Monday, December 05, 2005

Why JBoss?

So why have I moved across to JBoss? Well it hasn't been an easy choice, as quite a few people out there will know. Firstly I was one of the founders of the company. I was also a director of Arjuna Technologies and being a director of any company imposes certain obligations on you that don't come with normal employment contracts. I want Arjuna Technologies to succeed, because I believe in what we've been trying to do and also for the many shareholders who have supported us over the years.

We've been working on having a closer relationship between Arjuna Technologies and JBoss almost from the start. The fact that Bob Bickel is on our advisory board and also works for JBoss is a happy coincidence (we like to point out that Bob joined us first!) When the opportunity finally arose, it was simply too good for the company to pass up. Also to be honest, the way open source has burst onto the software scene, if the likes of IBM are feeling the pinch then you can bet that either every other middleware vendor is too, or is feeling OSS breathing down their necks! Nuff said.

The way JBoss operates when getting involved with any project, be it cacheing or transactions, is that they need to have a critical mass of knowledge as well as the software. So, as well as the transaction software that we have developed over the past 20 years, they needed the knowledge to compliment it. And that's where I came in.

I think this is an exciting opportunity for JBoss and Arjuna. It's also an extremely important deal for both companies. Which is why I, along with many other people in Arjuna, worked hard to ensure it happened. In some ways it hasn't been an easy decision to make, but in others it was the only thing that made sense.

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