to head them into cloud-like operations, in addition its assistance in building new cloud applications. If an existing enterprise application has a difficult-coded value, akin to the IP address of a server it must access, Apprenda knows to switch it with a dynamic address assigned at runtime. “The system knows to tear out the IP address and replace it with the address it is going to be working inside the cloud,” said Malhotra.

The ability to mediate between legacy applications and cloud settings means Apprenda can assist run “80% of customers’ application portfolios” within the cloud, he claimed. The identical scaling capability may be used for next-generation applications, streamlining developers’ work.

Apprenda may also export server log-file data to be used as developers troubleshoot an application’s operation. It includes native support for the Oracle database system, including Oracle’s recently added multi-tenancy feature. It has policies governing bootstrapping systems and dynamically loads needed libraries before deployment. It supports use of Active Directory authorization to split identities and permissions for one user using multiple applications.

Apprenda is priced in accordance with the choice of gigabytes of memory at the server where it’s running. Apprenda didn’t disclose 5.0 pricing, but Malhotra said a huge enterprise system could be launched for a worth tag “within the low six-figure range.”

Charles Babcock is an editor-at-large for InformationWeek, having joined the publication in 2003. He’s the previous editor-in-chief of Digital News, former software editor of Computerworld and previous technology editor of Interactive Week.

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