Announcing Java on Engine Yard

We are delighted to announce that Engine Yard is adding support for running Java apps in the cloud, in addition to Ruby, PHP and Node.js apps. Early (beta) access to Java on Engine Yard will be available within 30 days. Developers will be able to deploy Java apps and services on an Engine Yard-curated stack, with component choices for JVM, application server, load balancer and database running on an Ubuntu­-based (12.04 LTS) Linux distribution.

Why are we doing this? Java developers need cloud too!

We are adding Java, in short, because our customers are ready and we are ready.

There’s a lot of Java out there, Java code, JVMs running critical services, and experienced Java developers. By supporting Java, we want to help developers easily deploy their apps and services to the cloud and help companies that wouldn’t or couldn’t have considered the cloud be able to now. Supporting Java also opens up new use cases for Engine Yard such as application migration and overhaul.

Our new Java stack is part of the continual evolution of our systems that started with the new architecture we began rolling out at the beginning of this year. With the Java release, developers get early access to features of the new architecture we’re excited about, such as blueprints and server groups. They’ll also get a first look at a fast and intuitive new UI based on AngularJS and Node.js and a scriptable CLI for automating application configuration and deployment.

Engine Yard has a polytech vision, to enable developers to deploy any app, on any language, using any persistent store, to any cloud infrastructure. To help achieve this vision, we have been evolving our platform conservatively based on two principles of curation. First, we choose and update platform components we know are performant and secure and second, we ensure we have the expertise and resources to support them. This is why we add language stacks only when we have the experience to curate their components and can offer the level of deep platform and infrastructure support our customers expect. This really matters on gameday (or awards night).

###Does a single technology stack fit every scenario?

Today’s distributed and cloud applications span multiple languages. Modern web systems certainly have less Java at the front-end, as developers move towards thicker JavaScript clients, but we still see it all over the back-end. For example, many systems have back­-end APIs and services or integrations with data written in Java and front-­end components in Ruby, PHP or JavaScript. With Java support on Engine Yard, developers can pick the best language for each component of their distributed apps and deploy to the cloud.

“There’s life in the old (Java) dog (Duke) yet”

We hear from our customers and the open source communities we’re involved with that Java remains an important platform for developer innovation, not only when it comes to using the Java programming language itself but also others on the JVM. By offering a curated stack with a solid Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Engine Yard is also able to offer other JVM languages besides Java. Java is also the platform for critical open source software many web development teams use to run their businesses such as Solr, Cassandra, Jenkins, and Hadoop/HBase.

What to do now?

Sign up for early access to run your Java apps on Engine Yard. To learn more visit engineyard.com/java.

If you are going to be at JavaOne in San Francisco this week, please come and find us! We’ll be at the Engine Yard booth demoing the Java early access release. Our booth is #5000 in the Exhibition Hall. We’d love to get your feedback and talk about your requirements for Java on the Engine Yard cloud platform.