Wednesday June 03, 2009

We have been using multiple metrics, such as downloads and registrations, to measure GlassFish adoption, all of which you can check out at The Aquarium.  For example, GlassFish has been the most downloaded application server for quite some time, and is a leading indicator of what can happen further down the road.

Down that road, another metric is to measure the adoption of an open source project by other open source projects.  Because "open source" projects have source code publicly available, it is possible to automate the gathering of data/metadata for open source projects, which offers non-subjective evidence of adoption.  Ohloh (recently acquired by SourceForge) has been doing just that, by crawling 38,000 projects across 3,500 source forges. With the support of Ohloh, we have been able to measure the adoption of GlassFish within open source communities.

The results are in with this report, and GlassFish adoption has shown continued within open source communities.  In fact, the first graph shows that GlassFish is now the most targeted application server among open source projects, with over 50% of those projects supporting GlassFish.  The second graph (below) shows that new projects target GlassFish a stunning 73% of the time, far surpassing any other application server. Note that in both cases, projects can support more than one application server, hence the results total more than 100%.

The results of GlassFish adoption is apparent when you consider the growth in monetization of GlassFish. While Sun does not break out GlassFish Enterprise Server in our earnings reports, GlassFish is contributing to the growth of software infrastructure at Sun, and is a leading indicator that shows that the future opportunity looks bright for GlassFish Enterprise Server. 

Monday September 17, 2007

There is a good reason for the rather long pause at The Clingan Zone. As mentioned previously, I moved out of the field and into corporate as the GlassFish Group Product Manager. In that role, I have been working in the background doing my part to help move GlassFish V2 towards the goal line. As of today, we've crossed that line. GlassFish V2 is formally released!!

GlassFish V1, the first Java EE 5 application server available, focused on developers with Java EE 5 ease-of-development features, low resource consumption, dynamic resource configuration, etc.  GlassFish V2 adds out-of-the-box enterprise features. In particular:

• Clustering - Cluster for scalability high-availability. New to GlassFish V2 is in-memory session replication for high availability; robust and easy to set up. For 5 9's of availability Sun continues to offer HADB.
  
• Advanced administration - From a centralized GUI console (or  CLI) users can manage and monitor the clusters and applications. Clusters can be created and grown dynamically to meet user demand.
  
• Best-in-class performance - GlassFish V2 offers great performance and is the fastest open source application server available. In fact, GlassFish V2 is 10% faster than BEA WebLogic 9.x on the same hardware (compare here and here).
  
• Microsoft .NET 3.0 Web services Interoperability - At it's core,  Project Metro offers industry-leading web services performance with JAX-WS. In addition, Sun (through Project Metro) and Microsoft have worked together to ensure secure, reliable, transactional and high performance web services interoperability between Java EE and Microsoft .NET 3.0.
  

Enterprise features do not compromise ease-of-use. To date the feedback we have received on ease-of-use has been overwhelmingly positive, especially for clustered deployments. Ease-of-use will be a top-level theme for GlassFish V3 (more on that in a later post).

Sun's commercially available counterpart to GlassFish V2, the Sun Java System Application Server 9.1, is offered with new annual subscriptions for support, including live transfer for issues impacting production availability. In fact, we have dropped prices by up to 75% to be in line with other open source offerings. Yep, you can buy online. Note, GlassFish V2 is at feature parity with the Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 - we're not penalizing the open source community for committing to open source bits.  However, if production support is required to reduce the impact of production issues, we have your back. With great out-of-the-box enterprise features and cost-efficient pricing, the Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 offer a great value proposition whether you are an enterprise looking to drive down costs or a startup looking for a low barrier to entry.

Download GlassFish V2 or Sun's commercialized counterpart, the Sun Java System Application Server 9.1. Take it for a spin. Have questions? Check the documentation or the FAQ on how to get help.
 

Monday March 19, 2007

I'm not the first to bring this up (not even close), but Ian Murdock has joined Sun. He's not the first participant to do so. Semi-newbie employees include JRuby studs Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo.  I've got this gut feel there's more to come. Nope, no insider info. Just an ever-expanding gut, so when I get a gut feeling, I notice it.

So what is the "source" of this gut feeling? There is simply no other company doing sssooo much with Open Source today. Part of our strategy is to Open Source our IP and build new communities. Another is to strengthen ties with existing open source communities. Hiring from the outside is a good way of strengthening those ties. It lends us some "kick-start" credibility in those communities, although "more complete and consistent" credibility still needs to be earned. External hiring adds to Sun a better understanding of  the culture of those communities and even impacts the Sun culture over time.

Personally, I think there is a lot Sun can offer to active Open Source participants looking for a change. In case you were wondering, you can can look for a role at Sun that may be of interest to you. I don't know if we had an opening for a "Chief Operating Platforms Officer", but when you've got access to talent that fits a need and that talent can make a difference, 'ya simply go for it :)