All People > marklittle > Mark Little's Blog > 2012 >
June
2012
I've seen a lot of FUD directed at me, my teams and our products over the years, especially whilst I've been at JBoss. But recently some came our way that was so bad and so inaccurate that it almost seemed like a waste of time to debunk it. But debunk it we did and Shane wrote a great article on it. Here at JBoss we don't do FUD, just facts. Many of us have strong scientific backgrounds and reproducibility and provability is important whenever we make presentations, write papers, present at conferences etc. So be warned: if you send FUD our way we will respond and kill it with the facts! What made this feeble attempt worse in my eyes (apart from the number of inaccuracies in it!) was that the author tried to pull me into the FUD directly by referencing my recent EAP 6 release announcement and using that as "proof" that we had immature implementations, poor architecture etc. That annoyed me because not only was I taken completely out of context but the facts speak for themselves. I posted a comment on the original article's comment page, but I doubt it'll be approved so I'll copy it here for posterity:
"Ricardo, your article is so full of inaccuracies I don't even know where to begin. You need to do your homework better, because FUD of this quality is very easy to debunk! I would also appreciate it if you would not misquote be (sic) in future as you have. I did not refer to the things you mention in that paragraph and you used a very underhanded approach to attempt to make out that I did. Not very professional."
Now I'm not going to tell this company what to do with this FUD, but I'm sure some of you can guess. All I will finish with is a simple statement: if this had come from someone in JBoss then I'd at least be having a few stern words with them Fortunately I trust my teams and know we only hire the best!
It hasn't been that long since we announced the availability of EAP 6.0 and I'm really please to make another related announcement: EAP 6.0 is now running on OpenShift! We've been running the community version of the application server on OpenShift for over a year now, with much success and adoption. We started last year with AS7.0 and the Web Profile, moving on earlier this year to AS7.1 with the Full Profile. However, as I said earlier these are the latest and greatest community versions, with all that that entails. I won't go into the community versus product differences again, except to point you at a great article from Rich Sharples. So putting our platforms (all of them eventually) on to OpenShift was an obvious next step. This gives developers and customers the stability that they've come to expect from all of the JBoss platforms, along with the great capabilities that we get from AS7 such as performance, scalability, lightweight(-edness?!) and manageability. And guess what? This is the world's first PaaS based on a supported Full Profile EE6 application server!
In fact being "cloud ready" is something we've been trying to ensure for all of our projects and platforms for several years now, and especially EAP 6.0. But what does this really mean precisely? Well for a start the tools that developers use are more naturally integrated with the cloud. To see what I mean by this you should really take a look at some of the great work of the JBDS team under the leadership of Max Andersen. Furthermore, because we've been working on cloud (PaaS and IaaS) for several years now, we've architected EAP 6 so that it can take advantage of the underlying infrastructure services to scale out on demand, as well as cope with some of those interesting idiosyncrasies that some IaaS providers impose, such as no multicast. And if you saw my keynote from last year's JBossWorld, you'll understand some of the architectural changes we've made within AS7 and associated projects to better support an "as a service" approach, which is important for the Cloud.
It is worth repeating that this announcement means we're the first to put a supported EE6 application server into the cloud. As part of doing that work we've learned a lot about what it means to be "cloud ready" and the limitations or restrictions that current standards impose. So although we can say we are done for now in terms of the implementation, we're definitely not done in terms of feeding those experiences back into projects, specifications and evolving standards. As a result I'm expecting to see us use these experiences to influence heavily new standards such as EE7 and EE8.
OK, so what next? Well now that EAP 6 is on OpenShift you should expect to see more of our platforms appear there over the coming months. But for now, just enjoy EAP 6 on OpenShift and for the best experience ever, make sure you check out JBDS as well! Onward!!
OK, so on the same day we announce the release of EAP 6.0, we also announce that our JBoss Data Grid, our NoSQL offering based on Infinisipan, is also available. You will definitely see and hear a lot more about this at JBossWorld and JUDCon from the likes of Manik Surtani and his team. Just as EAP 6.0 is a major announcement for us in the traditional enterprise Java space, so too is JDG important in the new and evolving world of NoSQL and BigData. I know that the team have spent a lot of time and energy getting this release out and working with early adopters in our early access program. This would have been a monumental effort at any time, but having to do this at the same time as pretty much everyone else was working on EAP 6.0 ramped up the pressure. Yet deliver they did and on time! So my congratulations go to entire team, including QA, docs etc. You've all done a fantastic job and keep it up!
We began planning for EAP 6.0 just over 4 months after I took over from Sacha. Having been with JBoss since 2005 and lived through various AS and EAP releases, I knew how important this new version would be. We had EE6 in its final stages of ratification in the JCP, with core capabilities such as CDI and Bean Validation that we had lead; there were new projects that were related to that effort in the JBoss world and new people in various positions (not just me) to lead this. But if history had told me anything, it was that it wouldn't be an easy ride; we've have ups and downs, highs and lows over the years and it's inevitable that things won't always go according to plan with an effort as significant as EAP 6.0. But I felt that the team could produce the world's best EE6 compliant application server in the community and likewise for our customers.
Well if you've followed our progress over the past months and years you'll know that we did it in the community first (of course!) with our certified Web Profile implementation and then Full Profile release. I won't go on again about all of the good things you'll find in the new application server, except to remind everyone that they include significant improvements in performance, reliability and ease of use. And lightweight? Of course! But the community release was only the first step towards EAP 6. Between then and now we've run an extremely successful Early Access program, which has allowed us to make further improvements based on feedback from those users. We've also put the code through probably the most rigorous testing that I've seen for any application server I've worked on (and I've worked on a few, across several different companies). We've worked on the docs, quickstarts, training, support and a host of other materials that are often taken for granted and yet are just as critical to a successful product as the code itself. Looking back on all of this, I'm surprised that we managed to accomplish so much in relatively little time! But today is the official release announcement. And you'll hear more about EAP 6 at JBossWorld next week of course!
I've had the privilege of being involved with some of the best software developers and managers I know, and watched them create a quality offering in the community and now for our customers too. The feedback we've received since the first community releases has been overwhelmingly positive, as has the early access feedback. And we've even managed to find time to put it on to OpenShift, where it has been successfull as well! I'm confident that we'll build on this success as we move forward with point releases for EAP 6, other products that will be based on EAP 6 and of course, slightly longer term, EAP 7 and beyond! After having seen how well we've worked as a unified team (engineers, QA, docs, support, product managers etc.) I don't think there's much we can't do if we set our minds to it! Though I think everyone deserves a bit of a rest now and time to recharge those batteries!!
So with that I just want to end by saying a very big thank you to everyone involved in the EAP 6.0 adventure. Whether you helped cut the code, test it, define what we had to do, use it, or anything else related to the product, you're all part of the team and can be justifiably proud of what we've all produced. And I also want to say thanks to Sacha for giving me this opportunity!
Onward!