WSO2 has announced the launch of WSO2 Stratos 1.0, a cloud middleware platform for implementing an enterprise service-oriented architecture. The open-source platform is built on top of WSO2 Carbon, the company’s OSGi-compliant enterprise middleware.

According to the company, WSO2 Stratos, together with Carbon, provides customers a fully hosted application Platform-as-a-Service to develop and deploy composite applications and services that they can provision on a public, private or hybrid cloud.

Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2’s founder and CEO, said, “The cloud is a compelling platform for enterprises seeking greater agility, better cost management, and improved interactions with customers and partners.”

He added: “WSO2 Stratos 1.0 delivers on the promise of cloud computing with a complete enterprise middleware platform for delivering applications that can run on—and integrate with—any combination of private clouds, public clouds and on-premise systems.”

Stratos offers the benefits of the cloud minus the complexity or fear of vendor lock-in. Benefits include shorter project times; cost-effective multi-tenancy services delivered from a single location; metering and auto-scaling from an optimized data center where tenants can share hardware resources so they pay just what they owe; and built-in governance over tenants’ applications and services. Additionally, it increases deployment flexibility because it’s open source. Applications can be migrated quickly, safely and easily.

This first-generation platform expands the capabilities of the June release of WSO2 Stratos. The company said it provides new features for auto-scaling and single sign on, enhanced functionality for automatic activity monitoring, usage metering, and centralized governance and identity management, and it enables deployment of all of the Carbon middleware products as cloud services.

Key to the WSO2 Stratos PaaS is the Cloud Manager feature, a server that manages all other services and offers a Web portal for self-provisioning. Users log in and register their domain, manage their account, and configure available middleware services. Developers can get started immediately and focus on the business logic, rather than configuring and deploying software systems given the point-and-click configuration and provisioning capabilities. Stratos will integrate with other existing cloud infrastructures such as Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud and VMware ESX.

WSO2 Stratos 1.0 is now available for enterprise and virtual private clouds, independent software vendors, original equipment manufacturers, and Software-as-a-Service providers. Free demo accounts are available. WSO2 anticipates that enterprise-level hosting options will be added in 2011. There are no license fees, and the company offers a range of service and support options.