WSO2 Stratos – A Comprehensive Open Source Middleware Platform

So here at WSO2 these days the hype is all about Stratos. Why is everyone hyped about it and what on earth is Stratos, you might wonder. Nope, we are not planning our next vacation to the village in Aetolia-Acarnania in West Greece or anything like that; in fact, Stratos is our very own middleware cloud platform. So before going into detail about WSO2 Stratos, let's take a look at what Middleware and Platform as a Service mean.

What is Middleware?

Middleware is software that facilitates exchange of data between two application programs within the same environment, or across different hardware and network environments. Middleware manages the interaction between disparate applications across diverse computing platforms. The middleware layer usually addresses common concerns for Enterprise applications such as authentication, authorization, logging, centralized thread pool management, governance and so on. These are common but crucial aspects that need to be addressed in the development of Enterprise Software. Middleware provides interfaces to developers to write end user software. So the developers will be calling the corresponding Application Programming Interfaces for this purpose.

What is Platform as a Service (PaaS) ?

Platform as a service (PaaS) is the delivery of middleware as a service. PaaS offerings facilitate deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities. PaaS provides all the infrastructure needed to run applications on the cloud. It’s delivered in the same way as a utility like electricity or water. Users simply consume these utilities without worrying about the complexity behind the scenes such as hosting, scaling, availability and security. And just like a utility, PaaS is based on a metering or subscription model so users only pay for what they use. PaaS provides a clean API to software developers to build end-user software.

So what has Stratos got to do with Middleware and PaaS?

WSO2 has a range of middleware products in one platform and this is known as the WSO2 Carbon Platform. These products incude an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), a Governance Registry, an Application Server and so many other middleware products (to learn more about the products or to download you can visit wso2.org). The same platform can be hosted on the cloud as a PaaS, and this is Stratos! In other words, it’s the same set of products available for download at http://wso2.org as a Platform as a service offering. Stratos is the first 100% open source cloud platform for enterprise applications. Not only does Stratos provide an Application Server and an Enterprise Service Bus but also Identity, Governance, Data, Cache , BPS and many more as services. You can choose what you want and build your software using the relevant platform components. Interested? You can download Stratos to be hosted on your cloud or you can try out the version hosted by WSO2 which is known as Stratos Live. 


Check these links for more information on Stratos.

WSO2 Stratos - Platform-as-a-Service for private and public cloud

WSO2 Stratos: A Technical Introduction

From on-premise to cloud computing – WSO2 Carbon, Stratos and StratosLive