Mash with everything

The notion of what constitutes a cloud `platform’ is getting ever-richer, and the range of tools and services now available to end users now appearing largely have one aim in mind, giving the ability for users to build targeted services that are mashed up from a range of different applications and tools.

One of the latest is Progress Software with its Pacific aPaaS (application Platform as a Service). The company has just introduced some enhancements to the platform that extend its abilities in accessing data and mashing up service solutions, with the goal of giving anyone the ability to create, evolve and customise connected business applications, quickly, on demand.

On the data connectivity front, the company has now added the DataDirect Cloud service, which is designed to make it easy to integrate applications from the popular SaaS, relational database, Big Data, social, CRM and ERP systems. The connection management service allows applications to be built in less time by using a single, standards-based interface to execute SQL queries against a wide range of cloud data sources.

When it comes to application development, Progress has add a new integrated business process management(BPM) and business rules managementsystem (BRMS), which is aimed at simplifying application customisation using the company’s OpenEdge development software.

This should make it easy to configure flexible processes, rules and workflows to meet business requirements while accelerating productivity. In addition, an improved version of the company’s Rollbase rapid development platform offers an enhanced user experience for standards-based business applications. This uses innovative drag-and-drop tools using any web browser.

Progress Pacific uses Advanced Business Language, an implementation of JavaScript, for building end-to-end business applications including business logic, user interfaces and complex data management. This works with Rollbase, which features a web marketplace that lets you browse, evaluate and select from a growing number of on-demand business applications designed to run on the Rollbase platform. This is also available as a cloud service, meaning anyone involved in the service development process can access Rollbase with just an internet connection and a browser.

The range of integration options extend across on-premise applications, elastic connectivity with SaaS services and unified SQL access to a broad spectrum of Cloud data sources for effective and efficient data management. Not surprisingly, there is also support for big data applications, with optimised data connectivity to Hadoop databases.

An important cloud services component of Pacific is its Tenant Management capabilities, allowing users to rapidly create and manage any number of tenants across any number of application and database servers.

Cal German, president and CEO at DMSi Software, which builds a business management solution for building materials distributors, said, “After evaluating a number of platforms, including SalesForce.com, SAP and Acumatica, we’ve chosen Progress Pacific to help us build and deploy innovative applications for our customers. In particular, the drag and drop features and robust workflow and triggers in Progress Rollbase will enable us to quickly deliver highly customizable solutions that meet our customers’ complex business processes.”