Silicon Valley vet launches software venture focusing on WebAssembly in Cary

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By Rick Smith

A veteran of Silicon Valley’s technology battlefield is rolling out a new software venture in Cary that’s focusing on the emerging specialty of WebAssembly so developers can “drop in or swap out code with ease.”

Jarrod Overson launched Vino Technologies which he formally unveiled on Wednesday. He and co-founder Bei Zhang were part of the leadership at Valley-based Shape Security before its $1 billion acquisition by F5 Technologies.

Jarrod Overson from his LinkedIn page.

Describing the venture’s “composable software application platform,” Vino says its promise is to offer “Code Less, Build More.” Vino offers “low-code speed with full-code power at enterprise scale” through use of WebAssembly which helps create “applications composed of building blocks that can run anywhere.”

Composable architecture enables all the systems and processes within an enterprise and its partners.  A composable architecture allows access to developers and business users, and can result in a dynamic combination of an application program interfaces (API) to yield solutions for the business, as needs change.


WHAT IS WEBASSEMBLY?

WebAssembly (sometimes abbreviated Wasm) is an open standard that defines a portable binary-code format for executable programs, and a corresponding textual assembly language, as well as interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment. The main goal of WebAssembly is to enable high-performance applications on web pages, but the format is designed to be executed and integrated in other environments as well, including standalone ones.

Vino plans a public beta and says it “will release as an open source framework for turning what amounts to lightweight code containers. These containers, or components, serve as the building blocks that can be composed, remixed, or reshared.”

THE APPLICATION CHALLENGE

“Building applications that meet modern expectations is slow and riddled with hidden costs,” Overson said. “We wanted to develop a new platform that treated generic functionality as a commodity, where developers could drop in or swap out code with ease. The bottom line is that we’re making building global software more accessible to everyone.”

In announcing the company, Overson explained: “We built Vino because we were tired of solving already solved problems,” said Overson. “Vino makes building, running, maintaining, testing, securing, and scaling software easier and cheaper. We’ve spent seven years testing Vino’s core ideas, and we’re excited to share what we’ve built.”

In a recent blog post, Overson said Vino is on a “mission” to democratize software. To do that we need to close the gap between what you can easily build today and where modern expectations are for applications.

“This gap is filled with waste and work that produces no differentiable value. Waste like integration and boilerplate, work like authentication, storage, and security. It’s the cost of playing the game. Modern software leaders found success when this gap was narrow, when the cost of entry was low. As the industry matured, the gap widened. Companies had to do more. Companies that form today have an ever-growing list of requirements while established companies keep pulling further into the lead.

“Today, it’s difficult to compete without spending millions of dollars just to get to a competitive baseline. There are shortcuts like SaaS vendors and cloud platforms, but these exploit the gap. They don’t shrink it. They defer the upfront costs in exchange for payment based on usage, not income. They have to. They’re based on cloud services that charge on usage as well. It’s no different than a pyramid scheme. We race to capture value so we can pay our bills. This isn’t sustainable.

“Democratizing software means leveling the playing field and removing the middle-men.”

Overson said he moved to Cary for a “fresh start” after the Shape Security sale.

He and Zhang hold numerous patents. Vino stems in part from Overson’s work in building a “defense platform” for Shape.

Original Source: WRAL TechWire