Cherokee Market: The 1st marketplace for Web Apps | alo's web site

Cherokee Market: The 1st marketplace for Web Apps

It's been a couple of days since we launched the Cherokee Market. I'm glad I have finally found a few minutes to write about it. Oh, boy.. these last few months have been intense!!

I will begin by introducing what we have done. The Cherokee Market is a marketplace for Web applications. It's basically a distribution channel where Web developers can distribute and sell their applications, while users can deploy them seamlessly.

Watch this short video to see what I'm talking about. Two minutes are enough to perform the Cherokee Web Server installation, and to access the Cherokee Market to install Drupal 7. It's interesting to notice that the user is never asked for any superfluous installation details:

The technology we have developed to create this services is quite interesting, although in my honest opinion, that is not the best thing about the Market. If you ask me, the very best thing about the Cherokee Market is the vast amount of people who will benefit from it. There are basically two groups of people who are starting to enjoy its benefits:

• Web Developers: I'm including on this category both companies and independent developers. Cherokee Market represents a new distribution channel for them with two main advantages. First of all, it expands its user base. Every single Cherokee Web Server user is their potential user as well. The application gains visibility, and increases it user base. Second, as a direct consequence of the previous point, the monetization of the product will turn easier, and a bigger user base will be translated into an increase in the sells.

  The Cherokee Market is already open for Web Developers and Companies to join. We are already working with a few companies to bring their products to the market. Do not hesitate to join if you want to distribute/monetize your Web applications.

• Web Infrastructure Owners: There is a number of reasons why people like Cherokee. I'd split them in two groups. First, it's how it works: it's fast, very fast and it requires little memory to run. It also supports all the modern Web technologies, so there are no restrictions about what you can or cannot run under Cherokee.

  
  Independent benchmark, published on LXF 142 March 2011

  Then, we have how the user interaction with the server is designed. Let me get this straight: It's 2011, it's about time to stop editing complex, error prone, plain text configuration files, don't you think? Now that we all are running fancy desktops full of powerful applications.. what sense does it make to have to open a terminal window, become root, and edit a text file, and type a new command to reload the service in order to make a little change on how your web server behaves. I’d say that none, none at all.

  
  Behavior rule configuration
  
  Traffic monitoring

  The first step was to improve how users interacted with their Web Server. Now, we have taken the approach even further, and we are changing how users interact with their Web infrastructure as a whole. It's possible to configure your Web Server behavior, Load balancing policies, and even to browse and install applications from within the same graphical user interface.

  The best thing, though, is the simplicity of the process. Odds are you have had to deal with the installation of some Web application that took way much longer than you expected. It's a common situation: missing Python, Ruby, PHP modules, missing build dependencies, invalid versions of interpreters you already have, etc. Not to mention that fact that you might have to perform some operations by hand: create data bases, add users, groups or services to your system, etc.

So, as a condensed summary: The Cherokee Market allows users to deploy applications seamlessly, while we ensure they are deployed safely. They can forget about misconfiguration issues, or poorly performing apps.

I must confess I am deeply proud of what we have achieved here. Besides all the technology we have had to develop in order to bring this project to life, we have created something that I understand is much more important: a way in which hundreds of companies and developers can distribute and sell their Web applications, providing an additioinal (previously proved successful) business model to all of them.