Q&A with Sinclair Schuller

VSM: Can you tell the readers what Apprenda does?

SS: Apprenda is a provider of an out-of-the-box private platform as a service (PaaS) and framework that leverages the full power of cloud computing - including multi-tenant architecture and highly efficient grid execution - to deliver business critical applications faster and at a dramatically lower cost.

VSM: What do you mean by private PaaS? How is it different from public PaaS?

SS: Public PaaS is referring to a PaaS provider that offers the platform runtime and operates the platform as a third party for an organization. Private PaaS gives the control back to the organization and enables them to build, deploy and manage applications on-premise in their data centers. Public PaaS may work for small development shops, but it by no means covers the broad-based needs of enterprise IT. Constraints such as SLA needs, latency, regulatory concerns, risk management, and co-located integrations are real concerns that prevent organizations from fully leveraging public PaaS.

VSM:  What significant enhancements did you make for this latest release?

SS: We made a number of significant enhancements in our latest Apprenda 3.0 product release. This includes an enhanced API which gives developers a lot more control over the platform in terms of managing and installing updates.

Additionally, the Apprenda 3.0 introduces the ability to sandbox applications within defined usage boundaries, creating "slice policies" that define the resource limits offered to each application. Our new resource usage feature also makes it easier than ever to track and modify resource usage based on "slide policies" selected by each application provider. This means you're only using the capacity you need and are allowing other applications to take advantage of that excess capacity.

VSM: How do these new features make it more enterprise-ready?

SS: Ultimately, our goal at Apprenda is to make the lives of developers as easy as possible and ensure they are meeting business demands. These new features are ensuring developers are able to concentrate on building applications that are solving business challenges and not having to deal with the technology issues associated with deploying and managing those applications. This allows enterprise developers to be more productive and focus on the needs of the business.

VSM: How does Apprenda help enterprises save on costs?

SS: The costs savings enterprises can achieve with Apprenda are two-fold. First are management costs. Because of the self-service model, developers can deploy business critical applications quickly. The net result for an enterprise IT organization is that as more and more applications are deployed to a private PaaS, the marginal increase in cost to manage and maintain the PaaS-based application portfolio drops drastically. Therefore, developers need to concentrate on quickly getting applications up and running.

Secondly, private PaaS enables organizations to utilize their existing infrastructure so data center equipment does not have to be fully replaced, dramatically saving on costs.