
BitNami (YC W13) Launches App Store for Server Software - ridruejo
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/25/y-combinator-company-bitnami-makes-deeper-move-on-booming-app-store-market/
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bradleybuda
I've used BitNami a number of times and their product is incredibly polished
and has a huge library of server apps. I needed to test some of our software
with a couple of different versions of Drupal and I was able to spin up
running instances in just a few minutes, without touching a command line. It's
definitely a big step up from just launching an AMI.

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northisup
Don't we already had an app store for servers called apt-get?

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ridruejo
apt-get works for system libraries but not really that well for high-level
apps which have different requirements and release schedules, specially the
less mainstream ones. We also support Windows and OS X, which do not have
anything like apt-get. In those cases we use regular installers or the OS X
App Store

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LaSombra
Say what? Isn't Firefox a high-level application? What about LibreOffice? Or
Apache HTTPD?

Isn't the distro maintainers the ones who define the release schedules?
Doesn't Fedora or SuSE, for example, release the newest versions for Firefox,
KDE to the latest on their current distro for example?

I think an Application Store for servers is something redundant, re-
engineering the wheel.

But that's my 2¢.

EDIT: And I'm even talking about similar tools to tasksel.

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FooBarWidget
What happens if the distro maintainers are not doing a good job and keep
lagging behind? Shouldn't developers themselves be able to take charge of the
situation?

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Nursie
They already can if they want to produce packages. This sounds like it may
make that easier.

I'd still prefer to use the ones built and maintained by the distro though.

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gadders
Hasn't Bitnami been going for years, though? (At least 4-5, I think). I'd be
interested to find out why they took the Yc cash now.

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ridruejo
We are profitable and we certainly did not do it for the cash :) We did it for
the advice. I know this sounds trite, but they have been incredibly helpful in
taking BitNami to the next level and they have done it before which companies
like Heroku, which we look up to.

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gadders
Fair enough! I hope you get everything you want out of the deal.

I've been a fan of your products for a while. They were great when I was
working at a bank and it was a quick way to get something up and running for a
demo quickly.

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socialized
I have worked with Daniel and Erica (the Bitnami execs) for the last five
years. They are smart and they have been steadily growing Bitnami for a while
now. Their appliances make deploying and updating a snap.

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troymc
The BitNami Cloud Hosting Features page [1] doesn't say anything about how
easy (or how difficult) it is to update an application (or stack). Will I be
notified if there's a new version available? Can updates be automated?

Other "managed hosting" providers make updates a big selling point. For
example, check out the marketing copy at Page.ly (managed WordPress hosting)
[2].

[1] <http://bitnami.com/cloud/product-tour>

[2] <https://page.ly/features/>

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javipas
Fantastic news for the guys at Bitnami. I met Daniel López at LinuxCon 2012 in
Barcelona and he let us all know there that they have an interesting proposal.
I'm still missing some Nginx love on your stacks, btw, but I guess it'll come
eventually.

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ErikRogneby
Is the pricing just for the one click launch? Or have the public AMIs you've
been maintaining gone away and it's all pay to play?

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ridruejo
No, nothing has changed and we are not doing anything 'evil' :) The pricing is
for our hosting service, which also has a free tier. We will continue to
provide the AMIs for free.

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njx
I see only open source applications. Can someone offer commercial applications
that are not open source?

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ridruejo
Yes, commercial apps are coming soon to the platform. We already provide
commercial versions of Liferay and SugarCRM in our Cloud Hosting product

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njx
Would it be like just providing you the complete package and installation
steps or is there some kind of integration required?

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ridruejo
Right now we handle all the packaging, but over the next few months you will
be able to provide your own apps on top of the platform. We want to make this
process as painless as possible :)

