Press Release

Mendix Offers Enterprises Unrivaled Cloud-Native Deployment Options with Addition of Kubernetes Support

Mendix Becomes the First Low-Code Platform to Support the De Facto Standard for Container Orchestration, Providing Enterprises with Even Greater Choice and Control

BOSTON – September 14, 2017 – Mendix, the fastest and easiest platform to create and continuously improve mobile and web applications, today announced support for the Kubernetes open source container orchestration system. Mendix is the first low-code platform to support Kubernetes, and already has enterprise customers running production apps on Kubernetes to enable automated deployment and continuous delivery at scale.

While Docker has emerged as a popular tool for developers to build and run containers, enterprise IT organizations face challenges managing containers at scale. Because most applications have software packaged into multiple containers and use other services (e.g. data stores, caches, and load balancers), manually managing multiple, independent lifecycles introduces significant complexity. Container orchestration systems like Kubernetes address this challenge by automating the deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers, including Docker, across clusters of hosts.

With this release, Mendix adds support for Kubernetes, enabling customers to run Mendix applications in distributed environments and support microservices architectures using the industry’s de facto standard for container orchestration. Customers can now deploy Mendix apps across Kubernetes-orchestrated server clusters via Docker containers. For DevOps workflow, popular automation servers such as Jenkins can be used to build and deploy containers on the cluster. This means that customers can now enjoy the same ease of deployment and horizontal scalability associated with Cloud Foundry on virtually any PaaS stack. This includes commercial PaaS solutions and Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) offerings, as well as frameworks that enterprises may assemble themselves using Docker and Kubernetes. Mendix support for Kubernetes includes a set of how-to’s as well as a Jenkins/Kubernetes reference implementation running on Azure Container Services.

“Since adopting Mendix, Enexis has delivered more than 50 apps into production. This year, we are implementing a multi-cloud strategy to sustain that velocity at scale,” said Gert-Jan van Gisteren, Enterprise Architect, Enexis groep. “Part of our strategy is containerization of stateless applications to ensure elastic scalability, full control, and reduction of infrastructure costs. Kubernetes fits seamlessly in our CI/CD pipelines (Gitlab, Artifactory, Ansible Tower), allowing us to deploy, monitor, and manage our mission-critical Mendix applications quickly, reliably, and at low cost.”

Mendix Continues to Set the Standard for Enterprise-Ready Low-Code Cloud Platforms

Mendix was built from the ground up as a cloud-native app platform. Consistently recognized by leading analysts for its cloud-native architecture, the company has been at the forefront of leveraging open and complementary cloud technologies to offer enterprises unrivaled multi-cloud deployment, portability, scalability, and high availability:

  • 2014:
    • Mendix announces Cloud Foundry support and remains the only low-code platform vendor to leverage Cloud Foundry as a core technology within its runtime so enterprises have the flexibility to run their apps on any Cloud Foundry-based environment, including AWS, IBM Bluemix, Mendix Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Pivotal, and SAP Cloud Platform.
  • 2015:
    • Mendix continues to execute on its Cloud Foundry strategy, announcing a partnership with Pivotal that enables one-click deployment of Mendix apps to Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), PCF on AWS, or Pivotal Web Services directly within Mendix.
    • Mendix open sources its Mendix Cloud Foundry buildpack, so that any (private) Cloud Foundry installation can run Mendix as well.
  • 2016:
    • Mendix introduces its next-generation cloud-native architecture, making the runtime completely stateless so customers can take advantage of massive scalability and HA failover. In addition, Mendix releases a new version of the public Mendix Cloud that runs on AWS in multiple regions and availability zones, with out-of-the-box HA failover.
    • Mendix further broadens customers’ deployment options, becoming the first low-code vendor to introduce Docker support. Customers can deploy their apps on virtually any private cloud, virtual private cloud, or on-premises infrastructure using Docker containers.
  • 2017:
    • Mendix supports the Open Service Broker API, which makes the service brokering functionality in Cloud Foundry available independently. The API allows applications to find and bind to platform-level services, such as message queues or databases.
    • Mendix marks yet another low-code industry first, adding Kubernetes support to provide enterprise customers with even greater deployment choice and control. Customers can leverage Kubernetes to manage the deployment of Mendix runtime instances across Kubernetes clusters.

“The trends of greater collaboration and interoperability across open source projects and commercial offerings, and the unbundling of key capabilities of comprehensive PaaS frameworks are creating more deployment choices,” said Johan den Haan, CTO, Mendix. “The only Low-Code Platform with a sophisticated, cloud-native architecture and deep support for the open cloud ecosystem, Mendix supports the broadest range of deployment scenarios. From the fully managed public Mendix Cloud, to a Cloud Foundry or Docker/Kubernetes-based PaaS, to a customized CI/CD and container stack using tools like Docker, Kubernetes, and Jenkins, Mendix uniquely gives enterprises a spectrum of choices to balance simplicity and control based upon their business and operational requirements.”

Availability

Mendix support for Kubernetes is generally available.

Learn More:

    About Mendix

    Mendix, a Siemens business, is the only low-code platform designed to address the full complexity of enterprise software development challenges. Deploying point solutions to departmental problems solves things at a micro level—but if you want to make a significant impact on your business, you need to go bigger and build powerful portfolios that move the needle sustainably and strategically.

    With Mendix, enterprises can take on more complex, transformational initiatives by engaging everyone in capturing requirements, forming ideas, and embedding value assessment throughout the lifecycle of the software portfolio.

    Focus on the right problems while relying on governance and control to avoid unnecessary risk. Mobilize your organization. Build the change readiness muscle. And when the next big idea drops, turn it into an outcome quicker.

    More than 4,000 organizations in 46 countries use the Mendix low-code platform. An active community of over 300,000 developers has created over 950,000 applications – and counting.