Apps Tech News

The innovative idea of a start-up helping a start-up is in evidence with Meteor Development Group’s multi-million pound fund to aid enterprise app development.

Meteor – described as ‘Silicon Valley’s newest star’, is an open-source platform which allows developers to utilise their JavaScript framework to build apps on their PCs without having to fight with other non-Java codes.

And during this round of fund-raising, Meteor has made $11.2 million (£7.13m) in helping enterprise app developers get off the ground by speeding up the app-making process.

The majority of the funds have come from venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, who have raised $2.7bn (£1.72bn) overall in the three years preceding January 2012. They have also raised $100m towards open source code sharers GitHub.

Meteor will hope that Andreessen Horowitz’s backing will help them bring open source into the enterprise.

But more than anything else, it ensures Meteor Development Group’s short term future to pursue their goals of making Meteor ubiquitous and creating opportunities for developers.

“What it gives us is certainty”, Meteor CEO Geoff Schmidt said, adding: “With this money comes a lot of responsibility. When we started this project, we took on two jobs; building a great application platform and building a fun, welcoming and supportive community around it.

“Now we’re taking on a third job, building a world-class company,” he added.

The company plans to eventually create a premium product with the similarly space-oriented monikor of Galaxy, which will eventuate as an enterprise-grade hosting environment, although “for now the only focus is Meteor”.

There’s also a wealth of experience in terms of Meteor’s substantial backers, including Rod Johnson, creator of the open source Spring framework, David Skok, who engineered the enterprise sales strategy for JBoss, and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz.

“It’s clear to everyone that we need something new,” said Matt DeBergalis, co-author of the Meteor code.

He added: “What we see today is that it is open source developers who drive the technology that is ultimately adopted everywhere else in the industry. So it depends on whether the open-source community chooses to rally around Meteor”.

How much of a boost will this be for enterprise app development? Can Meteor become ubiquitous like Java and SQL?