eXo, a Java portal technologies pioneer, today unveiled its roadmap to take modern enterprise portals, gadgets and mashups to cloud computing environments. For enterprise companies that have invested in Java, eXo is offering a path to the cloud that will help reduce costs, simplify administration and substantially shorten time-to-deployment for new applications. In support of this roadmap, eXo is making two announcements today:
• eXo introduces eXo Platform 3.5, the first and only multi-tenant user experience platform (UXP) for Java systems. A UXP is the evolution of the enterprise portal to support a variety of consumer web technologies that affect how people interact with the web today. In addition to multi-tenancy and cloud management capabilities, eXo Platform 3.5 will feature improvements to its web-based IDE, making it easier to write, test and deploy gadgets, mashups, HTML5 and content applications.
• eXo is launching eXo Cloud IDE, a new service offering available today as a private beta. The first of a set of free cloud services planned for 2011, eXo Cloud IDE is a hosted development environment that facilitates social coding–the collaborative development of gadgets and mashups that can be deployed directly to a PaaS. eXo Cloud Services enhance PaaS development and will leverage core technologies in eXo Platform 3.5, including multi-tenancy, social and collaboration features.

“Over the last six months, our customers have found a real Java alternative to SharePoint with eXo Platform 3.0, and they’re deploying transactional websites, managing web and social content and building next-generation gadgets and dashboards with it,” said Benjamin Mestrallet, CEO of eXo. “In 2011, eXo is once again changing the game for enterprise portals with deployment options that meet today’s computing requirements. With our cloud-ready user experience platform and PaaS developer services, eXo is paving a path to the cloud for Java enterprises.”

A Cloud-Ready User Experience Platform
eXo Platform is an integrated UXP based on the open source GateIn portal for building and deploying transactional websites, managing web and social content and creating gadgets and dashboards. It lets companies leverage their existing Java infrastructure, while accommodating changing user behavior driven by consumer web technologies such as social networks, social publishing, forums, etc.

eXo Platform 3.5 makes it easier to develop, extend and deploy modern enterprise portals, gadgets and mashups in cloud computing environments. Furthermore, it opens up cloud deployment options for multiple users, including:
• Service Providers: Manage portals with a single user experience across many customers. Shared OS multi-tenancy means lower cost for service providers with only one JVM to worry about.
• IT Operations: Manage and monitor a private or public cloud from within one portal. A single user experience makes it easy to learn and lowers support costs.
• Users: Add enterprise social and collaboration capabilities easily. Embed business applications in dashboards. Extend the portal by aggregating private and public cloud applications. A smartphone or tablet user interface means the portal can be accessible on those devices without extra coding.

General availability for eXo Platform 3.5 is planned for the second half of 2011.

eXo Cloud Services
eXo Cloud Services is a set of free services that will enhance PaaS development. The first service out the gate is eXo Cloud IDE, launching today as a private beta open to development teams. Key features and benefits in the Cloud IDE roadmap include:
• Web Development: A single environment for wiring REST services, HTML5, Gadgets and structured content to create rich mashups and web apps on the fly. Because coding is done in a production environment, moving from code to testing and deployment can be done much faster.
• Quick Setup of New Domains: As a multi-tenant service, creation of a new network is almost instant. Developers can pick a domain, invite their development team and start coding in their own IDE.
• Source Control Integration: Support for Git and SVN.
• Collaborative Development: Enables social coding with activity streams and collaboration tools like wikis and forums.
• Deployment Flexibility: Ability to deploy locally on the Cloud IDE platform, or remotely via Git push or classic WAR deployment.
• PaaS-agnostic: Develop and package Java web projects as webarchive (.war) and deploy on popular Java PaaS. In the future, eXo intends to extend support beyond Java to Rails, Node.js, Play and .NET, among others.