Monday, 15 July 2013 00:27
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As cloud and API management open doors to new business models, enterprises are seeking to control the applications being developed with those APIs; both within their organisations and across their partner networks.
WSO2 is addressing this demand with the launch of WSO2 App Factory, which enables continuous cloud delivery through a shared, self-service, multi-tenant and elastic enterprise DevOps platform.
WSO2 App Factory empowers teams to collaboratively create, develop and deploy enterprise applications into cloud environments without the delay of server provisioning. Robust lifecycle management and governance ensure compliance with IT, corporate and government policies. At the same time, the ability to create an intuitive Apple or Google Marketplace-like storefront means developers can easily subscribe to and consume APIs, applications and gadgets.
“Too often, enterprise agility is stalled by a proliferation of stovepipe deployments and shadow IT projects that are disconnected from enterprises’ strategic initiatives,” WSO2 founder and CEO Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana said. “WSO2 App Factory removes those barriers by providing an open cloud-based platform for development collaboration backed by robust governance. Through WSO2 App Factory, enterprises now can extend their business capabilities across a connected ecosystem of internal teams, suppliers, channel partners, distributors and customers, while lowering the costs of integration and interaction.”
WSO2 App Factory provides an open source, open standards approach to cloud-enabled enterprise DevOps. It is built on and integrates with the award-winning 100% open source WSO2 Carbon enterprise middleware platform and WSO2 Stratos, the most complete platform as a service (PaaS) available. The capabilities include WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (WSO2 ESB), WSO2 API Manager, WSO2 Application Server, WSO2 Governance Registry, WSO2 Business Activity Monitor, WSO2 Business Process Manager, WSO2 Business Rules Server, WSO2 Identity Server, WSO2 Complex Event Processor, WSO2 Message Broker, and WSO2 User Engagement Center.
WSO2 App Factory enables the integration of popular software development lifecycle (SDLC) tools, such as Apache Subversion (SVN), Git, Jenkins, Maven, Redmine, Clover, FindBugs and JUnit. At the same time, the open design of WSO2 App Factory also allows the integration of any SDLC toolset with widely adopted tools, such as Atlassian JIRA and Bamboo. Additionally, App Factory integrates with existing user repositories via LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory. Because all the third-party tools used in WSO2 App Factory are integrated through open, interoperable extension points, developers can easily configure new life cycle stages, workflows, and tools of their choice.
“There are several drivers for the use of application development life cycle management (ADLM) services. In load/stress testing, significantly larger loads can be created than in on-premises solutions, a more accurate representation of real-world conditions for client-facing applications, and more-effective pricing structures have combined to make this a rapidly growing market segment,” observed Gartner Research Director Thomas E. Murphy in the Gartner report, Platform as a Service: Definition, Taxonomy and Vendor Landscape, 20131, published on 13 June, 2013. He added: “The continued emergence of DevOps practices and the rise of new cloud platforms will drive adoption as organisations seek to drive productivity and adopt cloud deployment platforms.”
WSO2 App Factory is equipped with a complete SDLC tool chain and PaaS capabilities that aim to address many aspects of the application management process. It provides teams with a unified, controlled platform to manage this complex set of tasks across cloud portals for development, testing, production, and continuous builds in order to provision quality assurance environments, run continuous integration tests, and continuously promote and deploy software assets across development life cycle environments and production. With WSO2 App Factory, developers can easily create and administer projects, automatically build applications, and continuously deliver applications.
WSO2 App Factory provides the tools to create, manage and govern applications, along with the runtime to execute these tools. Developers only need to use the App Factory development portal to perform most of their daily tasks (builds and deployments). They also can consume APIs, applications and gadgets that have been published to an intuitive storefront to develop their own applications, as well as publish data into a shared storage server.
At the same time, developers can continue to use their preferred integrated development environments (IDEs) to develop applications, which run inside the App Factory runtime. WSO2 App Factory supports a range of application types, including web applications, ESB integrations, BPEL-based workflows and PHP applications, to name but a few.
WSO2 App Factory provides several benefits to enterprise development teams. The ability to impose policies and standards between life-cycle stages means an application won’t progress from one stage to the next before meeting regulatory and quality standards. Meanwhile, making an application publicly available in a storefront fosters cross-organisational collaboration and encourages reuse, speeding time to market. The storefront also helps developers understand what capabilities are available before starting a new project, reducing rework. Similarly, early detection of issues cuts the cost of development.
Automated processes also help to simplify the developer experience and streamline processes. Notably, WSO2 App Factory automatically manages dependencies. For example, when moving an application from development to staging, there is no need to connect to different APIs and databases. A developer can simply move the application through its life-cycle stages while the platform automatically connects it to the correct resources. WSO2 App Factory also creates a skeleton project automatically; developers simply select a project type. Additionally, App Factory’s numerous dashboards make it easy to manage and monitor projects throughout the life cycle.
WSO2 App Factory as a fully open source solution released under the Apache License 2.0, it does not carry any licensing fees.
