Engine Yard, a startup that allows businesses to outsource their Ruby on Rails app deployment needs, today received $3.5 million in Series A funding from Benchmark Capital, providing further evidence that Rails is a Java alternative to be reckoned with.The open source Web framework provides organizations with a quick way to develop database-driven Web apps. As such, its relative development ease has made it the darling of the startup set; yet it and fellow dynamic languages, PHP and Perl, are fast finding their way into the enterprise as strategic tools to cut down the development backlog fast, as InfoWorld contributor Andrew Binstock outlines in “Dynamic languages: More than just a quick fix.”That said, don’t expect Rails and other scripting languages to replace programming mainstays such as Java anytime soon, despite the hype. As Binstock cautions in “The shortcomings of scripting,” such programming tools do present limitations in terms of scalability and performance. Much of Rails’ momentum has thus far been fueled by its community-driven roots. But investments such as Benchmark’s into Engine Yard suggest at least some believe there is money in the model — in this case, offloading the mess of deploying applications away from those developing them, and providing those businesses the means to scale operations quickly. Engine Yard’s cluster computing platform is the company’s core asset. Cluster resources are either dedicated or shared along slices, depending on customer needs.Related articles: • Dynamic languages: More than just a quick fix • The shortcomings of scripting Software Development