Uruguay's KONA Selects IBM Cloud over Amazon Web Services as the Foundation for its Application Development Platform

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Oct 28, 2014, 09:00 ET

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Oct. 28 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that KONA has deployed a new cloud-based application development service on IBM Cloud with SoftLayer, an IBM Company to help it build dynamic mobile applications that link its customers' back end systems of record with mobile systems of engagement. After evaluating competitive infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Rackspace, KONA selected IBM Cloud to take advantage of its fast, stable, secure delivery platform and its massive global cloud footprint with cloud centers in every major market; enabling it to seamlessly scale as it launches mobile applications abroad.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the global Backend-as-a-service (BaaS) market is estimated to grow from $216.5 million in 2012 to $7.7 billion in 2017*. With the release of Kona Cloud, Kona is working towards becoming a world-class player in the exploding BaaS market. Kona Cloud reduces the complexities of application development by automating the complex processes involved in server-side programming, reducing the redundancy in creating backend code blocks and providing ready-to-integrate features for mobile applications. By building and deploying applications with Kona Cloud, developers can focus on developing the front-end features of their applications and marketing activities.

SoftLayer's flexible cloud infrastructure provides Kona with the ability to seamlessly scale up and down as demand shifts – a key capability for Kona as it grows from a startup to a global provider of IT services. Since getting out of private-beta, KONA Cloud gathered more than 300 developers and companies that trusted the platform for their projects, which vary from productivity apps and e-commerce to social networking projects.

"We knew we had to go with a global cloud provider that could instantly provide additional resources whenever we needed it," said Diego Cibils, CEO of KONA. "SoftLayer provides us with cutting edge technologies and services, which we use extensively in the product like MongoDB for Data Storage, for Object Storage, load balancing and service monitoring among others. We can add resources instantly like memory, processors and mass storage via a powerful API."

SoftLayer provides Kona with a level of control and transparency that it needs to build a full range of mobile applications for its customers quickly and securely. In fact, existing customers of KONA Cloud develop their apps at least 10 times faster and with fewer errors than with traditional, on-premise development tools.

"Kona's focus is on enterprise customers, where Softlayer's level of control and transparency of assets and fault tolerant network design is a key advantage," said Gerardo Quincke, Cloud Services SoftLayer Focal Point, IBM Uruguay. "SoftLayer's flexibility will help Kona start small and grow fast, from small virtual instances to fully configured and very powerful bare metal servers, and will provide it with a complete portfolio of solutions available in all cloud centers distributed all around the World."

While KONA's development team is based in Uruguay, KONA Cloud was created with a global vision. With a "Pay as you grow" model, the platform is flexible for all kinds of customers, allowing them to choose the most convenient way to use it.

About IBM Cloud Computing
IBM is the global leader in cloud with an unmatched portfolio of open cloud solutions to enable clients for the hybrid cloud era with integration, control over data and expertise. IBM Cloud has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a growing global network of cloud centers. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more the 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM's public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

* Cloud Backend-as-a-service (BaaS)/Mobile BaaS (MBaaS) Market – Global Announcements, Business Models, Technology Roadmap, Forecast & Analysis (2012-2017).

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SOURCE IBM