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Paris, France – July 17, 2012 – CloudBees, Inc., the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, today announced that VX Company, a Netherlands-based provider of IT services to customers around the globe, has selected the CloudBees platform to re-develop their Soweto application into a cloud-based SaaS. The Soweto application was developed by VX Company as a way to give back to the AIDS-ravaged African countries. It is used by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Africa to monitor AIDS patients and caregivers, as well as maintain records of home visits. The software is used by more than 85 different NGOs, all affiliated with Soweto Care System.

When VX Company originally developed Soweto, it was a desktop application. The problem they faced was that some NGOs didn’t have in-house IT staff to support the computing infrastructure. As a result, many NGOs were using various older versions of Soweto, mandating that VX Company support multiple versions.

“We knew that in order to get Soweto into the hands of every NGO who wanted access to it we had to redevelop the application as a SaaS, hosted on-premise,” said Bas van Oudenaarde, technical manager, VX Company. Another challenge Bas and his team faced was that as usage amongst the NGOs in Africa grew, so did the need to scale up the computing infrastructure. VX Company had to make ongoing investments in additional hardware and software to support Soweto, something that was turning into an annual occurrence.

“Around this time, we realised the power, flexibility and ease-of-use the cloud could potentially offer to us,” explained Bas. “It was a realisation that hit at the right time, as our software factory was overloaded, particularly when trying to support peak customer demands.”

Using the CloudBees Platform, Bas redesigned Soweto to run in the cloud. In just a couple of months, he had re-built the entire software factory with cloud components. This time the CloudBees Platform – offering Jenkins in the cloud development services – was the central hub.

As a result of deploying the solution to the cloud as an SaaS, NGOs could easily utilise Soweto because they no longer had to rely on local IT resources to support the application. “We have eliminated the ongoing infrastructure investments as well as the associated maintenance and operational costs,” said Erik Zeillemaker, Business Unit Manager. “We now operate within a PaaS environment managed by specialists who really know the ins and outs of their services. That frees us up to focus on what we do best: develop high quality software.”

Some of the benefits VX Company experienced from using the CloudBees Platform include:

Operating expenses reduced up to 30 percent

Customer support time reduced nearly 90 percent

Less infrastructure maintenance

New projects for perspective clients set up in minutes

Extensibility via the CloudBees Partner Ecosystem

As a result of the success VX Company had with the Soweto project, the company has continued to use CloudBees for new projects.

“VX Company is a perfect example of how a company can benefit from the CloudBees platform while, at the same time, automatically leverage the value provided by the cloud,” said Francois Dechery, vice president of international development, CloudBees. “By using the CloudBees services, VX Company was able to eliminate the ongoing infrastructure investments they had to make, as well as perform the associated activities that go along with maintaining the infrastructure. Now they can simply focus on developing high quality software.”

For more information on how the VX Company implemented the CloudBees PaaS for its Soweto application, visit: http://www.cloudbees.com/case-study/vx-company.cb .