rPath announced the beta launch of its rBuilder Appliance Creator and rBuilder Catalog features for the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2). When coupled with rPath's technology for release management, lifecycle management, and its comprehensive support capability for Linux technology, these new features offer one of the most comprehensive solutions for managing cloud application deployments in the industry. This solution is being offered to developers for Amazon EC2 deployments at no cost via rBuilder Online.

“The steady evolution to virtualized and cloud-based infrastructures is causing both IT organizations and vendors to take new and innovative approaches for deploying applications,” said Chris Wolf, Senior Analyst at Burton Group. “Solutions that streamline application deployment across both virtual- and cloud-based architectures are trending to be an integral part of application delivery in the coming years.”

The rBuilder Appliance Creator takes developers through the steps to package a Linux-based application as an Amazon Machine Image. With rBuilder, the on-going maintenance and release management of the application image becomes efficient and elegant. The rBuilder Catalog for Amazon EC2 provides a simple management interface for launching, managing, and retiring application images for Amazon EC2. The dynamic search and catalog capabilities will be familiar to anyone that uses Apple's iTunes, and this “dynamic playlist” metaphor provides a basis for future management activities directed at large scale catalogs of machine images.

“rPath’s new features for rBuilder complement Amazon EC2 by providing a browser-based solution for quick and easy AMI creation, deployment and maintenance,” said Steve Rabuchin, Director of Developer Relations and Business Development for Amazon Web Services. “We are pleased to see rPath utilize Amazon EC2 to bring their customers the scalable and highly available web infrastructure that they require.”

Intalio, a provider of Open Source Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture software, recently came to rPath to deploy its on-premise solution on Amazon EC2. “rPath’s technology seamlessly enabled us to deploy our application in the cloud,” said Ismael Ghalimi, Intalio co-founder and CEO. “Without rPath it would have taken months to get our application up and running.”

“This solution makes it easier than ever for developers to deploy images on Amazon EC2 and experience first hand the benefits of its scalability and a pay as you go model,” said Billy Marshall, rPath Founder and CEO. “By significantly lowering the barrier for application creation and lifecycle management for Amazon EC2 cloud deployments, rPath continues to fulfill our mission of simplifying the delivery and consumption of software innovations.”