Heroku

Heroku. It is a cloud platform as a service supporting several programming languages, widely recognized for enabling developers to build, run, and scale applications entirely in the cloud. Originally created as a platform for deploying Ruby on Rails applications, it has expanded to support a broad polyglot ecosystem. Owned by Salesforce since 2010, the platform abstracts away much of the underlying infrastructure complexity, allowing teams to focus on application code.

Overview

Heroku operates on a managed container system, where applications run in isolated, lightweight Linux environments called dynos. The platform is built atop Amazon Web Services, leveraging its global infrastructure for reliability and scalability. A core philosophy of the platform is the concept of the twelve-factor app, a methodology for building modern, scalable software as a service applications. It integrates seamlessly with popular development tools like GitHub and provides an extensive ecosystem of third-party add-ons for services such as PostgreSQL, Redis, and New Relic.

History

The service was founded in 2007 by James Lindenbaum, Adam Wiggins, and Orion Henry with the initial goal of simplifying Ruby on Rails deployment. The company was acquired by Salesforce in a $212 million deal in late 2010, a move that significantly accelerated its growth and feature development. A pivotal moment in its evolution was the 2011 introduction of the Cedar Stack, which transformed it into a polyglot platform supporting languages like Java and Node.js. In recent years, under the stewardship of Salesforce, it has continued to evolve, launching products like Heroku Data and Heroku Enterprise to cater to larger organizational needs.

Architecture and features

The fundamental compute unit is the dyno, a smart container that executes user-specified commands. Applications are deployed using a simple Git-based workflow, where pushing code to a remote repository triggers an automated build process. The platform provides a fully managed data ecosystem, including Heroku Postgres and Heroku Redis, which handle complex operations like high availability and continuous protection. Key operational features include Heroku Connect for bi-directional data synchronization with Salesforce, Heroku Review Apps for creating ephemeral testing environments, and comprehensive application programming interface access for automation.

Pricing model

It employs a tiered, consumption-based pricing structure centered on dyno types, ranging from free, low-performance Hobby dynos to performance-oriented Standard dynos and resource-intensive Performance dynos and Private Spaces. Costs are also incurred for managed data services, with Heroku Postgres plans scaling from a free, basic tier to advanced, high-throughput Premium plans. The Heroku Enterprise offering provides additional features like single sign-on, enhanced security controls, and dedicated account management for large-scale deployments, with pricing typically negotiated via custom contracts.

Competitors and alternatives

Major direct competitors in the platform as a service market include Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure App Service, and IBM Cloud Foundry. The rise of container-based platforms like Red Hat OpenShift and the immense popularity of Kubernetes-based services, such as Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service and Google Kubernetes Engine, represent a significant architectural alternative. Other notable alternatives include DigitalOcean App Platform for simpler deployments, Render, and Fly.io, which emphasize global low-latency distribution. For developers seeking more infrastructure control, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Terraform for infrastructure as code present a different operational model.

Category:Cloud computing providers Category:Platform as a service Category:Salesforce