Mobile backend as a service platform StackMob announced today that it is teaming with Ruby cloud platform Heroku to support more developers. StackMob is integrating with Heroku as an add-on that will allow Ruby developers on Heroku to use StackMob’s service.
It is a significant tandem. Heroku is one of the leaders in cloud infrastructure for developers while StackMob provides one of the more robust backend services available to developers. Ruby developers also now have a mobile solution that can be used within Heroku. The partnership gives developers a single integration point to both the backend platforms that can be used through an open-source SDK created by StackMob. While StackMob had an early lead in backend services for developers, the partnership with Heroku puts it above and beyond solutions offered by other startups in the space.
Developers will be able to use StackMob for implementation of custom REST APIs to store and retrieve data. In turn, they can then use Heroku to write code to extend those REST APIs.
StackMob is still in private beta, but developers on Heroku will get instant access.
“We see a lot of mobile developers wanting to write their server-side code in Ruby,” StackMob co-founder and CEO Ty Amell told ReadWriteWeb. “This integration with Heroku allows us to support a much broader range of developers who are currently in mobile or want to get into mobile development. Heroku has an amazing community of Ruby developers who now have access to StackMob, a platform geared specifically towards building, deploying and scaling mobile apps.”
Some of the key benefits of this partnership is that StackMob can now support Ruby custom-code in addition to Java, Scala and Clojure, which it already supports. The two other hot startups in the mobile backend services realm, Parse and Kinvey do not yet offer custom server-side code.
How big is this partnership? Is StackMob head and shoulders above the competition with the new Heroku integration? Let us know in the comments.