"We usually get several thousand activism tweets a day. That hasn't happened for 36 hours, because of these issues with Amazon and...]]> Everyone’s favorite under-estimator of social media, Malcolm Gladwell, might get a chuckle out of Amazon’s EC2 problems this week. First, they took out Foursquare, Reddit and Quora service, as TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher reported yesterday. The disaster in the cloud also put a stop to those who would Tweet the revolution via Act.ly, a site that gets petitions going virally, online.

The site and service was still out of order as of publication. Act.ly founder Jim Gilliam said:

“We usually get several thousand activism tweets a day. That hasn’t happened for 36 hours, because of these issues with Amazon and another service provider we use, Heroku, also effected. I can’t access the data to tell you what our petition creation, retweets and general user interactions looked like last year on Earth Day, because I don’t have access right now. But the timing on something like this is a bit of a shame, really.”

According to Gilliam, petition creation and sharing tends to spike sharply around particular events, from the earthquake in Japan, to a calendar holiday like Earth Day. Act.ly petitions in the past have ranged from environmental to entertaining. They have encouraged “web citizens” to demand that phone manufacturers source materials used in their devices sustainably, or to get the EPA to regulate ostensibly harmful pesticides and food additives more carefully.

Staff members at The Young Turks, the popular political news series and site, regularly send out Act.ly petitions, and got in touch with Gilliam to vent and gripe about the Earth Day blackout.

Gilliam is also the founder of NationBuilder.com, a site that he says is not effected by the problems in the cloud.

Anyone can use Act.ly to whip up awareness and inspire problem solving around a cause, online — at least when it’s up and running.

]]> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/22/actly-amazon-outage-earthday/feed/ 0 lorakolodnytc http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/stackmob/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/stackmob/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 02:36:42 +0000 Mg Siegler http://techcrunch.com/?p=268848 we first wrote about a company called Heroku. At the time, the Y Combinator startup was little more than a good idea: ease the development and deployment process a lot of other startups face by putting it in the cloud. Last month, Salesforce bought them for $212 million in cash. It's no wonder that a new startup, StackMob, doesn't mind being called a "Heroku for mobile". Truth be told, that is a pretty good way to describe what they're doing. They've created a cloud-based system to ease the development and deployment of mobile applications. Or even more simply put, "we're trying to solve the backend services for mobile applications," is how co-founder Ty Amell phrases it. They want to be the single integration point for all the backend needs that an app developer may have.]]> It was almost exactly two years ago that we first wrote about a company called Heroku. At the time, the Y Combinator startup was little more than a good idea: ease the development and deployment process a lot of other startups face by putting it in the cloud. Last month, Salesforce bought them for $212 million in cash. It’s no wonder that a new startup, StackMob, doesn’t mind being called a “Heroku for mobile”.

Truth be told, that is a pretty good way to describe what they’re doing. They’ve created a cloud-based system to ease the development and deployment of mobile applications. Or even more simply put, “we’re trying to solve the backend services for mobile applications,” is how co-founder Ty Amell phrases it. They want to be the single integration point for all the backend needs that an app developer may have.

And like Heroku, this has the potential to be huge. Mobile app development is exploding right now. But at the same time, there aren’t a ton of experts at it that aren’t already locked up by either larger companies or well-funded startups. That means that a lot of great ideas are either being left on the table, or take way too long to come into being. StackMob’s goal is to condense development time by weeks if not months, by taking care of a huge range of needs that can be streamlined rather than forcing the developer to learn everything and implement it themselves.

What kinds of things? It’s all across the backend board really. OAuth, social services (Twitter, Facebook, etc), storage solutions (Joyent now, Amazon coming shortly), advertising (coming soon), messaging (including Push), APIs, analytics, etc. A developer can pick and choose what they want or need to include from StackMob. And in some cases, it’s as easy as filling out a web-based form. “Everyone keeps reinventing the wheel everytime. Haven’t we learned our lessons yet?,” Amell asks.

Currently, they’re focused on the iOS platform, but the grand goal is to work across many of the popular mobile platforms — including, of course, Android. But iOS is a good place to start as StackMob’s tools combine nicely with the SDK tools Apple provides to developers to get them going. Plus, StackMob co-founder Pouyan Salehi is ex-Apple.

And while post-Salesforce/Heroku, ideas like this seem ripe for anyone to try to take advantage of, Amell and Salehi actually started StackMob well before the Heroku deal made this so hot. In fact, they already got funding well before that. While they haven’t disclosed it previously, they took a seed round from Harrison Metal, Baseline, Founder Collective, CRV, and some individuals back in May 2010. (Though they’re still not disclosing the amount.) Yes, those are a number of the same guys that funded Heroku. Funny how that works, huh?

StackMob launched a very small alpha test in late November/early December. And they’re now comfortable enough to talk about the basic ideas of how the service will work. The plan is to launch a beta version by late February or early March.

The model for this is a freemium one. Everything will be free to start out. It’s only if you decided you want to actually deploy your app that they’ll charge you based on how popular your app is, and how much of their backend resources it’s taking up. But not to worry, both Amell and Salehi are adamant about your work and data being your own. If you chose to leave StackMob for whatever reason, you’ll be able to take your work with you. “We want to make sure that developers know that they own their data,” Salehi says.

“Mobile is where the web was in ’97 or ’99,” Amell says. “It’s booming — but there’s no framework or infrastructure. There’s no Ruby on Rails. No Django. Nothing that helps with that kind of stuff. There are apps that get really popular, but they don’t know how to monetize,” he says. ”We want to bring an experienced backend and ops team to the masses,” is how he finally puts it. In other words, Heroku for mobile!

StackMob is currently a team of 5 people working in San Francisco. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about them in the coming months.

]]> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/stackmob/feed/ 0 MG sm sm2 sm3 http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/yc-funded-appharbor-a-heroku-for-net-or-azure-done-right/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/yc-funded-appharbor-a-heroku-for-net-or-azure-done-right/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 03:10:30 +0000 Jason Kincaid http://techcrunch.com/?p=266100 PHP Fog (which, as you'd guess, focuses on PHP) and dotCloud (which aims to support a variety of languages). And today we've got one more: AppHarbor, a 'Heroku for .NET'. The company is funded by Y Combinator, and it's launching today. AppHarbor will be going up against Microsoft Azure, a platform that developers can use to deploy their code directly from Visual Studio. But co-founder Michael Friis says that Azure has a few issues. For one, it uses Microsoft's own database system, which can lead to developer lock-in. And it also doesn't support Git, which many developers prefer to use for collaboration and code deployment.]]> You may be noticing a trend: there are a lot of startups looking to mimic the easy-to-use development platform that made Heroku a hit with Ruby developers and offer a similar solution for use with other languages. In the last few weeks alone we’ve written about PHP Fog (which, as you’d guess, focuses on PHP) and dotCloud (which aims to support a variety of languages). And today we’ve got one more: AppHarbor, a ‘Heroku for .NET’. The company is funded by Y Combinator, and it’s launching today.

AppHarbor will be going up against Microsoft Azure, a platform that developers can use to deploy their code directly from Visual Studio. But co-founder Michael Friis says that Azure has a few issues. For one, it uses Microsoft’s own database system, which can lead to developer lock-in. And it also doesn’t support Git, which many developers prefer to use for collaboration and code deployment.

Other features: AppHarbor has automated unit testing, which developers can run before any code gets deployed (this reduces the chance that they’ll carelessly deploy something that breaks their site). The service also says that it takes 15 seconds to deploy code, rather than the fifteen minute wait seen on Azure.

Friis acknowledges that there are a few potential hurdles. For one, some .NET developers may be used to life without Git, so it may take some work to get them interested (Mercurial support is on the way, which many .NET developers already use, so this may not be a big deal). There’s also going to be competition for the small team, which currently includes Friis, Rune Sørensen and Troels Thomsen.

AppHarbor is first to launch, but there will be others: Meerkatalyst and Moncai are both planning to tackle the same problem, and they won’t be the last.

]]> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/yc-funded-appharbor-a-heroku-for-net-or-azure-done-right/feed/ 0 jason http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/breaking-salesforce-buys-heroku-for-212-million-in-cash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/breaking-salesforce-buys-heroku-for-212-million-in-cash/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 11:03:15 +0000 Robin Wauters http://techcrunch.com/?p=252597 Salesforce.com has just announced that it is acquiring Heroku, which provides a Ruby application platform-as-a-service, for approximately $212 million in cash. That's one hell of an exit for the startup, which was founded in 2007 and has raised only $13 million in funding.]]>

Salesforce.com has just announced that it is acquiring Heroku, which provides a Ruby application platform-as-a-service, for approximately $212 million in cash.

That’s one hell of an exit for the startup, which was founded in 2007 and has raised only $13 million in funding.

Heroku was initially provided with seed funding through Y Combinator back in 2008.

The startup says it currently powers over 105,000 social and mobile cloud applications.

According to the company, the Ruby development community is over 1 million members strong and growing fast, with Internet companies as big as Twitter, Groupon and Hulu using the development language to power its applications.

Salesforce.com says the acquisition of Heroku is a way for them to continue providing support for the next generation of (Java and Ruby) app developers.

Byron Sebastian, Heroku CEO, put it this way:

“Together, we will provide the best place to run and deploy Cloud 2 apps. We believe this is the winning combination to bring cloud application platforms into the mainstream of the enterprise.”

In addition to the $212 million cash, Salesforce.com will grant shares of restricted stock and restricted stock units with a value of approximately $27 million to Heroku employees, and commits to paying approximately $10 million in cash for unvested Heroku shares.

The acquisition has been approved by Heroku’s board and stockholders and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011, ending Jan. 31, subject to customary closing conditions.

This is Salesforce’s fifth acquisition this year. Earlier purchases include Activa Live, Sitemasher and Jigsaw. Salesforce.com also spent $170 million to fully acquire its Japanese subsidiary, Salesforce Japan.

Full press release:

Salesforce.com Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Heroku

Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service, powering more than 105,000 next-generation social and mobile cloud applications

With an exploding community of more than 1 million developers, Ruby powers many of the leading Cloud 2 apps

Heroku’s Ruby cloud platform to accelerate enterprise customers’ transition to new era of cloud computing

Salesforce.com cloud platform will support major Cloud 2 languages – Java and Ruby

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/) company, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Heroku, the fastest growing cloud application platform for writing Ruby-based applications, for approximately $212 million in cash, net of cash acquired. The transaction is expected to be completed in salesforce.com’s fiscal fourth quarter ending Jan. 31, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050216/SFW105LOGO)

Comments on the News

“The next era of cloud computing is social, mobile and real-time. I call it Cloud 2,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Ruby is the language of Cloud 2, and Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service for Cloud 2 that is fueling this growing community. We think this acquisition will uniquely position salesforce.com as the cornerstone for the next generation of app developers.”

“We have a service that developers really love, and salesforce.com has the trust and credibility the most demanding customers expect,” said Byron Sebastian, Heroku CEO. “Together, we will provide the best place to run and deploy Cloud 2 apps. We believe this is the winning combination to bring cloud application platforms into the mainstream of the enterprise.”

Heroku: Leading Ruby Cloud Application Platform

Heroku is the leading Ruby platform-as-a-service, built from the ground up to work in an open environment and take advantage of the Ruby language. Ruby has become the leading development language used to write next-generation apps that are social, collaborative and deliver real-time access to information across mobile devices. Today, Heroku powers more than 105,000 apps, written by an avid following of Ruby developers.

Heroku was founded in 2007 by application developers for application developers, with the goal of making the deployment and management of next-generation cloud apps as easy as developing them. The application platform features a workflow and interface designed to mirror how developers work. Because the platform is a service, there are no virtual machines to manage, no software to install, and no hardware to manage and tune. Developers can focus on writing their code, and Heroku takes care of everything else — from deployment to scaling and quality of service. That focus on the developer experience has translated into a passionate following and rapid growth. Last week alone, developers added 2,600 new apps to the platform.

Ruby: The Development Community for Cloud 2

With a growing community of more than 1 million developers, Ruby has become the leading development language used to write next-generation social and mobile applications. Such apps include Internet and social-media leaders Groupon, Hulu, 37 Signals and Twitter. Heroku — with its flexible and open platform — is geared to that Ruby development community. Heroku serves customers of all sizes, in all industries, from around the world. More than 105,000 web apps run on Heroku’s application platform, ranging from social media apps from cutting-edge companies like FlightCaster, which helps users avoid delayed flights, to established companies such as Best Buy, which created an app to help consumers improve their shopping experience.

With the demand for Cloud 2 apps increasing, new platforms and new languages are required to provide developers with the best experience possible. Salesforce.com recognizes that the leading language for building Cloud 2 apps is Ruby, and the leading cloud platform for Ruby is Heroku. The acquisition of Heroku — the leading Ruby platform for building apps using the leading development language — will help salesforce.com accelerate the shift to the next era of cloud computing, within the enterprise and across the entire industry.

Accelerating the Enterprise Shift to Cloud 2

With Heroku, salesforce.com will gain the leading application platform-as-a-service for developers working in Ruby, the hottest language used today for building next-generation apps. Salesforce.com not only gains a highly talented team and access to the rapidly expanding community of Ruby developers, but also gets technology and intellectual property assets that don’t exist anywhere else. Salesforce.com expects that — together with VMforce, the enterprise Java cloud for the more than 6 million Java developers — Heroku will enable the company to become the unparalleled platform provider for nearly any kind of Cloud 2 application. This will help salesforce.com extend its leadership in the cloud platform market.

Heroku was built with the same multi-tenant philosophy that is the hallmark of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. Heroku and salesforce.com share the vision of providing an open and portable programming environment that doesn’t require customers to take on the expense or maintenance headaches that come with buying and deploying hardware and software.

Salesforce.com Positioned to Increase Share of Rapidly Growing Cloud Services Market

Salesforce.com anticipates that the acquisition will help it attract and serve a critical mass of developers, customers and ISVs wanting an open, scalable and trusted Cloud 2 platform. The purchase also will enable salesforce.com to take an increased share in the worldwide market for public IT cloud services, which market research firm IDC forecasts will grow 27 percent a year, to $55.5 billion in 2014. The apps that are moving to the cloud increasingly require technologies that support collaboration and mobility. The acquisition of the leading Ruby cloud application platform uniquely positions salesforce.com to capture a greater share of this market opportunity.

Details Regarding the Proposed Heroku Acquisition

Salesforce.com will acquire Heroku for approximately $212 million in cash, net of cash acquired. In addition, as part of the acquisition salesforce.com will grant shares of restricted stock and restricted stock units with an aggregate value of approximately $27 million to Heroku employees and will pay approximately $10 million in cash for unvested Heroku shares. The acquisition has been approved by Heroku’s board of directors and stockholders and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011, ending Jan. 31, subject to customary closing conditions.

Additional details and information about the terms and conditions of the acquisition will be available in a current report on Form 8-K to be filed by salesforce.com with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Financial Impact of Proposed Heroku Acquisition

* Q4 FY11: The acquisition is expected to have no impact to salesforce.com’s fiscal fourth quarter revenue. However, the company expects the acquisition to reduce non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.02 in the quarter ending Jan. 31, 2011.

* FY12: The company currently expects no material revenue contribution from the acquisition during its fiscal 2012. The company currently projects the acquisition to reduce non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.12 to $0.13 in the year ending Jan. 31, 2012.

The financial impact of the acquisition on a GAAP-basis cannot be estimated until the allocation of the purchase price is made following the closing of the acquisition. Salesforce.com currently expects that the impact of the acquisition will be significantly greater on a GAAP basis than a non-GAAP basis.

About Heroku

Heroku was founded in 2007 by Orion Henry, James Lindenbaum and Adam Wiggins, with the goal of creating a platform-as-a-service that would make deploying, managing and scaling next-generation web applications as easy as writing them. The industry-leading Ruby application platform, Heroku features a workflow and interface that mimics how developers work. Heroku’s multi-tenant architecture means no virtual machines to manage, no software to install, and no complicated platform stacks to manage and tune. Developers can focus on writing their code — and Heroku takes care of everything else. Heroku’s investors include Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital, Ignition Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Y Combinator. Based in San Francisco, Heroku has about 30 employees.

About Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the trusted enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s Force.com platform and apps (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate. Salesforce.com’s cloud offerings include:

The Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management
The Service Cloud, for customer service and support
The Jigsaw Data Cloud, for ensuring data integrity and quality
Salesforce Chatter, for social collaboration
The Force.com platform, for custom application development
Database.com, the world’s first enterprise cloud database
The AppExchange, the world’s leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing apps

Salesforce.com offers the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing. As of October 31, 2010, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 87,200 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements may not be currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

]]> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/breaking-salesforce-buys-heroku-for-212-million-in-cash/feed/ 0 heroku robinw http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/10/former-microsoft-execs-lead-10-million-round-in-ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/10/former-microsoft-execs-lead-10-million-round-in-ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 18:22:26 +0000 Leena Rao http://www.techcrunchit.com/?p=5144 Heroku has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Ignition Partners with existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Baseline Ventures, and Harrison Metal Capital participating. John Connors, General Partner with Ignition and former CFO/CIO of Microsoft has joined the company’s board of directors. This brings the company's total funding to over $13 million. Founded in 2007, the Y-Combinator-backed startup develops a Ruby on Rails development and hosting environment. Heroku aims to make software development more accessible for a wider range of people. It does so by providing a browser-based programming environment that cuts out steps traditionally needed to produce RoR applications. Heroku's application management platform combines runtime technology for cloud scalability with tools and automation for developer productivity.]]> Ruby Cloud Platform as a Service provider Heroku has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Ignition Partners with existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Baseline Ventures, and Harrison Metal Capital participating. John Connors, General Partner with Ignition and former CFO/CIO of Microsoft has joined the company’s board of directors. This brings the company’s total funding to over $13 million.

Founded in 2007, the Y-Combinator-backed startup develops a Ruby on Rails development and hosting environment. Heroku aims to make software development more accessible for a wider range of people. It does so by providing a browser-based programming environment that cuts out steps traditionally needed to produce RoR applications. Heroku’s application management platform combines runtime technology for cloud scalability with tools and automation for developer productivity.

And Heroku is seeing considerable traction with its platform. There are currently 60,000 apps running on Heroku today, including apps for the iPad, Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone. Clients include Shopify, Comcast and BestBuy. The funding will be used to further product development and expand the platform. Heroku faces competition from Engine Yard.

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]]> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/10/former-microsoft-execs-lead-10-million-round-in-ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku/feed/ 15 leena Heroku | Ruby Cloud Platform as a Service http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/07/engine-yard-cuts-15-of-workforce/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/07/engine-yard-cuts-15-of-workforce/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:17:33 +0000 Robin Wauters http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=36506 Engine Yard that has laid off 15% of its staff, as publicly reported on the company's blog earlier this week. We've contacted co-founder Lance Walley and can confirm that 12 out of 82 people have been let go, across several departments. The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker has been updated accordingly. Engine Yard, which essentially delivers a platform to build, manage and host Rails applications, raised raised a $15 million Series B round of funding from new investors New Enterprise Associates and Amazon last July, with investor Benchmark Capital also participating. The round brought its total amount of funding to $18.5 million.]]> The bad news for startups keeps on coming in. This time it’s RubyOnRails application hosting provider Engine Yard that has laid off 15% of its staff, as publicly reported on the company’s blog earlier this week. We’ve contacted co-founder Lance Walley and can confirm that 12 out of 82 people have been let go, across several departments.

The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker has been updated accordingly.

Engine Yard, which essentially delivers a platform to build, manage and host Rails applications, raised raised a $15 million Series B round of funding from new investors New Enterprise Associates and Amazon last July, with investor Benchmark Capital also participating. The round brought its total amount of funding to $18.5 million.

Competitor Heroku also attracted substantial funding in 2008, but they have been spared from significant lay-off rounds so far, at least to our knowledge. Other alternatives to Engine Yard include Joyent and Rails Machine.

Unsurprisingly, Lance Walley added that the lay-offs are part of a ‘slight course change’ that had been in the works for several months already, and that Engine Yard is in perfect health. Also noted is the fact that Walley is no longer the CEO of the company, and that they’ve appointed John Dillon to assume leadership of the company in order to meet new profability (and other) goals.

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]]> http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/07/engine-yard-cuts-15-of-workforce/feed/ 0 robinw http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/13/amazon-nea-invest-in-rails-hosting-startup-engine-yard/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/13/amazon-nea-invest-in-rails-hosting-startup-engine-yard/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:40:59 +0000 Michael Arrington http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=19954 Engine Yard, a platform to build, manage and host Rails applications, raised a $15 million Series B round of funding from new investors New Enterprise Associates and Amazon. Previous investor Benchmark Capital also participated – Engine Yard has now raised $18.5 million in capital.

Engine Yard competitors Heroku and New Relic have also raised capital this year.

Amazon’s investment is clearly strategic as it expands its own web services products. Engine Yard fits nicely into Amazon’s big picture plans for application tools, hosting and management.

Engine Yard Aim For Java With RubyOnRails Platform – Read More On TechcrunchIT >>

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]]> http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/13/amazon-nea-invest-in-rails-hosting-startup-engine-yard/feed/ 0 michael-arrington engineyard-logo.png http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/08/ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku-gets-3-million/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/08/ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku-gets-3-million/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 18:00:31 +0000 Mark Hendrickson http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/08/ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku-gets-3-million/ Heroku, the online Ruby on Rails (RoR) development and hosting environment, has raised $3 million from Redpoint Ventures and other angel investors.

The Y Combinator startup aims to make software development more accessible for a wider range of people. It does so by providing a browser-based programming environment that cuts out steps traditionally needed to produce RoR applications.

The founders picked RoR because it was designed for developers who want to actualize their ideas quickly. Heroku not only makes the development process easier, but it helps deploy and scale web applications, thereby making the maintenance of online software more feasible as well.

The service remains in private beta but we’re told the curtain should lift pretty soon. Meanwhile, developers interested in using Heroku can put their names down on a waitlist.

Co-founder James Lindenbaum says that the platform already supports over 10,000 developers and more than 12,000 applications. Almost all of them are non-critical sites, however, since the service is still working to maintain stability.

Also see Engine Yard, a company with a more hands-on approach to RoR hosting.

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]]> http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/08/ruby-on-rails-startup-heroku-gets-3-million/feed/ 0 mark http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/new-relic-to-monitor-performance-of-rails-applications/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/new-relic-to-monitor-performance-of-rails-applications/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 05:07:37 +0000 Peter Ha http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/new-relic-to-monitor-performance-of-rails-applications/

New Relic is looking to capitalize on the growing number of Ruby on Rails application deployments, having recently raised $3.5M from Benchmark Capital for their Rails Performance Management (RPM) product.

RPM is a combination of installed software and cloud services that helps developers understand performance problems in their RoR applications. A Rails developer first installs a standard plugin that continuously sends performance data to New Relic’s servers. He or she can then use an RPM dashboard to identify the specific points in their code that are causing bottlenecks.

Several brand name Rails developers are already using a beta version of the RPM service, including Rails core developer Rick Olson. While the company is reluctant to disclose its current enterprise-size clients, they are obviously going after the several billion-dollar-plus businesses already using Rails in production.

New Relic was founded by Lewis Cirne, who in 1998 started a company that offered similar monitoring software for the then-young Java application industry. Cirne successfully sold that company and has brought several of his old colleagues with him to this new Rails venture.

Other startups working to make Rails deployment less painful include Heroku, which offers online development and one-click cloud deployment, and Engine Yard, which offers managed Rails service infrastructure.

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]]> http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/new-relic-to-monitor-performance-of-rails-applications/feed/ 0 tcbucket http://techcrunch.com/2008/02/07/heroku-lifts-ruby-on-rails-development-to-the-cloud/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/02/07/heroku-lifts-ruby-on-rails-development-to-the-cloud/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:00:02 +0000 Mark Hendrickson http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/07/heroku-lifts-ruby-on-rails-development-to-the-cloud/

Y Combinator startup Heroku, which has been in private beta since October, is coming out today with more details about how it’s out to ease the development and deployment of Ruby on Rails (RoR) applications.

There are two sides to Heroku’s offering. The first is a completely in-browser development environment where RoR programmers can build their apps instead of doing so with software on their own computers. Relative to other programming languages, Ruby and the Rails framework can be particularly onerous just to install and configure. Heroku wants both amateur and advanced programmers to get coding right away by making RoR development possible with any browser-equipped computer.

The second aspect to Heroku’s offering, which it is promoting with new materials on its website today, will allow RoR developers to not only build their apps with Heroku but to host and scale them there as well. Heroku is using Amazon Web Services to provide automatic scaling of its hosted apps and plans, like a utility, to charge premium users for the amount of processing power they consume. Even if you don’t want to build your app within Heroku, you can import it to (and later export it from) the hosting service to enjoy its automatic scaling capabilities.

For the time being, those who are interested in developing and/or deploying their RoR apps with Heroku can submit their names to a waiting list. Co-founder James Lindenbaum says that they are actually letting people into the site pretty quickly and are using the waiting list mostly as just a way to prevent an onslaught of new users.

A free version of Heroku’s hosting will be available to beta testers, with a premium version coming later that will remove Heroku branding, allow for custom domains, lift bandwidth and processor caps, and provide a set of advanced developer tools such as performance metrics and code optimization.

Heroku, while part of this winter’s batch of Y Combinator startups, has been in development since last June and has already attracted 2,500 users who have built about 2,000 apps. The three founders have backgrounds in enterprise software development and came up with the idea for Heroku when they witnessed the rising popularity of RoR for the enterprise but also saw the difficulties that many faced with the deployment of RoR apps.

For another company working to provide better RoR hosting, check out Engine Yard (discussed here) which provides a more hands-on approach.

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