Heroku is an amazing cloud computing service that I think is incredibly important but which really isn’t getting the visibility it should be at the moment.

Why does Heroku matter?

Firstly it gets deployment right. What is deployment in Heroku? It is pushing a version of your app to the cloud. That’s it. The whole transformation into a deployable application slug is handled by the Heroku, pushing it out to your dynamos is handled by Heroku. Everything is handled by Heroku except writing your application.

Secondly, it is the first cloud/scalable computing targeted directly at Ruby that has the right pricing structure to encourage experimentation and innovation. It has the low barrier to entry that Google App Engine has but requires no special code and imposes no special restrictions.

Thirdly it does the right thing with your data. It respects your right to access, mine and manipulate your data and provides a mechanism for doing this easily.

For me Heroku has set a new benchmark for Cloud Computing and build and deployment in the enterprise as well.