Bungee Labs Announces Revolutionary On-Demand Environment For Development and Deployment of Rich Internet Applications

100 Percent Web-Based Environment Delivers Competitive Edge to Small-to-Medium Sized Businesses
SAN FRANCISCO / Web 2.0 EXPO—April 16, 2007 - Bungee Labs™ today announced Bungee Connect™, a next-generation on-demand environment for small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs). With Bungee Connect, web developers can rapidly develop rich internet applications, then instantly deploy them on Bungee Connect's high-availability infrastructure grid. Bungee Connect dramatically increases both developer productivity and application capability by reducing web state management programming, automating Ajax interactivity, providing rich runtime libraries of programming functionality, and optimizing access to multiple web service APIs—including specific focus on the web services from Amazon®, Ebay®, Google™, Microsoft®, PayPal®, RealNetworks®, Salesforce.com® and Yahoo!®. Collectively, the development communities of these web service providers include more than 300,000 registered members.

"Given the current disjointed state of tools, testing and deployment models, most developers find creating rich internet applications (RIAs) to be complex, time-consuming and expensive," said Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions. "By combining development, testing and deployment functions into an integrated, low-cost-of-entry service approach, Bungee Connect both broadens the numbers of developers that can produce web applications as well as slashes the barriers of entry for creating innovative ecommerce services and web-based businesses."

Bungee Connect enables SMBs to dramatically improve the on-line experiences they deliver, shorten development cycles, differentiate above and before competitors, personalize community interaction, and completely eliminate upfront development license fees and all capital equipment required for deployment. Bungee Labs collects no fees during the entire development process—developers can freely access, develop, test, and even conduct online focus groups and beta programs for Bungee-powered applications.

Bungee Labs collects fees when Bungee-powered applications are unrestricted or commercially used. These fees, billed monthly, are based on highly instrumented infrastructure and utility computations that combine computing, storage and network interaction. The aggregate utility rate is expected to be US$1 per computer-network-interaction-hour. For example, typical commercial business applications are expected to consume between one and five interaction hours per user per month, depending on usage and each application's run-time combination of web service access, application processing, and network interactivity.

Bungee Connect is 100 percent on-demand and web-based—there is no software download, no server or client install, and no configuration of deployment infrastructure. Bungee Connect enables developers to:

• Use Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari for development and application access
• Create new Solutions and Projects
• Directly import and marshal SOAP web services for read and write
• Directly marshal REST and RSS services for read/write via efficient XML utilities
• Augment web service data structures with persistent object extensions
• Graphically layout pages and forms
• Interactively bind Ajax controls to server-side data types within pages and forms
• Create and apply user interface styles to Ajax controls, UI forms and pages
• Directly program custom application logic and data manipulation processes
• Test run forms and applications without code generation, compilation, or provisioning
• Create Design Groups and invite other developers to join
• Check-in and check-out for multi-developer process management
• Manage application revisions to new and existing URL deployments
• Make production snap-shots of completed development Projects
• Instantly deploy applications to any URL
• Embed deployed Bungee-powered applications into non-Bungee-powered websites

"Ajax is just the beginning of the RIA story and Bungee Labs provides the rest of the solution with a web-based IDE, on-demand scalable deployment, a well-designed community model and a built-in component ecosystem with real-world licensing options," said Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet blogger; President/CTO, Hinchcliffe & Co.; and editor in chief, AjaxWorld Magazine. "Bungee Connect is a surprisingly complete one-stop shop for the RIA development, deployment and operations lifecycle."

Martin Plaehn, CEO of Bungee Labs, added, "Removing technical and financial barriers blocking mass adoption of rich internet applications will greatly enhance business results and consumer satisfaction. Bungee Labs provides a compelling online environment and infrastructure for SMBs to aggressively and effectively innovate in the expanding on-line services-based world."

Bungee Connect is currently only available to private beta participants. Developers may register to participate in the early-access beta program at www.bungeelabs.com.