VMware launches beta of Micro Cloud Foundry

VMware on Wednesday launched a beta of Micro Cloud Foundry, a version of its Cloud Foundry platform as a service platform that can run on laptops.

The move is an effort to get more developers to try Cloud Foundry, an open platform framework that is also in beta. The challenge for Cloud Foundry is that developers have to be connected to a data center host to build apps. With Micro Cloud Foundry VMware is offering a complete version of Cloud Foundry that runs locally on a Mac or PC via VMware Fusion and Player, respectively.

Micro Cloud Foundry supports Spring for Java, Ruby on Rails and Sinatra, MongoDB, MySQL and other tools. VMware launched the beta of Cloud Foundry in April.

Developers typically load environments on their laptops, but that practice is lacking for platform as a service.

According to Dave McJannet, director of product marketing of cloud and application services at VMware, said Micro Cloud Foundry allows developers to build complete applications locally. "It's a way for developers to interact with Cloud Foundry to test applications," said McJannet.

From there, developers can upload apps for review. McJannet wouldn't reveal how many developers are on board with Cloud Foundry. He said that the number of developers doubles every two months and the app count triples.