- Just went beta, no cost for a dev account
- Easy to follow 5 minute videos to get you started writing your Cloud Java Web app
- Very nice local dev environment, with easy to use tools to slog code from your desktop to the cloud
- Trivial button-push creation of a sample Web App you can modify
- The sdk downloads your app to your desktop for modification, it provides a built-in Eclipse project that fires up with no modifications
- Trivial button-push to make a database (MySQL) for your application. (I haven't yet built my schema, I'm looking forward to watching the video for that.)
All things considered, this is the easiest Cloud I've had a look at. For Java devs, I can't imagine it getting much easier than this. (Although there are persistent rumors Google App Engine is bringing Java soon. Google also strongly understands the power of low-barrier-to-entry, so that'll be interesting.)
One downside: the User Agreement forbids several flavors of Open Source, notably the GNU stuff. For now, I'm sticking with the prepackaged stuff Stax gives you, so I shoudn't get in trouble that way.
If you've got 30 minutes to burn, you can have your own Cloud app up and running. The URL is here: http://www.stax.net/appconsole
