CloudBees, a provider of a Java platform as a service (PaaS), announced that the company has been elected to the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee.
The JCP is an open, participative process established in 1998. Its mission is to foster the evolution of the Java platform, in cooperation with the international Java developer community. As a member of the Executive Committee (EC), CloudBees will help steer the development of Java technologies. The CloudBees seat will be held by Steven Harris, senior vice president of products.
“My objective is to work within the Executive Committee to find ways to relax controls and lower barriers for involvement and community contribution so that the JCP serves as a facilitator for driving the Java platform forward,” Harris said, in a statement. “PaaS and the cloud are good use cases to help drive some of the changes needed within the JCP, since they are examples of innovation being driven by the community, independent of the JCP, at a rapid pace. The work ahead is very important for both CloudBees and the community overall, to ensure the continued success of Java in the future.”
CloudBees has been a forerunner in driving adoption of the Java platform, delivered as a service. Sacha Labourey, the company’s CEO, has repeatedly said he believes that the changes being brought about today by the cloud and PaaS will fundamentally impact Java developers and the enterprises creating Java-based applications. The cloud ushers in a new model for more efficient delivery of IT services. The Java platform must evolve to remain relevant and to support the changes enabled by the cloud.
Moreover, the JCP is a key element of the overall Java ecosystem, providing the structure for community engagement on standardization, compatibility and platform definition. CloudBees brings deep Java experience to the JCP, but with the sensibility of a startup, the company said. In addition to Harris, CloudBees employees include Labourey, the company’s co-founder and CEO and former CTO of JBoss, and Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the creator of the Java-based Jenkins Continuous Integration open-source project.
As the CloudBees representative to the JCP Executive Committee, Harris brings extensive experience both with Java technology and the community. Before joining CloudBees in 2011, Harris ran the Java server development team at Oracle for 13 years. In that role, he led Oracle Java enterprise development and managed much of Oracle’s participation in the JCP and other standards organizations. In addition to Oracle’s Java server product area, Harris was responsible for the BEA WebLogic and Sun GlassFish product lines, as well as Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) overall.
CloudBees is joined by the London Java Community to fill the two open elected seats to the Executive Committee. Cinterion Wireless Modules GmbH, Credit Suisse, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard were confirmed for the Oracle-nominated ratified seats.
The JCP Executive Committee includes leaders from across the Java community, such as Oracle, IBM, Google, Red Hat and the Eclipse Foundation.