First, let’s talk “stuff.” If you mean by data, absolutely. As Facebook’s recent stumble has indicated, customers should be able to freely move their content. In fact, any application platform should have published APIs that are enable you to migrate data in and out of the system. And their code-based development should support industry standard syntax and logic like Java so at the very least, you can migrate custom logic and processing. But if you mean the applications themselves, which you could argue is the valued piece, that is going to take awhile.

Applications are a combination of data structures (or data models), processing, presentation, a range of interaction that works in concert with the existing platform. As such, every platform vendor has ways of adapting those structures to help businesses leverage as much of the pre-built platform as possible. For PaaS providers, the application modeling and framework are part of their magical sauce, often uniquely optimized for their operating environment, mixed with a large dose of customer requests, and added to that many late night hours of ingenuity. Why? Because there is no all-encompassing platform yet, but each step takes us closer.

Alan Zeichick of SD Times has a more sensible response to issues of standardizing the cloud.

Standards, hastily enacted, can stifle innovation. Cloud computing is in an early experimental growth stage. Sure, we have some well-entrenched early success stories, such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com, but it would be a potential tragedy to allow the early work of three companies to be codified as standards. We need time for their cloud offerings to shake out for a few years. We need time for new players to enter the market with new technologies – and new ideas. We need time to broaden the base upon which the standards are made to go beyond commercial interests.

To add to Alan’s point, as we build our platform, our job is never done. Companies are finding more and more uses for LongJump and with each new use comes a handful of new requirements — sometimes involving a change to our modeling and framework. It’s exciting because it’s making our platform richer, more robust and more sophisticated with every update.

If you asked us today to adhere to a standard, we would say: “for what… and whose?” It’s not like millions of companies are jumping online creating applications and abandoning their traditional architectures. At this point a cloud standard would be like asking companies like us to band together to set rules and speed limits and street etiquette before we’ve reached escape velocity. Yes, it’s safe, but completely impractical.

When WiFi was in its early stages (or the Internet for that matter), standards came about when adoption became wider. Adobe held PDF until it ensured that everyone could read it. HTML is still changing as new browser technology is introduced. You want standards? Help improve adoption of these platforms and lobby for the changes that will make them interoperable. Don’t hang up projects based on interoperability first.

And if you’re worried about lock-in, pick an application platform vendor that is willing to work with you on those issues. Talk to them. Give them a chance to address those issues, one-on-one. It’s still early and you can help define the platform you need. And that is better than any standard.

Technorati Tags: application development, Applications, cloud computing, Platform-as-a-Service, standardization

Martin Heller of Infoworld comments in “Cloud application builder adds development suite” :

“From what I saw in the demo, however, any Java/JSP developer should be able to become productive with LongJump fairly quickly, and the pre-built relational objects provided should make quick work of many common applications.”

 Sarah Perez of Readwriteweb.com writes in “LongJump Extends Itself With New Developer Suite” :

With the new LongJump Development Suite, an I.T. department can build the app they need, then use the included visual browser-based UI for data and process modeling. Alternately, they could instead choose to hand of the integration of the app with another system or application to a developer (or team of developers). Finding a developer to work with LongJump shouldn’t be an issue since the suite provided is a Java-based development environment complete with a plug-in to the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment), something that’s used by 69% of Java developers today.

Svetlana Gladkova of Profy.com remarks in “LongJump Further Enhances Its PaaS Offerings to Developers” :

“…the fact that all the development and deployment are conducted online on LongJump platform means significant cost reduction for a business that can not afford the traditional infrastructure to run a business application on its own (while it is possible to ensure hosting of the applications elsewhere as well).”

Bob Thompson from CustomerThink Corp. remarks in “Jumping Into Cloud Computing Platform War: LongJump” :

“From a demo I saw, it seems developers can easily create custom applications, using a combination of data objects, workflow, business rules, etc. And custom Java code if you need it. I can envision developers creating fairly complex applications in a few days, and deploying immediately via the cloud.

From a technology standpoint, I’d say LongJump is on a par with Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. Both are powerful and built to support enterprise-grade applications.”

He goes on to say…

“LongJump strikes me as one of the real gems in the cloud computing market. Assuming it can execute its marketing strategy well, I think it will attract developers who like the robust platform, easy-to-use interface and standard Java code for customizations.”

Finally, Mark Hendrickson from Techcrunch observes in “LongJump Challenges Force.com with New Developer Suite” :

“LongJump will provide a sandbox area for developers to test their Java applications before deploying them into production. The platform also implements a reusable relational data object model that’s intended to save you time recoding when developing several applications.”

We’d love to hear from you if you have additional feedback on our Developer Suite.
 

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, java, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

• Basic concepts of PaaS, e.g. benefits, technology, potential risks and hurdles, etc.
• Applications suitable for PaaS
• Roadmap for successful adoption and integration
• Q&A

Date:
Wed., Sept. 24, 2008

Time:
8am Pacific Time
11am Eastern Time

Duration:
1 hour

Speaker:
Derek Cheng,
Director of Products and Marketing,
LongJump

To register:
http://www.longjump.com/paas-webinar/land/paas-webinar-sep08.htm

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud computing, PaaS, Web2.0

At the conference, LongJump CEO, Pankaj Malviya, will be participating in the Platform as a Service Panel on Sept 4, 2:15 – 3:00pm. Other panel participants include Rob Bernshteyn (SuccessFactors), Anshu Sharma (Salesforce.com), Raju Vegesna (Zoho). Hear them discuss how vendors are addressing the needs of developers, covering technical architectures, development methodologies, and best practices. If you’re planning to attend the conference, make sure not to miss this panel discussion.

Technorati Tags: Applications, best practice, PaaS, Platform-as-a-Service, saas

Technorati Tags: Applications, cloud, Longjump, PaaS, Platform, saas, Sales and CRM, Service