VANCOUVER, British Columbia – May 26, 2010 – ActiveState, the Dynamic Language Experts, and analyst firm RedMonk today announced the results of an informal survey that reflects the industry trend of enterprise developers planning to deploy cloud applications in the next 12 months.

The survey found:

  • Half of the developers have deployed or plan to deploy cloud applications in next 12 months
  • The highest percentage of developers, 37%, look to blend public cloud computing with on-premise computing resources
  • The top 2 perceived obstacles in deploying applications in the cloud are security (40%) and lack of tools/expertise (40%)
  • While JavaScript was the most common tool used by developers in the poll (79%); Perl and Python were each used by about half of the respondents

The survey was conducted in a webinar titled “Best Practices in Porting and Deploying Enterprise Applications to the Cloud Using Dynamic Languages” by Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst and Partner at Redmonk and Jeff Hobbs, Director of Engineering at ActiveState. The webinar had over 140 attendees and included a mix of information architects and software developers.

“The survey results are indicative at once of the interest in cloud solutions and the desire to use dynamic languages in that setting,” said Steven O’Grady with RedMonk. ”While there are clearly barriers yet to adoption for some enterprises, the cloud is an increasingly popular deployment model for a variety of organizations. As with their investments in the datacenter, key to adoption for many customers will be commercial support, and ActiveState is a logical choice for those looking to leverage Python in the cloud.”

“The survey mirrors what we are seeing with our users who choose dynamic language distributions such as ActivePython and ActivePerl for their cloud applications,” said Jeff Hobbs, director of engineering at ActiveState. “Due to their portability, speed, and scalability, dynamic languages continue to gain popularity as enterprises shift to deploying applications in the cloud. ActiveState offers all of these benefits plus SLAs, compliance and security for enterprise customers relying on the cloud to speed up developmentwhile managing risks.”

During the webinar, O’Grady and Hobbs polled the audience with several questions. For the purposes of this poll, Cloud Computing was defined as a style of computing in which dynamically scalable, and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.

– A Public Cloud is accessible to the general public.
– A Private Cloud is behind a corporate firewall and is inaccessible to the general public.

What are your plans for developing Cloud applications?

Currently developing applications  12.2%
Plan to develop within next 6 months 24.4%
Plan to develop within 7-12 months  14.2%
Plan to develop within 13-24 months 6.1%
No plans at this time  42.8%

Which best describes how you expect to see your company’s development in the future?

All apps deployed in a Public Cloud    12.5%
No apps deployed in a Public Cloud    0.0%
All apps deployed in a Private Cloud    18.7%
Some apps deployed in a Public Cloud and some in on-premises Private Cloud   37.5%
Some apps deployed in Public Cloud and some on premises (no cloud)   31.2%

What is the TOP inhibitor or obstacle to DEPLOYING APPS to the cloud?

Security  40.0%
Lack of tools / expertise  40.0%
Latency   13.3%
Potential vendor lock-in   6.6%
Reliability / uptime   0.0%

What are the top 3 languages with which you spend the most time programming TODAY?

Python  47.3%
Perl 47.3%
PHP  42.1%
Javascript 78.9%
Ruby 31.5%

Download the slide presentation, with results, at https://www.slideshare.net/activestate/cloud-deck-activestatewithpoll. Visit www.activestate.com/webinars to watch the recording of “Best Practices in Porting and Deploying Enterprise Applications to the Cloud Using Dynamic Languages.”

About ActiveState

ActiveState is the world leader in enabling companies to develop, manage, and distribute applications with dynamic languages. The company’s products and services for Perl, Python, Tcl and other web languages, are used by over 2 million developers and 97% of the Fortune 1000 to build and run applications from mission-critical to open source projects. ActiveState’s end-to-end solutions include development tools, language distributions, indemnification, OEM solutions, support and other services. With these, customers such as Cisco, CA, HP, Bank of America, Siemens, and Lockheed Martin are able to accelerate productivity, minimize risk, and ensure compliance.

About Redmonk
RedMonk is the first analyst firm built on open source. We’re dedicated to providing high quality research at no cost, and believe that the dialog that follows is beneficial to us, our community and our clients.

Contact:
Bret Clement
PR@activestate.com
303.462.3057