HarrisData Supports Linux with new ‘AppsInHD’ Platform

November 4, 2014 Alex Woodie

IBM i ERP software developer HarrisData recently unveiled AppsInHD, a new platform that will serve as the foundation for the company’s future Web-based, loosely coupled, REST-enabled applications. The new “mashup” AppsInHD apps will run on IBM i as well as Linux.

HarrisData says AppsInHD is “the revolutionary platform” that it’s using to build the next generation of enterprise software. The company says that, with AppsInHD, it “broke apart” its previous application and re-assembled the pieces as a series of small and independent services. The resulting REST-based services run independently in a cloud environment.

“AppsInHD fundamentally uses REST and its emphasis on resources (“pieces of information”) to create a network of services which work together,” writes HarrisData co-founder Lane Nelson in a recent blog post.

New resources can participate in the AppsInHD network by simply defining them and their behaviors, he continues. “To develop new applications, we design the resources … unique to the application and any actions unique to the resource, and deploy the application through AppsInHD.”

At runtime, the AppsInHD platform provides options beyond IBM i. “The AppsInHD platform runs just as well on a single IBM i as a rack of commodity Linux servers,” the company says on its website.

The fact that the new platform runs on Linux should not be a big surprise. The Brookfield, Wisconsin-based company has been busy transitioning business logic from RPG to PHP for years, and had largely completed the move when HarrisData ERP Software version 5.0 shipped four years ago. While the company says it would never leave IBM i, it hinted that it would be expanding its platform coverage.