cloud-test: AppScale and App Engine Work Together to Provide Infrastructure Flexibility

Google Cloud Platform Blog

AppScale and App Engine Work Together to Provide Infrastructure Flexibility

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

When we created Google App Engine, we wanted to allow developers to build the way Google does. Unencumbered by old models, bad software, or limited infrastructure, we were free to bring the innovations born inside Google out to you. This remains our aim.

We know how important flexibility is to you in the languages you write in, the deployment model you use, the tools you build with, and the infrastructure on which your software runs. Today we’re announcing a unique collaboration between AppScale and Google Cloud Platform. We are making a direct investment, in the form of contributing engineers, to drive compatibility and interoperability between AppScale and App Engine.

Together, you’ll have even more infrastructure flexibility for your apps.

With AppScale you can run your App Engine app on any physical or cloud infrastructure, wherever you want. You also have the flexibility of configuring AppScale yourself, or working with AppScale Systems to manage the infrastructure for you.

Imagine you have a subset of customers who would be better served by your infrastructure because they have custom integration requirements. You can continue to serve your worldwide customers with the power of App Engine, and route requests from specific customers down to an installation of AppScale just for them.

Imagine you have an existing data center or colocation capacity, but want to get started building apps designed with the cloud in mind. Simply install AppScale today and start building apps that are cloud-ready.

Today, AppScale exposes a subset of the 1.8 App Engine API, while the current version of App Engine is 1.9. We’re working with AppScale engineers and the broader community to add compatibility with App Engine 1.9, including Versions and Modules. We’re eager to take community feedback on feature prioritization, and specifically we’re very interested in integrating Managed VMs in to AppScale to further increase interoperability.

There are lots of details to share and we’re eager to keep you posted on our progress. We will continue to share updates on this blog, the AppScale project wiki, the AppScale Github page, and AppScale Systems’ blog. If you want to give it a try today, try AppScale’s Fast Start for running AppScale on top of Google Compute Engine.

We hope you’re as excited as we are about our work together; we can’t wait to see what new, amazing things you build with it. As always, I’m personally interested in your feedback, so please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions, ideas, or great stories. Thanks!

-Miles Ward, Global Head of Solutions, Google Cloud Platform