A new start up called Buddy launched today with two ex-Microsoft employees at the helm. Why is this of interest to you? Because this is a cross-platform cloud service for mobile app developers, with push notification and live tile support for Windows Phone developers in a PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering.
The service starts at a cost of $4.95, which includes 100MB worth of hosting space with 10,000 API transactions. For more information about the service and what's on offer for your apps, head on over to the Buddy website and read up on the press release (link to website and press release found after the break).
Press Release
Buddy Platform, Inc. today announced the launch and public beta availability of “Buddy” – a feature-rich collection of cloud services available for developers writing mobile applications and games on any operating system (OS). Buddy helps developers by providing a collection of APIs that enable them to quickly and easily add functionality like user accounts, friend lists, messaging, location-based services, photo albums, metadata and detailed usage analytics to their apps and games.
With the growth of mobile apps and games on OS platforms such as iOS, Android and Windows Phone not showing signs of slowing, developers need all the tools and assistance available to remain competitive. By using Buddy’s set of APIs, developers don’t have to write, test, scale or manage this technology themselves, freeing them to spend more time on what is important – the app features and user experience. And with Gartner Inc. predicting mobile app sales to reach $58bn by 2014, Buddy is poised to bring significant time, cost and resource savings to this rapidly growing industry.
“Three years ago, a startup needing 100 servers would have had to buy, host and manage those units – today, you can spin up 100 computing instances on a cloud service provider in no time,” said Jeff MacDuff, CTO and co-founder of Buddy. “In three years, mobile app developers won’t think twice about building their apps and games on a Platform as a Service (PaaS) in preference to building and hosting the technology themselves. We are proud to be bringing that technology to market today.”
Buddy is launching with a core set of web services, and plans to continue building out the feature set according to the needs of professional developers like Matchbox Mobile, 2Moro Mobile and iHwy, Inc. “Buddy is filling a clear hole in the market that many professional developers have been looking for. We’re excited to get started building on Buddy,” said Simon Hamilton Ritchie, CEO of UK-based Matchbox Mobile. “We’ve been very pleased with the engagement we’ve had from the Buddy team and have already started work on the first of several apps we plan to build on the platform,” added Peter O’Neill, CEO of Australian developer 2Moro Mobile. iHwy’s CEO, Mark Brown echoes these comments, “We’re a developer of both mobile apps and web services, and so we understand that cloud services development is very different from mobile app development. As a Buddy partner, we look forward to bringing Buddy technologies to our customers’ apps and games – across all the OS platforms we develop for.”
While Buddy has been designed to support the dramatic growth of iOS and Android, the platform is also breaking new ground by offering dedicated push notification and “Live Tile” functionality for Windows Phone developers.
David McLauchlan, CEO and co-founder of Buddy believes we’re at an inflection point for the industry. “With modern smartphones we can run applications in our pockets that only a couple of years ago would have been unimaginable. As the cost of these devices continues to drop and powerful cloud services like Buddy come to the fore, the race to build the software that powers the world’s mobile experiences is on. Buddy is leveling the playing field for developers building increasingly complex app experiences, across any number of OS platforms.”
Developers can learn more about Buddy, or create an account and start developing at http://buddy.com. Pricing starts at only $4.95/mo and scales with usage of the platform across a developer’s portfolio of applications.
About Buddy Platform, Inc.
Buddy Platform, Inc. is a Kirkland, Wash. based company that offers mobile application and game developers on any OS platform, cloud based solutions to ease the development burden. Developers build their apps on top of Buddy services such as hosted user accounts, friends lists, messaging, geo-location services, photo albums, metadata, push notifications and usage analytics.
Source: Buddy (press release)
