Continuuity

Continuuity is a cloud-based Big Data application platform for developers. Rather than simply providing another cloud service for writing and running Hadoop jobs, Continuuity allows developers to more easily build, deploy and manage Big Data applications on top of the components within the Hadoop ecosystem.

Packaged in Single-node, Hosted Private cloud, On-premise Private cloud and Public Cloud Editions, Continuuity has built a cloud-based application runtime platform called the Continuuity AppFabric. The company also provides an SDK and suite of developer tools that promise "push-button deployment" from the developer's local single node AppFabric to the cloud.

Product

The company calls its product the Continuuity AppFabric, and it’s essentially a runtime for scalable Big Data applications. There are four core capabilities that comprise the AppFabric:

Streams – allow users to send and store their data into the platform
App Containers – allow users to process their data in real-time
Datasets – data and tables that store and index the output of applications that run in the App Containers
Queries – allow users to access their data directly or write and deploy their own server-side query processors

These components sit on the Distributed Data Fabric that enables reading and writing to the underlying Hadoop infrastructure.

Continuuity AppFabric and a Software Development Kit allow developers to build applications in their IDE, run, test and debug them on their local machines, and when ready, "push to cloud" with a single click.

Continuuity has simplified the entire Big Data application development lifecycle.

The platform currently supports Java applications only — a natural first step given that Hadoop is written in Java — but Continuuity plans to support other languages going forward.

From an integration perspective, Continuity supports REST interfaces.

Leadership

Continuuity was started in 2011 by a team with deep domain expertise when it comes to Big Data, including Todd Papaioannou, former chief cloud architect at Yahoo and entrepreneur-in-residence at Battery Ventures, and Jonathan Gray, founder of personalized news streaming startup Streamy and more recently a top engineer at Facebook, where he worked on the company’s Messages product.

Papaioannou, along with cofounders Nitin Motgi and Jonathan Gray, were reportedly early adopters of the Hbase big data technology while working at companies such as Facebook and Yahoo.

Funding

The startup received $2.5 million in seed funding in January 2012 from Battery Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners, and a group of angel investors On November 14, 2012, Continuuity, raised $10 million in a Series A round. The investors include Battery Ventures, Ignition Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Data Collective and Amplify Partners.