Backend as a Service... or Vulnerability? Frank talk with Apigee and Fat Fractal

By now you've probably heard that popular Backend-as-a-Service provider Stackmob is shutting down on May 11 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7221680).

Where does that leave you? Are you relieved that you chose Parse or another service? Are you determined to avoid backend service providers altogether?

We'll talk about these issues and more at our February meetup at Apigee's headquarters in San Jose. We'll talk about two alternatives: Apigee's Usergrid (https://usergrid.incubator.apache.org), an Apache 2-licensed open source BaaS product that Apigee hosts and you can run on your own servers, and Fat Fractal (http://fatfractal.com), which offers a "Cloud in a Box" product that Fat Fractal says you can "deploy onto any infrastructure that you prefer: public cloud, private cloud, or traditional data center."

I used Usergrid to build the open source (http://github.com/renaissanceio/renio) Renaissance (http://renaissance.io) conference app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/renio/id588226808?mt=8). We'll start by discussing that and looking at the Usergrid project and related code, and then Fat Fractal President and CEO Kevin Nickels will tell us about Fat Fractal and show us the Cloud in a Box trial edition (http://fatfractal.com/prod/products/cloud-in-a-box/) that we can download and run on our own systems.

All proceeds from the RSVP fee will be donated to Mission Bit (http://www.missionbit.com), a local non-profit that offers free programming classes taught by experienced engineers and entrepreneurs (http://www.missionbit.com/about-us/#lead-instructors) to San Francisco public school students.