If you want to play in the enterprise these days, an vendor has to have a mobile strategy. Open source infrastructure provider Red Hat Inc. is expanding its strategy by buying enterprise mobile application provider FeedHenry, a Irish-based platform that supports security, storage, data synchronization and app management.
“As mobile devices have penetrated into every aspect of enterprise computing, enterprise software customers are looking for easier and more efficient ways for their developers to build mobile applications that extend and enhance traditional enterprise applications,” Craig Muzilla, senior vice-president of Red Hat’s application platform business, said in a statement. “FeedHenry will help us enable customers to take advantage of the capabilities of mobile with the security, scalability, and reliability of Red Hat enterprise software.”
The acquisition is subject to closing conditions.
Red Hat said FeedHenry — which can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud on AWS, Rackspace, HP Cloud, IBM Softlayer and hybrid clouds like VMware’s VCHS — fits into its JBoss xPaaS strategy for OpenShift, its PaaS offering for hosting apps in the cloud. JBoss is backing a community project called AeroGear, which provides libraries for simplifying mobile development.
In one sense, writes Scott Fulton at Fierce Enterprise, that makes the JBoss app server a competitor to FeedHenry. Unlike JBoss, FeedHenry’s principle architecture platform is Node.js, a server-based implementation of JavaScript. Fulton raises the question of whether Red Had bought FeedHenry to keep it from overtaking JBoss.
In April, FeedHenry launched version 3 of the platform which included
- new collaborative workflows supporting Agile development and deployment. Administrators have visibility and control over multiple authentication levels. Role-based development also allows separate client-side development and backend integration, with DevOps-enabled functionality for cloud deployment. Each app and cloud backend within a project also has its own Git repository;
- a so-called “Bring Your Own Tools” approach, which supports native software developer kits, hybrid Apache Cordova, HTML5 and has been extended to include cross-platform toolkits Sencha Touch, Xamarin and Appcelerator. In addition, re-usable templates, app forms and out-of-the-box connectors allow for faster creation of apps and prototyping. It said developers can build hybrid apps not only for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry, but also web apps accessible from any browser;
- enhanced MBaaS (mobile backend as a service) and API discovery. RESTful APIs can be created and managed from within the platform. Developers have access to self-help capabilities and self-discovery of APIs and can create their own backend APIs in Node.js to share them across multiple projects. Flexible service-based architecture makes these APIs available for re-use, and administrators can report on usage and performance.
