Public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services acquires Cloud9

Public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services has acquired Cloud9, a privately-held company selling an online, collaborative integrated development environment (IDE). The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

 ''We have been acquired by Amazon!'' CEO and founder Ruben Daniels wrote in a blog post yesterday, titled ''Great News!'' ''We're looking forward to working together [with AWS] on terrific customer offerings in the future. In the meantime, you'll still be able to depend on and continue to invest safely in Cloud9,'' Daniels wrote. ''Over time, we'll work with AWS to do even more on your behalf.''

According to commentators, it was not clear was use AWS would make of Cloud9, or whether Cloud9's standalone offerings would no longer be available once the company was integrated into AWS. The Seattle-based tech company did not mention the purchase on its website or in its blogs. What was also not clear was the fate of Cloud9's support for Google Cloud Platform, announced in January.

Cloud9's IDE offers an Ubuntu-based alternative to traditional desktop-based development environments, allowing online Salesforce-oriented coding in the Apex programming language, using the Visualforce mark-up language and Lightning app builder.

Cloud9 boasts a fairly rich feature set for building and deploying applications. Thanks to the fact that it runs in a browser, developers can pick up their work from any machine. Cloud9 comes with tools that allow developers to collaborate on projects.

Along with Codenvy, it counts among the few popular, independent cloud IDEs.

"While the cloud IDE space is hot, as a market, IDEs are not an easy way to make money," said IDC analyst Al Hilwa. "The technology is better used as a sweetener to make broader platforms more attractive to developers,"Computerworld reported.

According to commentators, that might be Amazon's goal with Cloud9.