High-level app development with CUBA.platform on Jelastic PaaS
We’re living in a fast-paced world where everything needs to be quick, easy and cost effective in order to be competitive. With the help of frameworks, modern development has become a lot simpler, even for complex applications.
CUBA.Platform is a high level open source Java web framework most suitable for developing enterprise applications with rich web interfaces, complex data models, enhanced security requirements and support for a multitude of business processes.
Being a high level framework, it abstracts developers from underlying technologies — such as Vaadin, Spring or EclipseLink — so they can focus on the business tasks, empowered by a rich set of features and development tools, and without restrictions to low level code.
All you need to develop apps in CUBA is Java SE, XML and JPQL. In addition to a more uniform and easy to maintain code, it also reduces requirements to your dev team as you don’t need any Java EE gurus.
Enhanced Docker® Lifecycle Support on Layershift Jelastic PaaS
The latest platform upgrade on the Layershift Jelastic PaaS delivers three great headline benefits that every Layershift customer should take advantage of today.
1. Docker® on Jelastic PaaS is now GA
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Docker®. That little fish has made big waves.
Back in April, we announced how Layershift’s private cloud customers were already using Jelastic together with the Docker® packaging standard to use this technology in advanced real-world DevOps workflows.
We just made this a whole lot easier and more flexible with support for volumes. Volumes allow you to dispose of your container without disposing of your data – hence you can upgrade your container to a later version (e.g. switch Docker® image tag).
With this feature we are also making our Docker® feature GA (generally available) to all paid public PaaS account customers by default, marking it out as a first-class citizen available for all to use and enjoy.
This is a great moment to briefly recap the main benefits of using Docker® powered nodes within your Jelastic PaaS environments:
- Instant access to 100,000+ pre-defined server templates, giving you the ability to deploy a wider range of server software than ever before.
- Define your own server templates – including standing on the shoulders of giants by basing your template atop of any existing one (for example, if you just need to make a minor modification or addition).
- Deploy the same server template on your laptop (e.g. via Docker® Compose) as you use in production on our Jelastic PaaS.
Layershift Jelastic PaaS expands its borders!
Layershift were the first provider to introduce this revolutionary platform to the UK. Now we’re first to go multi-region with the addition of our USA Southwest region in Phoenix, Arizona.
Answering your demand
Customers throughout Europe are enjoying the exceptionally high standard of service and support we deliver together with our Jelastic PaaS. More and more businesses are saving time and money by only paying for usage, rather than instance size, combined with the renewed focus our highly versatile hosting platform grants by removing sysadmin setup time and headaches.
But our friends across the pond in America were sad. They looked across with envy and pleaded:
“Why do we have to put up with poor service and unreliability from the huge IaaS corps?”
Of course this illustrative of the problem facing most of our PaaS competitors: almost all are built on top of third party infrastructure such as AWS, Digital Ocean, or Azure, so they really have no control over the important infrastructure details; nor can they provide robust SLAs as standard like Layershift.
The US is also an important market for many of our European customers. Together these factors created a very high demand to combine Layershift’s extra special service quality, scalable hosting platform, and a well connected US server location.
We took this opportunity to expand our overall footprint – already in Manchester, Amsterdam, Chicago, and Singapore – launching our Jelastic PaaS in Phoenix is a really proud moment for us.
Layershift Jelastic PaaS – unlimited edition
Hate trials that are so limited they’re effectively “crippleware”? Yeah, so do we! Sadly a few budding trialists brought it to our attention that we’re guilty of this heinous crime – today we’re putting that right.
The Jelastic PaaS is a polyglot platform, supporting applications authored in a variety of programming languages, and running a wide selection of application and database servers.
With this power comes great responsibility. A responsibility to set the resource limits high enough to suit a vast assortment of different technologies, frameworks, and server stacks. It turns out that some of your apps (particularly Java EE apps) are heavily performance limited – or may not run at all – with our old trial limits.
Introducing Apache TomEE cloud hosting
We’ve spent some time checking out Apache TomEE recently as we’ve added it to our Jelastic Cloud hosting platform. Although not as popular as other servers in the Java Enterprise Edition world, TomEE – pronounced “Tommy” – does a great job at delivering a fully operational, Java EE 6 Web Profile stack. It was founded by David Blevins, starting as part of the Apache OpenEJB project, and received the Java EE 6 Web Profile Compatible certification in Oct 2011.