CumuLogic, Java PaaS Software Provider - James Gosling Backed Cloud Startup To Watch Out For

CumuLogic, founded by Java veterans and backed by the Father of Java - James Gosling himself, is a Java PaaS software provider that is building on the cloud computing movement and using technology to differentiate themselves in this increasingly competitive space.In conversation with Chandan Raj from YourStory.in, Sandeep Patni, Rajesh Ramchandani and Laura Ventura tell us about how CumuLogic began, their services, and where they see cloud computing services headed.

Briefly describe CumuLogic for us.

CumuLogic is focused on the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model. PaaS is the best way to embrace and leverage cloud computing technologies as it provides higher level capabilities and ROI. More importantly, CumuLogic is about a “cloud-agnostic” PaaS, which provides a mechanism to move applications and data between clouds so users are never locked into a specific cloud vendor. Finally, CumuLogic is about choice. We want to give customers the choice to build their own platform by picking and choosing components, in addition to clouds.

So, how did it all begin?

CumuLogic is one of the first companies to emerge with a full Java PaaS for federated clouds. Our team has deep Java expertise so we quickly realized that focusing on enabling Java in the cloud would be an interesting and challenging problem to solve. This was what was going to set us apart. We shared our vision with our former Sun colleagues, James Gosling and Bill Vass, to share our vision with them, and they agreed to advise us.

We wanted to pick a name that described our product functionality (logic) and also a name that was related to the cloud. We got lucky the domain was available.

We know that CumuLogic is founded by a veteran team, can you please share more details on each of your background.

Rajesh Ramchandani is founder and vice president of products at CumuLogic. He has more than eighteen years of experience in the software industry, with over ten years of hands-on experience in Java and middleware. He has extensive knowledge in Utility Computing technologies and Cloud Computing. Rajesh’s responsibilities included market development and building the partner ecosystems to drive cloud computing revenue for Sun Microsystems.

Sandeep Patni is the co-founder and vice president of systems at CumuLogic. He has more than seventeen years of hands-on experience in Technology Infrastructure. Prior to this, he was the Application Infrastructure Lead for Risk Technology at Goldman Sachs for more than eleven years. Sandeep founded Perfect Systems and provided consulting services to various financial services industries.

Laura Ventura is the co-founder and vice president of marketing at CumuLogic. She carries with her, more than 16 years experience in technology marketing. During her tenure at Sun Microsystems, she played a key role in Java marketing, advanced technologies marketing and cloud computing. She was also part of the team that re-launched the Java brand.

What are your offerings to a Java PaaS customer?

CumuLogic is a private PaaS that companies deploy in-house primarily for security and compliance reasons. There is also a public cloud offering, which is now available (in beta) on Amazon EC2.

The main features that set CumuLogic PaaS apart is that our solution supports both public and private clouds from multiple vendors. CumuLogic PaaS is basically cloud-agnostic, so you’re never locked into a specific cloud vendor. CumuLogic PaaS also allows for mix-and-match of infrastructure components so you can pick components based on workload requirements.

In the future, you can expect support for PHP, Python and Ruby. You can expect our PaaS to be generally available in the first quarter of 2012.How is the competition in the Java PaaS market space?

Today, there are only a handful of companies providing private PaaS solutions. In the Java space, we’re the only enterprise-grade, commercially supported PaaS. Although, we see Cloud Foundry as potential competition.

PaaS models are still evolving but we’ll see PaaS technology go mainstream in the enterprise as corporate IT requires it to help them simplify cloud application development. Ultimately, it will replace Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) as the dominant layer of cloud computing. We believe PaaS will be the dominant layer of cloud computing in five years and possibly earlier. Also, we expect enterprises and ISVs leveraging PaaS to deliver and deploy cloud services.

Where do you see the PaaS market heading in five years from now? And how do you see it shaping up in India.

We’re seeing a variety of applications being developed for the cloud with Asia Pacific and North America are leading the way.

India is a fast growing economy and IT infrastructure requirements are growing exponentially. To cater to this dynamic market, ISVs and organizations will quickly develop web and mobile applications, hence we see PaaS as a way for ISVs to deliver web scale apps.

India is a key strategic market for us. We’ll soon start working with partners to launch in India.

We have heard the news about ‘James Gosling’ the Father of Java mentoring you guys. Tell us more about it and your other Advisors / Mentors.

James has been part of the CumuLogic Advisory Board since the early days of our company. We showed him a prototype and he agreed to advise us. He’s been instrumental in shaping CumuLogic PaaS, as has another Advisory Board member, Bill Vass, former Sun Microsystems CIO. Bill has been the ‘voice of the customer’ at Cumulogic, bringing valuable insights into customer requirements.

How has been the journey so far?

We work with many partners, especially in the IaaS space so we can test our PaaS against different cloud vendor offerings and make sure our PaaS works with them out-of-the-box. With most partners, we have go-to market activities. Today, our PaaS runs on Amazon EC2, OpenStack, Citrix CloudStack, Eucalyptus and VMware clouds. CumuLogic PaaS is the first PaaS that has been verified as Citrix Ready to ensure compatibility with Citrix XenServer and Citrix CloudStack.

We sell software license for private PaaS, plus we offer subscription pricing on public clouds.

We are currently angel funded. We have a dozen employees and will add addition employees as business growth warrants. Most of the team has Sun Microsystems DNA, but we also have expertise from the financial services industry, i.e. Goldman Sachs, and also from BladeLogic.

To know more about Cumulogic, please visit their website - www.cumulogic.com

- Chandan Raj