Over the years we've put in a lot of time and effort to make JBossAS the best application server out there. With JBossAS 5 we refocussed around a new microcontainer architecture that gave us a lot more flexibility in terms of deployments and configuration. Building on AS 5, we saw performance improvements through AS 6 and now into AS 7. For those of us within JBoss and the active developer communities, this progression has been fairly low-key. However, now that we are through the first official community release of AS 7 and more people are starting to kick the tyres on it, the feedback we're getting is very positive and most folks seem quite pleasantly surprised!

Take the latest article for instance, which looks at startup times for various types of Java EE container. If you skip to the bit where the author comments specifically on JBossAS you'll see that between AS5 and AS7 we've seen orders of magnitude improvements in the start-up time. However, this is not due to the use of OSGi (which we do support), but to the work of Jason and the team on improvements to the microcontainer architecture and implementation. If you want more details then be sure to check out the Asylum Podcast that was recorded recently.

Of course start-up times are only part of the equation. You'll hear more of the benefits of the micro-services architecture on the podcast. But the various teams, such as HornetQ, JBossTS, EJ3, JCA and others, have all been looking at how to improve the run-time aspects of the container. We aren't quite ready yet to publish official figures, but I can tell you that by the time EAP 6 comes out, JBossAS 7 will rock! It will be the best platform on which to develop and deploy your enterprise applications, whether they run in the Cloud or run locally. So if you haven't taken a look at it yet, I recommend that you do so and provide us with your feedback. Or write articles extolling the virtues of the new performance improvements that you will find :-)

And I'll take this opportunity to congratulate Jason and his team, along with the other project leads and their teams, for putting in a great effort! We are really seeing the benefits and they'll keep coming over the next few months!