Pervasive Software held its annual Metamorphosis event last week. That's where we ask 100 current customers to spend two days with 100 prospective customers. It's our concept of a "rush" for customers. We host a nice dinner, give them a comfortable place to network and let the experience of our customers speak for itself. The event is always a huge success for both parties, and this year was no exception.
For our part (DataCloud2 Team) we were one of the darlings of the party, cloud computing is everywhere and our CTO (Mike Hoskins) made it clear Pervasive is committed to integration in and around the cloud.
It always feels good when you know people are talking about you in a good way, but it is even better when they put it in writing. Charlie Babcock (Information Week) wrote a good review of where the Pervasive DataCloud2 has been and where it is going based on what he learned at the conference.
What Charlie didn't say is we (Pervasive DataCloud2 Team) have already reached the future. A few weeks ago we completed a project with MicroFinance, which leverages the Pervasive DataCloud2 in a big way. We published a great case study capturing how we used DataCloud2 services to connect several (4 in the initial phase) end points. Of particular interest is that two of the end points are located behind firewalls. Using VPN services running on the DataCloud the MIX team created tunneled connections, insuring secure access to on premise data, that allowed the integration of data to occur in the cloud environment. The VPN clients are ultra-thin and self contained and delivered using Pervasive Apollo agent technology. This means that the owner (MIX in this case) of the data can control access and authorization. Updates, when required, are small and automatic.
In addition to the VPN services we have added SFTP, SMTP and encryption services via PGP libraries for use by our growing number of partners creating integration solutions on the Pervasive DataCloud2. What we are realizing is that by leveraging the IaaS of Amazon Web Services we are able to provide a rich environment for our customers. And they are taking advantage of it as quickly as we can roll the services out.
We will be rolling out more services in the future (as Charlie says), but don't look for the future to be too far away.