Recognizing the growing popularity of Node.js for building distributed Web applications, cloud provider Joyent will soon offer a commercial support package for managing the platform, wherever it is run.
Priced at US$990 a month, Node.js Core Support is aimed at heavy commercial users of Node.js. The service will inspect Node.js systems and provide data to troubleshoot issues.
The service can work with the Node.js deployments that Joyent itself runs as part of its PaaS (platform-as-a-service) collection of hosted technologies. It can also work with hosted Node.js deployments from other providers, such as Heroku, Microsoft Windows Azure, and Engine Yard.
The service can also work with any private deployments of Node.js that are running on either Linux or Solaris servers.
Joyent's offering suggests that Node.js is increasingly becoming a core Web technology. Since its creation in 2009, Node.js has been rapidly adopted across a range of industries, especially within the fields of media and Internet services. The New York Times, Groupon, Yahoo, Condé Nast, HBO, National Public Radio, Walmart, eBay, PayPal, and LinkedIn all use the technology.
Last month, Microsoft released a package to help developers write Node.js applications in the company's Visual Studio IDE (integrated development environment).
Joyent boasts of having deep expertise in Node.js. It currently manages the code base and employs a number of the software's maintainers, including, up until recently, Ryan Dahl, who originally created it.
Dahl wrote Node.js to simplify the process of creating more interactive Web applications. Built using the high performance Google V8 JavaScript run-time engine, Node.js is written mostly in JavaScript.
Although JavaScript was originally intended to be used in a browser, Node.js executes a program's JavaScript on a server. It is particularly well suited for handling simultaneous threads and for gluing together APIs (application programming interfaces) from multiple sources, both traits needed for high-performance distributed Web applications.
Node.js also features a number of handy developer aids, including a built-in Web server and the npn package manager for installing additional modules.
Currently, Joyent offers commercial support for its own Node.js customers in three tiers: production, business critical, and mission critical. The new offering will be similar, offering four levels of support, each with a guaranteed service level agreement, which have yet to be specified.
Joyent announced the offering at the Node Summit conference, being held this week in San Francisco.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.