Google App Engine Developers Get Help From Cloud Sherpas’ Ferris

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Thomas Claburn.

Cloud Sherpas, a company that helps businesses implement cloud computing services, released Thursday an open source Python framework to simplify custom app development on Google App Engine. Recently named Google Apps implementation partner of the year by Google, Cloud Sherpas has amassed some 3,000 corporate customers since 2007 and boasts projected 2013 revenue of more than $100 million. Most of its business involves helping companies deploy cloud computing services like Google Apps and Saleforce.com.

But in 2011, the company was losing custom app development opportunities presented by its enterprise clients because there were too few tools available to accelerate Google App Engine projects. The absence of a mature tool ecosystem for App Engine meant that custom apps tended to take longer and cost more than clients would accept. Tim Lockyear, director of application development at Cloud Sherpas, said in a phone interview that his team spent much of 2011 and 2012 working on software to make it easier to create custom app engine projects that could interact with Google Apps…

The result was Ferris, a Python framework for accelerating Google App Engine development. Named in honor of the work-avoiding protagonist of the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris aspires to make life easier for App Engine developers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/platform/google-app-engine-developers-get-help-fr/240149628