March 29th, 2010 Leeds, UK - A new Cloud based service called Mike and the Ceiling (“Mike”) delivers control and consistency for Java based development projects across distributed software teams using hardened security and a consistent web interface. By uitlizing a hosted solution, software teams are relieved of the burden of managing their build environments whilst ensuring that all developers, wherever they are based, have the same consistent view of the build and related tools.

By implementing agile-style continuous integration where the application is built automatically as the source code components are updated, teams have instant feedback on the status of their application. Integration and functional tests can be run automatically and key team members instantly notified by email of the results. Reports can be viewed using a simple and secure web interface.

“Mike (www.mikeci.com) has been developed from our extensive expertise in helping blue chip Enterprises to maximise the efficiency of their software development efforts”, says Gary Parlett, CEO of Mike. “This service delivers real cost savings through better resourcing whilst improving the quality of software development. It is fundamental to 21st century application development, especially where outsourcing or off-shoring is part of your development strategy".

Mike is a new service utilising Amazon EC2 secure hosting to provide flexible build support for small teams through to unlimited Enterprise sized development departments. As Mike is hosted in the Cloud, software teams around the globe can access the service 24/7 and always be sure they have the latest build status and tools.

Mike implements detail security features to protect valuable IP and software assets and each build environment is clean and securely ‘sand-boxed’. All the source code processed by a build is accessed using token-based authentication over encrypted channels. All network communication within Mike is encrypted using either key or token-based authentication and all outbound network access from a Mike build is transparently proxied and validated. Mike supports Ant, Maven and Eclipse development environments and, thanks to the security features of Mike the full range of Ant tasks and Maven plug-ins are available as part of a build. Ant-based projects can now use Maven dependency management for their binary artifacts and there is support for Maven Ant Tasks (v2.1.0). Java source code can reside in public or private Subversion or Github based repositories. Mike can start, stop and deploy to application servers and containers such as Apache Tomcat (v5 and 6), Jetty or Glassfish as part of the build process. Mike can support integration and functional tests, using frameworks such as HtmlUnit or JWebUnit and utilise additional processes as part of a build, such as bash scripts and other non-Java based tooling.

“The challenges of delivering a service that provides flexibility with security are considerable,” Said Adam Leggett, Chief Architect at Mike, “We have developed a platform that can grow with teams and through which we can support a wide range of development environments over time. And we have provided an online demo and trial that takes only around 20 minutes to experience the fundamentals of what Mike offers,” he added.