Atlassian launches cloud development platform

Atlassian has introduced Atlassian Forge, a serverless cloud development platform designed to streamline enterprise cloud application deployments. Atlassian Forge is available in a private beta, with a waitlist now in effect.

In elaborating on Forge, Atlassian said that developers of cloud-based applications have had to deal with building, hosting, and operating an independent web service, which itself means needing expertise in cloud architecture and management. Forge aims to free developers from these burdens.

Forge works with other Atlassian technologies including the Atlaskit UI library and Bitbucket Pipelines. Forge has three key components:

• A serverless FaaS (functions-as-a-service) platform with compute and storage services operated by Atlassian. The serverless model enables developers to write single functions rather than building entire web applications. This reduces the amount of code required. The FaaS platform is powered by the AWS Lambda service and spares developers from having to orchestrate infrastructure commonly associated with launching applications. Pain points such as identity, authentication, scaling, and tenancy are dealt with by the system itself. Applications run inside a security layer enforcing tenancy isolation.
• Forge UI, a declarative UI language for building user experiences across the web and devices with a few lines of code, Atlassian said.
• A devops toolchain powered by the Forge CLI (command line interface). Atlassian is building resources including built-in onboarding and templates to help in ramping up on Forge. Atlassian Bitbucket Pipelines are leveraged for continuous delivery.