WaveMaker CEO Samir Ghosh is taking a new pass at aPaas, and leveraging the increasingly popular Docker open-source platform, with the announcement of WaveMaker Enterprise. The new version of the company’s eponymous software “enables instant, end-to-end custom web app creation and management by professional and non-professional developers (alike) and development teams,” according to the company.
We asked Samir a few questions about this, and here’s what he had to say:
Cloud Computing Journal: You’ve mentioned the previous challenge of business-side developers making that jump from design to deployment. What sort of learning curve will they still face with Wavemaker Enterprise?
Samir Ghosh: “Business-side developers” can include non-programming business users or professional developers under tight schedules or with limited mobile or front-end programming expertise. Both can use WaveMaker to meet their app development needs, but may have different deployment needs.
I think business users just want their app to run as easily as possible. In WaveMaker, they can literally click a button and their application will run, either on our public cloud or on the enterprise’s private infrastructure.
Of course, professional developers can do the same, but if they have the skills and desire, they can make direct self-service calls, such as via custom scripts, to Docker or even API calls to WaveMaker’s PaaS capabilities. And IT Operations has control over how and where WaveMaker provisions Docker containers.
CCJ: By working on CIO-sanctioned infrastructures, do you mean the Enterprise version simply won’t run with “Shadow IT” efforts? If so, what makes your solution compelling enough for people to stop trying to go around the CIO with their Shadow IT efforts?
Samir: What I mean is that I’ve seen the “Shadow IT” problem for 30 years. It probably isn’t going away, especially with Consumerization and BYO trends. But IT would prefer to see technologies used that they know and like.
Add the dimension now that data can easily end up outside the firewall in the public cloud by well-intentioned business users. Besides providing powerful RAD tooling on Java, Spring, Hibernate, AngularJS, WaveMaker helps IT ensure these apps run behind the firewall.
All else being equal, business users would rather use a technology—even “Shadow”—that IT will gladly accept. And with millions of WaveMaker downloads and loyal user base, IT can feel confident in offering WaveMaker to their users.
CCJ: Docker has certainly been gaining traction. What advantages do you see it bringing to your solution, and why will it be so compelling to enterprise developers both on the IT side and business side?
Samir: WaveMaker Enterprise is architected on Docker to simplify application stack management, version upgrades and app migration by leveraging containerization. Docker containerization also provides some unique capabilities otherwise difficult, if not impossible, via virtualization or other means.
For example, starting up a virtual machine, even a micro one, can take minutes. In contrast, because a container can be spun up within a second, WaveMaker automatically provides auto-passivation, hibernation and re-activation. We hibernate an idle app container and spin it back up only when needed. This provides significantly greater resource utilization, which is important to IT, especially for CapEx private infrastructures.
Developers on both the IT and business side then enjoy greater and faster resource availability for developing, testing and running their apps. After all, another reason for “Shadow IT” is not just lack of IT developer resources, but can be due to lack of IT compute resources.