Adobe’s Aiming ColdFusion at Multiple Clouds

Called ColdFusion 9 in the Cloud it's meant to run on Amazon EC2 and S3 as a hosted service

Oct. 6, 2009 10:30 PM

Adobe is nosing its flagship ColdFusion rapid web site and Internet application development platform onto multiple clouds.

Turns out it's been quietly collaborating with Alagad, a North Carolina web development services provider, on a cloud implementation of ColdFusion 9.

Adobe just released ColdFusion 9 on Monday. The cloud version of the stuff is still in private beta.

Called ColdFusion 9 in the Cloud it's meant to run on Amazon EC2 and S3 as a hosted service.

And, besides the new Alagad approach, Adobe says its new instance-based licensing for ColdFusion 9 will let developers install the widgetry on virtual instances in the cloud environment of their choice to prototype, develop, test and host ColdFusion applications.

Alagad, on the other hand, created an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of ColdFusion 9 containing the application, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Once verified and registered by Adobe, the AMI will let users deploy ColdFusion 9 on EC2, bypassing on-premises installation or configuration.

Alagad says ColdFusion in the Cloud will have all of CodeFusion 9's functionality but cut the user's investment in IT capital and time.

ColdFusion product manager Adam Lehman said, "Alagad's knowledge of ColdFusion and the EC2 platform was a significant benefit as we developed our cloud-based strategy." Adobe hopes to attract more developers to the platform.

ColdFusion 9 is supposed to accelerate the development cycle by reducing complex and powerful business logic to a few lines of code. Its applications can access data from existing enterprise infrastructure including Microsoft SharePoint and Office files and Java J2EE portlet standards.

New features include an Adobe AIR application for managing multiple ColdFusion servers from one location to save performance time and reduce redundant tasks.

It also offers local and remote database synchronization with AIR, giving users access to applications regardless of Internet connectivity. Integration with Hibernate's object relational mapping (ORM) provides developers with database-independent applications.

ColdFusion works seamlessly with Adobe's Flash Platform, a complete system of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers for developing web apps, content and video that runs consistently across operating systems and devices. It means more tools for creating rich user interfaces for enterprise applications, while integrating across existing technologies.

Adobe also released ColdFusion Builder Beta 2 Monday, its next build of the new Eclipse-based ColdFusion IDE for rapidly developing ColdFusion applications.

ColdFusion 9 comes in three editions. The Enterprise Edition, a high-performance solution for delivering multiple web sites and applications on one or more servers, or on existing J2EE application server installations, runs $7,499 for two CPUs. The Standard Edition if meant for single applications and SMEs and runs $1,299 for two CPUs. The Developer Edition for development use only is free.

See www.adobe.com/go/cf_cloud.

The 4th International Cloud Computing Expo is co-located at the Santa Clara Convention Center with the 7th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.

Sponsors and Exhibitors:

Early sponsors and exhibitors of the upcoming 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo include:

Oracle (www.oracle.com / platinum sponsor)
Unisys (www.unisys.com / platinum sponsor)
Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com / platinum sponsor)
Adaptivity (www.adaptivity.com / gold sponsor)
Bycast (www.bycast.com / gold sponsor)
EMC (www.emc.com / gold sponsor)
Sybase (www.sybase.com / gold sponsor)
3Tera (www.3tera.com / silver sponsor)
Akamai (www.akamai.com / silver sponsor)
Rackspace Cloud (www.rackspacecloud.com / silver sponsor)
CloudTest SOASTA (www.soasta.com / silver sponsor)
StoneWare (www.stone-ware.com / silver sponsor)
ExactTarget (www.exacttarget.com / bronze sponsor)
New Relic (www.newrelic.com / bronze sponsor)
ParaScale (www.parascale.com / bronze sponsor)
The Planet (www.theplanet.com /bronze sponsor)
RightScale (www.rightscale.com / bronze sponsor)
Vizioncore (www.vizioncore.com / bronze sponsor)
CloudSwitch (www.cloudswitch.com / bronze sponsor)
Tranzition (www.tranxition.com / bronze sponsor)
Altor Networks (www.altornetworks.com / exhibitor)
LSI (www.lsi.com / exhibitor)
M/Gateway (www.mgateway.com/ewd.htm / exhibitor)
Newstar (www.newstar.com / exhibitor)
Zetta (www.zetta.net / exhibitor)

Sponsorship Opportunities:
Sponsorship and exhibit opportunities can be obtained from Carmen Gonzalez by email at events (at) sys-con.com, by phone 201 802 3021.

Register Today and Save !
Sponsor and/or Exhibit Today
View Full Conference Schedule

Keynote & Breakout Session Speakers at the combined event at the Santa Clara Convention Center include:

DAY ONE KEYNOTE - November 2, 2009 The Time is Right for Enterprise Cloud Computing by Richard Marcello, President of Systems & Technology, Unisys Up to now you may have been reluctant to move your Enterprise application workloads to the cloud, fearing a lack of security in the cloud, compliance issues such as data location regulations and having to rewrite your applications. During his keynote, Rich Marcello will discuss the latest technologies and approaches that help knock down these barriers, creating the opportunity for attendees to now consider cloud managed services as part of their data center journey to secure "IT as a Service".
DAY TWO KEYNOTE: November 3, 2009 Cloud Computing Services at the Scale of the Internet by Shelton Shugar, SVP Cloud Computing at Yahoo! Yahoo! Cloud Services store and deliver web content, personalize content for consumers, optimize Ad selection and placement, improve search results, provide scalable virtual computing environments, and process and store enormous amounts of data to improve consumer experiences and drive innovation. This keynote will elaborate on how Yahoo! and consumers benefit from the Yahoo! Cloud Services that are in production today supporting web-serving properties and data processing environments.
DAY THREE KEYNOTE: November 4, 2009 Cloud Computing: Separating Hype from Reality by Richard Sarwal, SVP of Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager Enterprises large and small are drawn by the advantages of cloud computing - pay-for-use, self-service, elastic scalability tegration, compliance, lock-in, and long term costs of public clouds. Private clouds for the exclusive use of one enterprise can mitigate these concerns by giving the enterprise greater control. This keynote will explore how enterprises are likely to adopt public and private cloud computing, building on a foundation of virtualization infrastructure and management systems

About Maureen O'Gara
Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.